Morning Run

So let me by preface all this by saying my watch died with 16 to go which sucks for verification but hopefully rylans instagram videos of me running, my snapchat stories with the time filter, and rylans strava bike ride are enough to make this official. But anyways thanks to rylan for biking the entire way with me, and keeping me entertained with his dreams about getting married on a plantation and stories about a bacon dude burning stuff and causing them to move the state capital from jamestown to williamsburg. Also rylan if youre reading this i want you to know fences are not a landmark and im never eating another snickers bar again because of you.

Anyway for the actual run, we got off to a pretty solid start and were moving pretty well up until mile 20. Miles 20-25 i was feeling pretty tired and the detour after the rice center didnt really help, but i guess this was mostly me mentally realizing we werent even halfway there and how much it was going to hurt. After that rylan played “Richmond is a hard road to travel” i started flying until stopped at mile 30 and i almost puked (foreshadowing) after drinking too much gatorade too quickly. We got to Charles city (which I learned is not actually a city but a group of 5 unimpressive buildings btw) and was fine until 18 miles to go.

Now let me tell you something about the miles 34-46 of the capital trail. They. Fucking Suck. The sherwood forest is the equivalent of purgatory and i lost all sense of time and pace and slowly started to fall apart. Its literally just a straight line through endless forest and i adopted a “run 2 miles walk 1 minute” method to help with fatigue and to break up the run mentally. 

HOWEVER, with 13 miles to go, Rylan realized how fatigued i was and convinced me to eat a snickers bar, and upon finishing said candy bar i spit out a little, then prompty spit some more before i quickly hunched over the side of the trail and absolutely puked my guts out several times. I was convinced i was going to pass out and rylan was going to have to call an ambulance to pick me up (after which a doctor would tell me im an idiot for even thinking this was a good idea). I was completely prepared to give up on the journey and abandoned all hope of claiming the FKT.

But then after vomiting 2/3 of my body weight, a feeling of rage just took over my body and i took of down the trail, more determined than ever to take this FKT for myself. The 2 mile run 1 minute walk method continued and i slowly made my way out of the PTSD inducing sherwood forest and was getting by the best view of the beautiful chickahamony river. With 5 miles to go, i asked rylan if i was on pace for the FKT and all he said was “its gonna be close” which terrified me so i stopped taking walking breaks, asked for some country music, and essentially put forth my slowest 5 mile tempo of all time. With 2 miles to go i was hobbling on a possibly broken (not really but it felt like it) right foot and was literally galloping at one point because it was easier.

But with 1 mile to go, while i was perhaps the most broken, i asked rylan to play “Bring me to life” by Evanesence and “In the end” by linkin park and absolutely sprinted the last mile in what MUST have been sub 6 (probably sub 7 pace). And then i pulled out my phone and saw i beat the FKT by a solid 16ish minutes and promptly hobbled over to the beach took a snapchat, and then lied down on the nice warm black asphalt parking lot for a half hour.

Favorite sections of the trail:
1.)Four mile creek trailhead and the “Big Bike” (~ mile 12)
2.) Plantations outside of charles city that remind me of Indiana but are super cool (~mile 28-29)
3.) Chickahomony bridge (~mile 46)

Least favorite sections of the trail
1.) Charles “city” (mile 32)
2.) PURGATORY AKA SHERWOOD FOREST (~miles 34-46)
3.) SHERWOOD FOREST AGAIN

But yeah an interesting end to an interesting “season”. Time to hibernate like a bear and not run for 3 weeks

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Daniel Briggs

Dumb and Dumber conquer the Virginia Capital Trail and claim the unofficial FKT (52 miles, 7 hours 23 minutes)

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