Feeling Deflated

The gravel trail at The Hill Country Galleria is a 2.1 mile loop.  So I figured with a 10-minute warm-up walk, and a cool-down walk after my 3 mile training run, two loops would be great, right?  Wrong.

We hit the trail at 8:40am Saturday.  It was only 79 degrees, but with 90% humidity, and the sun in the sky beating harshly down on us, it felt way hotter.  Were we running or swimming?  Truly, the air was that thick.  I'm not making excuses, but I'm not used to running on a gravel trail, Austin's way more hilly than Dallas, and we forgot to eat before we left - not ideal conditions by any means.  After the first loop, and feeling miserable, I made the decision to cut the second loop in half and only do a total of 3 miles, including the warm-up walk.

At the end of the run I felt like a deflated balloon.  It's scary that I'm running a very similar course for The Purple Stride 5K in two weeks.  I went from feeling ready and excited for the race to feeling completely unprepared in 49 painful minutes:

• 0.9mi walk
• 2.2mi run; 33min; 15:00min/mi 
• Hill Country Galleria Loop