Had my second live race since covid this past weekend, the Hell Hole Swamp Gator Run 10k! I’ve been craving live races since Princess Weekend, so travelled the 2.5 hours to get to this quirky, long-running event (45th annual, longest running 10k in the low country of SC, maybe the whole state, but not sure on that). It was about half pavement, half dirt road through the woods. It was hot and humid after raining the previous evening, so we were warned that the road was going to be full of mud and puddles. Also, apparently the event is typically in May, so (in addition to a warning that we might see wildlife including boats and/or gators) we were warned that it was now hunting season, but they were not aware of any hunters in the area that morning! Now that’ll get you motivated
. With the heat and lack of consistent training this summer, I was a little slower than I hoped (I think somewhere around 1:07:00), but it turned out to be a fun crowd in this off the beaten path event!
Also, our local Walk for Life half marathon went virtual and had packet pick up a few days ago, so I took advantage of storms that came through yesterday afternoon and ran my virtual on the river trails in the rain. Held up a lot better than the 10k!
I think my watch may have given me a little extra, but the red dot was two miles from my car so I definitely got the whole distance in, even though I suspect I was probably closer to 2:15:00 in reality.
That said, my new toy came today! I splurged on a Garmin fenix 6x pro solar, so I’m looking forward to getting some more accurate measurements on my training runs soon!