I Got Lost On A Run...

Yeah, this happened. let me set the scene for you with a little background information.

It was Fall break 2014, and we were headed back to my hometown of Fort Smith AR, for a few days seeing family and then hanging out at the lake. We were planning on fishing, cooking out, having a fire, shooting guns and turtles and just having a blast (which we did). This was all going down on the weekend, Friday through Sat evening.


One of my favorite pictures of me and the "Bigs"

We got to town on Wednesday afternoon after stopping to see my folks at their work and then got to hang out with my sister and her family that night eating pizza. Thursday was a good day as my wife and I went to Ben Geren Park and ran together. We found this fitness trail that was a huge circular path with these little stations for you to do push ups and other exercises. So the wife and I ran 4 miles on it, almost 3 loops. Good run!

Earlier in the week, I had posted on FB if anyone in Ft Smith knew of good places to run, and one of the replies I got was from a guy I had graduated with, he had also just completed his 1st Ironman in July. So we made plans, along with another guy he knew, to meet up at Ft Chaffee, an old ARMY training base that is pretty much empty. My plan was to run 4 miles at a nice 9:30ish pace. Well that did not happen.

I am not sure what it is, but you get two competitive people together, especially two triathletes together, and things change. I knew for a fact that the 9:30 paces was going out the window and I quickly figured out that 4 mile run was going to be extended also due to the fact hat we just took off running, we had no plan. This is totally unlike me. I normally know how far I am going and where to turn and all that good stuff, but we're Ironman right? Let's just run. Wrong!!! Ft Chaffee is much unchartered waters as far as I am concerned. There is not a lot of traffic or signage along the route, so if you do not know where you are going, well that's tough Sunshine. Our little 4 mile easy pace run turned into a 6.5 mile 60 minute run. Not what I was looking for...

But, it was fun. We had to cut through some fields, make some guesses on where we needed to go and we had swapped some stories. My friend is faster than I am so it was good to be pushed on a run like this. I have always thought how cool it would be to just one day to just go out and run, and while I hated it at the time, I liked it now.

Fall Break was a lot of fun this year. Spending the night with just my wife and boys at he lake in a cabin with no TV or Wi-Fi is something you can do and live! The only way it could have been better is if the rain had stayed away and more family could have made it, but we fished in the rain, and got lost on a run. Good times, good time indeed.