The Plan:
Bicycle 40 miles, camp, run 13.1 trail miles, ride 40 miles back home....
The half marathon is called Run with the Foxes, which is put on by the Hoosier Hikers Council in Morgan Monroe Forest, (MMF). I haven't been running a lot this year, but I felt alright running the Indianapolis Mini Marathon, plus I've been commuting a lot on my old Fuji bicycle, so I'm good right?
I didn't want to waste the beautiful ride to MMF in a lousy car, so I decided to go ahead and ride my bicycle to the starting line.... The run was on a Saturday, so I figured Friday I'd ride my bike 40 miles to a MMF campsite, wake-up Saturday morning to complete the run, and finally ride back home. Sounds easy enough, eh?
Is there another bike back there? Yep, I was able to get some good company during the ride.
The ride was going real well, even though the sky was turning ominous. The local weatherman said "not to cancel plans this day, if we did get a storm it'd just be a pop-up". Well we were lucky enough to have a storm pop-up on us. I don't mind riding in the rain, in fact I kind of enjoy it, but when strong winds, lightening, thunder, and hail are thrown in the mix, I'm looking for shelter. Luckily we were about 4 miles away from a shelter I knew about in Brooklyn, but of course during that 4 miles we rode through the strongest part of the storm.
Thankfully the storm was just a pop-up, once it passed the day cleared up and turned out quite nice. The next stop was dinner in Martinsville. We figured we'd load up on food and a couple mugs of Dos Equis before we ride the last 6 or so miles to to the campsite in MMF.
After dinner we made another stop for a few essentials: Sierra Nevada and Crown Royal...
We took a rest after a big climb entering MMF. The beer added a little weight. You can tell by the blurred picture that I was still trying to catch my breath while snapping it. The hill was a real nice climb.
Finally made it to the forest headquarters to pay for the campsite. Once at camp we set up our tents and hung around the picnic table till about 1am. I had to get up in a couple hours to run 13.1 miles so I decided to turn for the night. The next morning I definitely wasn't feeling 100%. Too many beers and too late of a night. I still wanted to do the run, so after some coffee and oatmeal I headed by bike to the start line.
Here's a pic at the start/finish line. Somewhere in there is a slightly hung over and tired runner wondering what he's doing. I did finish the run in over 2 hours. Not too bad considering the lack of running I've done this year, plus the unnecessary drinking the night before didn't help. How do I celebrate finishing a trail half marathon? I ride my bicycle 40 miles back home.
