Avoiding Injuries

Today I ran later than I would have liked. The weather has been hot and humid, so it would have been better for me to head out at 6 or 7 in the morning. Instead, I didn't run until about 11. While I didn't have a bad run, neither did I run as long or as far as I would have liked. The temperature was probably in the mid to high 80s, and, with the high humidity, discouraged me from trying anything new.

So I returned to the orange trail, and, specifically, to the route I followed last Tuesday. This proved to be a wise decision. Most of the my run was in the shade, although the partly cloudy skies limited the amount of direct sunshine anyway. A second benefit to running the orange trail today, though, was that it provided me an opportunity to deepen my familiarity with it. Indeed, at one point I encountered a fork in the trail. I took the right fork, but I didn't have to follow it far to discover that I was on a trail that seemed more difficult than I had remembered the orange being. I backtracked and discovered that, yes, I'd taken the wrong fork; I'd missed the marking on one of the trees that pointed in the right direction.

Trail running, I'm learning, presents its own set of advantages and disadvantages compared to running on other paths (such as Forbidden Drive). Although the surfaces are often soft, variations in the surface are myriad. I have to be constantly on the lookout for rocks and roots and small changes in the contour of the path. I've been reminded of this several times during my last few runs, when I have accidentally turned my foot inwards, pulling some set of ligaments, tendons, or muscles on the outside of my leg. I hope that injury isn't inevitable or statistically highly probable. Perhaps I need to be more vigilant.

Towards the end of my run, I began to notice how intense the combination of heat and humidity was. When I put on my sunglasses, which cover my eye sockets, I could feel the heat within the space between my eyes and the lenses, and wearing them actually became slightly uncomfortable. Yet the proof for me came after I stopped my run and walked over to the water fountain. Without the motion of the air against my skin, I noticed how my body had become a furnace. So it was probably for the best that I halted my run when I did.