I'm so glad you had a great time! I knew you would. I read about that area I think on Scott Dunlap's Trail runners blog as he did the Death Ride there I think. Either that or jleitner ran a triple marathon there. Anyways, I'm sure you got a better experience of the area by getting off road and back into the hills. Did it make the wait and the drive worth it? Was running the streets in prep a worthy sacrifice to make to get that reward? I was thinking about you this morning wondering how your run went. I pulled up the web this morning as I was getting ready for work and saw that you had posted already and I had to laugh as it was about 8:00 am.
As for fuel, I tried various stuff this weekend. First, I ate two pieces of leftover pizza, ham and onion. It kind of sat in my stomach a little heavy till my next feeding about 1.5 hours later. Then, I tried candy corn. Talk about SWEET! I wouldn't recommend that if you're trying to get away from sweet stuff. Man. Next I tried some pancakes. You read right, pancakes! I had some left overs from the previous morning, 3 blueberry and 1 chocolate chip, all homemade. Before I left for the run I cut the stack in half, put it in a quart zip lock bag, poured in some pure maple syrup, then put the whole thing in another zip lock for safety's sake. When I opened it up to eat em, they had absorbed all the syrup. I just pulled em out and chowed down. Man, were they ever good! And, they boosted my energy within about 10 minutes very well. They weren't as sweet as you might expect. Give that a try if you don't mind the weight. That was it for fuel. I bought some NUUN tablets for electrolyte replacement. 1 tab per 16oz of water. Kind of like flavored Alka Seltzer. Kind of gross guzzling fizzy water but seemed to work okay. No bonking this week. It's hard to tell if it was the intentional increase of calories over last week or the addition of electrolyte tabs. Guess I'm no scientist. I'll just have to go for both in my long runs. I'll experiment some more in the future. Yesterday I bought some fig and blueberry breakfast bars at Trader Joe's. I love that store! I'm going to give those a shot next week.
As for my run, I got up at 2:30am, drove an hour north to the Appalachian Trail at Lehigh Gap. I had bought a head lamp at REI on Friday so I was stoked to give it a try. I was afraid of ghosts and monsters my whole life growing up and the dark as well. It didn't help that I loved reading those kind of stories and watching scary movies either. The last time I was on the AT about 3 years ago I was backpacking by myself and got wigged out as it was getting dark because I had watched the Blair Witch Project the day before. So, my mind was trying to play tricks on me the whole time and I had to battle to keep out the Bad Thoughts. I hadn't watched the weather before hand and wasn't expecting what I got. The humidity was 100%. As I climbed the trail, and climbed, and climbed, it got hazier and hazier. Everything was covered in moisture. My light only illuminated an area about 4-5 feet in front of me and that was all like a cloud. I could see the spider webs, about 1/2 a second prior to running into them with my face. My mind had just enough time to register "Spider!" before I plowed into it. No exaggeration, I must have gone through 30 webs in the 2 1/2 hours out. On the way back, they had enough time to rebuild them so double the number for a total of 60 for the run. Most of them weren't full blown webs which I'm thankful for. They seemed to be anchor lines or something, 1 line of webbing dangling down from the limb above to the ground below, covered in dew. Not fun.
Did I mention the rocks? No? Let's just say that the settlers built there houses out of em for a reason. Probably cause there were more of them than there were trees! It was tough to find a flat piece of ground to place my foot in. I was worried about twisting my ankle or knee. Many of the rocks seemed to be like a flat piece of slate, but with the edge poking out of the ground. Not fun for the feet. I was dancing more than running. It made it very difficult to run and my pace was slowed considerably.
I ran the first two hours in the dark. As it got lighter I realized I was running in the fog. A little breeze picked up and was blowing the mist across the beam of my light sideways which was interesting to see. Hmmm, moving soup. I was eventually able to turn off my light and "run" without it. The lookouts from the ridge, and Pennsylvania has some of the best on the AT, were not really "lookouts" that day. I couldn't see more than about 50 yards into the mist.
The 'back' portion of the out and back returned me to my truck 45 minutes sooner than expected due to the decrease in elevation on the return trip. So, I took the trail in the other direction on the other side of the river. Man, it was steep. Very steep. The trail ran straight up a rock face to the top of the ridge on the other side of the river. The gap is cut by a river that runs through the ridge, creating a steep climb back to the top. I hiked about half way up before I had to turn around due to time.
All in all, I had a great time. No bonking. Fuel and hydration worked real good this time. I was soaked the whole time due to the heat and humidity. I was just glad I started at 4 as the day ahead was really bad. I look forward to doing it again, though maybe on the other side of the gap in hopes the rocks will be less. Did I mention how rocky it was?

http://This message has been edited by Gregolowe (edited Aug-27-2007).

Other than that, we only saw birds and squirrels. Oh yeah, and two naked guys. That wasn't as pleasant of an experience as it could've been.

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?!?!?!?

Micro brew, Mmmm.....

How about Corn Nuts? I tried looking for some at a conveniene store prior to my AT run last weekend but couldn't find any. Pleny salty, compact, packed full of energy.

fatazzig -

I like oyster crackers in a snack size ziplock baggie. Nice carbs n salt and they fit perfectly in the back pocket of the Race Ready shorts.

How about spaghetti? If I can do pancakes, spaghetti shouldn't be too hard. Think I'll try it this weekend.