Fifteen Miles

[lokheed]

This morning while Ben got to hang out with Grandma for a few hours, Kris and I hit the Van Fleet trail and biked/skated fifteen full miles.  That is the farthest I have ever skated in a concentrated time.  (I once took advantage of a weekday off last year and skated the West Orange trail probably close to twenty miles, but I did it at a very leisurely pace, took a very long break for lunch at the park I stopped at before turning around, and it was in the spring when the temperature and humidity was much lower.)

It was a great morning on the trial, if a wee bit exhausting.  And by "wee bit" I mean "completely drained me of all energy and left quivering in a puddle of my own sweat".  So yeah, it was a good skate.  We went south instead of the usual north, and I have to say I much prefer north.  To the south there are more road crossings, and one of them has a very rough pavement that very nearly tripped me up both times I had to cross it.  Also, south has much less shade provided by tree cover, so it was a much hotter trip.  On the other hand, we finally saw the bend in the trail (in its twenty nine mile length, the Van Fleet trail is dead straight except for one twenty degree bend at the five mile point).

So yeah, I sweated a lot and drained all of the water I had brought along with a fair amount of the water Kris brought.  If we are going to be going that distance again in the future, I will need to bring along more than just the two water bottles.  Four would have been good....

Comments

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you definitely want to be taking in about a litre of water for every five kilometres/three miles or so, especially in July and August.

Back when i was living in Sarasota, i was skating about 80 km a week and rarely set out without at least a litre bottle in liquid form and one frozen.

[stannius.livejournal.com]

You could try a camelback. I don't know about skating, but camelbacks (or clones) keep us well hydrated when we go hiking.