Sunday, June 18, 2017

Day 2: Sedalia to Pilot Grove (25.7 miles)

Part 0: Time for Brekkie

After feeling so completely wiped out last night, Lizzy and I had no idea how we would feel when we woke up. Would we be stiff? Sore? Unable to move? Luckily, we felt a little tired and stiff, but not particularly sore, and absolutely ready to start the day. We headed into Sedalia and got breakfast at McDonald's trying to eat as much as we possibly could. It was pretty hard to eat this early in the morning, and I nailed down a much better breakfast routine later in the week.



Part 1: Rolling Hills of Sedalia

This segment of the trail was fun. Part of the trail follows roads through Sedalia, and it was interesting to see the houses as well as the remnants and reminders of the history of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad. We also saw some super cute puppies. By this point, we settled into a run-2/walk-1 pattern which worked well for us the remainder of the time we were together. We kept trying to hold back the pace on the running segments, but after having completed the trail, I don't think that's something we actually needed to worry about. I felt best just running at whatever pace my body wanted to run at whether or not my mind thought that pace was too fast or too slow.



Part 2: Still Feeling Pretty Good

After a short snack break, we finished out the 7-ish miles to get to the trail head at Clifton City. Clifton City is the only trail head between Sedalia and Pilot grove, and it does not have water. A 25-mile stretch without water is probably do-able for cyclists, but it's quite a long stretch for those on foot. If we do this again, we'll need to figure out how to get some water during this stretch because ran out during the last hour of the day. We were fine, but this could definitely be an issue on a hotter day. We also met some through-bikers at Clifton City that we bumped into a few more times along the trail. Our first trail friends!



Part 3: We're Tough!

When we told the park ranger at the Missouri state fairgrounds that we were running the whole trail, he responded with, "Wow! You girls are tough!" I don't remember much about this segment other than that it was hot, we kept on rolling, and we definitely dipped into our reserves of toughness ad stubbornness.

Part 4: Easy Hike During the Hottest Part of the Day

It was in the high 80s and sunny, Lizzy was starting to feel some knee pain from an old injury, and we were mostly out of water so we decided to hike the rest of the way to Pilot Grove instead of trying to force any running which would hurt Lizzy's knee and possibly leave us overheated without a way to get water.

In Pilot Grove, we camped out in the city park. Once we found the park and took a little recovery break, we walked over to the Casey's gas station, and got our third pizza of the trip. After that, it was 'lights-out' a 7pm with our alarms set for 4:30 the next morning.

Total recorded mileage: 26.8

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