i love dirty girls (gaiters)

the humble runners each got some new (and awesome) dirty girls gaiters for christmas, courtesy of santa (errr...my mom-in-law). got these snazzy splatter painted ones and a pair of groovy disco-ish looking ones. took them for a test run (pun intended) and they were superb. southern california experienced some pretty incredible rainfall most of last week, so a lot of the trails were closed at el morro. but that didn't stop us. we (tyler and i) hopped right over the caution tape and kept on truckin. okay, i do understand that that's probably not something to brag about or be so nonchalant about. as a humble runner, i'm not in the business of making haughty comments about disregarding safety. however, it'd been a few days since we'd had rain, so a lot of it was dried up. we took one detour when he hit a flooded area and everything worked out. except for the part where we saw a coyote. not kidding. tyler said it was a baby (i just saw its head peeking from around a corner from a distance and i wasn't wearing my glasses). but i digress. my gaiters were super muddy (they served their purpose) but we had a great run and did a total of 6.26 miles. i wore tyler's christmas present, the garmin forerunner 310xt. it tracked my pace, distance and time. my average was a little over 14 minute miles which isn't great, but also isn't bad considering the detouring and walking over muddy and slippery areas (and walking when i was really tired).

i had taken two weeks off from running (last time was the run in texas with my bro and sis) and i got sick after that plus with alllll the rain...anyway. i went on a run with my fellow humble runner, tayler, and was so winded. i felt nauseous and so out of breath. my chest hurt real bad. i was feeling worried about our 12k after that. but, i got back out the next day with tyler and felt great afterwards. here are a few photos from the day. since his knee is still pretty sore, he did a run/walk so he snapped a few photos of me.

here are the gaiters before:

tyler looking pumped (kinda):

me in my new arm sleeves and the garmin watch on my left wrist:

a taste of the treacherous trails:

and my gaiters and shoes after the run:



xo, jess