Today’s photograph is me standing at the start of the Rachel Carson Trail, just before I set off on my attempt to run the 46 mile trail.  At that moment, I felt very confident that I would complete the run, but I had no idea how my body would react to the challenge.  After all, I was planning to run 20 miles further than I had ever run before, and I was doing it on a trail with lots of hills.

I will cover how my body reacted during the run in a full report of my adventure later this week.  But how is my body feeling today, the day after the event?  The answer… not too bad.

The parts of my body that are most sore, are my ankles and my triceps.  I am guessing that the ankles being sore makes a lot of sense to you.  Trail running is tough on the ankles, what with all the running on uneven ground.  But what about my triceps? Those are sore, because I used hiking poles to help me up and down the hills. 

I honestly don’t think I could have completed the run without those hiking poles.  Some sections of the trail are extremely steep. The poles saved my legs going up those hills, and they stopped me from falling, while going down.  

The rest of me is in pretty good shape.  My quads and glutes are a little sore, but no more so than after the training runs that I did.  My feet survived really well, except for one large blister the size of a nickel on the back of my heel.

I am not sure if things will get worse tomorrow.  Sometimes, the second day after a hard workout is tougher.  Either way, I was prepared to be hurting a lot more than I am right now, so all in all, that’s a huge bonus.