Serpent Trail - Part 1

Considering this is the start of the trail, the marker is pretty discreet

 

This morning I really started my Ultra training in earnest and did a 17 mile run, the longest I've run in several years.

As my Ultra is a trail race I need to train on trails, so I'm using this as an opportunity to run some of the trials in my local area that I've been wanting to, but didn't have the motivation to get organised.

 

So this morning I got 'im outdoors to give me a lift to Haslemere and starting from the top ran the first 17 miles of the Serpent Trail.  This 65 mile trail wiggles from Haslemere to Petersfield.  If I was to drive between the two it would be about 14 miles and take about 25 minutes.  But the trail is a 'route designed to highlight the outstanding landscape, wildlife and history of the greensand hills.'  Which based on this mornings run it does very well.

I've run parts of the Serpent Trail on my Slow Way adventures and am very familiar with the little serpent waymarkers which I see all over the place.  And now I understand why I see so many of them, as the route is very well marked so I only went wrong 3 times, twice where I couldn't see a waymarker and once where I didn't do as I was told.  I hardly had to look at the map at all.

 

I'm also taking the time to test my kit (I was out with a fully loaded pack today) and my nutrition.  I already know that I don't drink enough when running to get enough nutrition just from what I put in my water, so I've been experiement with eating jelly babies along side the Tailwind in my water.  It seemed to work well for me, but the thing I really struggled with is spending all morning eating sweets!  It's very rare that I would eat a packet of sweets in one sitting - I might have one or two as a treat, so to convince myself that it was ok and I should, was actually the hardest part of the run.

I've got lots of time so I'm going to experiment with other types of nutrition too.  Others have made suggestions which mean it doesn't always have to be sweet which sounds good.

The aim now is to run the rest of the Serpent Trail over the next 3 long runs, which should get me to the end.  Then I'll have to decide which local trail I want to run next.

How can my shoes be braking with less than 300 miles on the clock?  Not impressed!

You can read about what happened on part 2 here.