The hardest exercise in the world, and a persistence hunt.

I've said many times the hardest exercise in the world is getting up off your couch.

  That was the situation I faced this morning, after a late night and an early morning left me feeling tired and demotivated for anything other than lounging around watching football.  Nonetheless, I got myself dressed (well, if a pair of light shorts and my Fivefingers count as 'dressed') and drove out to the park.

  Why the park?  Two reasons.  The first is that it's a nice trail, I'd done it once with a friend but wanted to run it on my own.  The second was simply a piece of mental trickery.  It was far enough away that once I committed to going I was definitely going to get a full workout in.  It also beat a round of HIIT in that once started, the fastest way back to the car was to finish the loop.  Sometimes willpower is about setting the conditions for success.

  Todays run was at Irvine Park, the Horseshoe Trail loop.  It's 3.7 miles around the border of the park on a mixed use trail.  I met some walkers, a couple mountain bikers, and more than a few horses.  The trail is generally soft dirt with some stretches along pavement, and one dry stream crossing on a gravel riverbed.  I'm actually thinking next time I run this trail I might go full barefoot and just carry the VFF's in case of emergency.

View Irvine Park in a larger map

  There were some hills, though not nearly enough for my liking.  No matter, next weekends run to the peak of San Jacinto will more than make up for.

  On my previous run through this trail I went with a friend who is still working up to more than a mile or two at a time.  We stopped at a few points along the way for recovery and we'd throw in some circuits just to keep things interesting.  We also cut off the last portion of the run to save some time as we needed to get back.

  This time, I wanted to run the trail all the way through and see how it went.  At first I was pretty sure my GPS was having a hard time locking onto a reliable signal, as first the one mile, then the two mile announcements came and went sooner than I expected.  When the announcement for the third mile came with the elapsed time and my average pace it sounded right but I just didn't feel tired enough to have already run three miles.  I knew it had to be right though since I was now in new territory, part of the end we cut off on the previous trip.  I was feeling great; I had plenty of wind, legs felt fresh, and my feet were in good shape. Things kept looking up.  Most of the run I had been alone or passing people going the other way.  Now as I looked ahead I saw a runner entering the trail from a diverging path about 300 yards ahead.  Time for a bit of a 'persistence hunt.'

  For those that don't know a persistence hunt is a pretty unique human hunting method involving running prey down to exhaustion before killing it.  Humans and canines are about the only types of animals on the planet that can successfully persistence hunt.  Nearly all other animals rely on sprinting from cover to overtake their prey.

  I was going to run him down over the next 3/4 of a mile.  He was several hundred yards in front of me, and actually running at a slightly faster pace.  I quickly stepped my own pace up to where I was beginning to overtake him.  I still felt great at this faster pace and was well within what I could manage for quite some time.  So far my prey hadn't noticed me creeping up behind him.  His thudding footfalls  masked my own softer nearly barefoot landings.  I was steadily reeling him in, the gap was now only 100 yards and closing.  Wearing just a light pair of shorts, I wasn't carrying my knife as I normally would.. no matter, this could be done by hand.  50 yards... 25... he knew I was behind now and looked back.  Hemmed in by the trail there was nowhere he could go but straight ahead... Closing... closing... and the leap!

  I landed on his back, my weight bearing him to the ground.  He was shocked to say the least and certainly not prepared to defend his vulnerable throat from my grasping fingers...  I reached out and squeezed...

  Ok, so that part maybe isn't true.  I did run him down though and caught him just before the end of the trail.  Once there we actually exchanged a nice little conversation about where the end of the trail was, as he was looking to get back to the trail head where he started.

  I was quite surprised to have reached the end of the trail so quickly as I certainly didn't feel like I had just run 3.7 miles.  I felt completely fresh and ready to keep running.  I strongly considered running the entire trail for a second loop but I just had too much going on to spend the extra time.  Anyway, check the video below for an actual modern day persistence hunt in Africa.