Frank B. and I decided to do a short run so I would see what the MS50 race would be like in March. I've never run a trail before and I wanted to get a taste of what I had gotten myself into. Having dressed in hunter's "protective" colors, excited anxiousness surrounded me. I wanted to run but knew I needed to make one sure step in front of another in order to make this a safe, fun run. With eyes on the ground, off we went.
It wasn't long before we came up on these really pretty mushrooms, some of the largest I've seen. They were very bright coral colored. So I had to take a picture. The color looks a little washed out but they were really pretty and vibrant.
It wasn't too long into the run that we came up on a puddle that could not be gone around. I plowed right through it but let out a squeal like a little girl. You need to know that I do NOT like to get dirty and never stomped in a mud puddle when I was small. So this was a new experience for me.
Not long running in my newly squishy shoes, filled with who knows what, we ran up on a huge spider web. Frank reached out to grab my arm to stop me but it was too late. I, obviously, didn't see it. AND there was this huge spider right in the center of it. Needless to say, I was engulfed in this new "natural" sweater fighting as hard as I could to get out of it. Then I felt something crawling up my leg and just about went crazy!! I knew it...it was on ME!! After a little dancing around, swatting at the air and scaring me and that thing slap to death, it finally fell off. I sure was hoping it didn't bite me. If it had any sense, it would throw itself out of that web next time he sees a human coming his way.
Now, I have friends that frequent these kind of trails and love them. But this is the first for me and I needed to know if I was willing to hang tough throughout...mentally and physically.
We did fine going from one tree to another following the signs UNTIL we reached a "T" and not a tree around held a single sign. The directions just stopped. Well, the little ole map that we had was totally useless as we come to find out at this point. We turned around and headed in a different direction where we did see a sign down the way. We ran it for a while and came up to a road. It was 4 miles there. We had talked about doing 4-6 miles. He seemed to think that instead of turning around and back tracking that we could go down the trail on the other side of the road and it would get us back to the start. Just making a loop of sort. So off we go across a road on another trail. Eventually we came up on a road. Looking both ways they looked the same...endless. We decided to take a left, confident that we had made the right decision...
...only to find that the road didn't seem to end or intersect. Sooooo, we turn around and head back to where the trail came to the road and go the opposite way from where we'd been. After a while, Frank remembers the Navigation program on our Garmins. We got it up and going (and it seemed to know what it was doing) only to find out that neither of us were good at looking at this small map on this watch face. Ahem...I DID tell him that I could see enough without my glasses to read the map that turned out to be a "not so good" map; therefore discounting what vision I could muster to read this tiny little map on a wrist. After following the arrow for a while, we noticed that the arrow changed and was pointing across a field, then the opposite direction as if we'd passed the "start". Not being able to cut across that area, we continued on down the road and there it was...a beautiful red Stop sign!! Yay...we were at least at a trafficked road.
What can I say?? It truly was an adventure and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was so much fun. And, we learned a new feature on our Garmins! When we got back to the truck, the watch had recorded a distance of exactly 13.1 miles! We did a half marathon!! I don't know how the trail will go on race day, but I'm confident we won't have to use any survival skills on it, ha! I hope you enjoyed reading my new escapade cause I've enjoyed sharing it with my readers.
4 comments:
Great race report Robbie! It seems you guys had a lot of fun!
I am the worst trail runner in the world (I don't like to get muddy either), so I envy you guys for trying.
Too funny. Good thing you weren't in the mtns when this happened, because Garmin's like to lose signal when you're down in the valley. BTW if you run with a lite weight stick in your hand it helps to catch webs when you're in front. Spider normally drop to the ground once you run into them. Remember they have deer do it all the time so the spiders know what to do. Joseph N.
When I run thru the woods, I find that dropping bread crumbs is an excellent way to mark my route, just in case I lose my way.
Message to Kent: Find someone a little faster than Frank for this particular mission.
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