1st Trail "Run"

Last week I read Lynn's account of her bike trail story, and it made me want to hit a trail.  I don't own a bike.  The last time I road a bike was in the late 1990s, in Boulder, Colorado, with my husband.  It was all down hill on pavement mostly, but I was still not confident or comfortable on it.  Plus, it hurt my booty.

Anyway, I don't own a bike, but I have two feet and thought I could go trail running.  There's a nature preserve 15 minutes away from us, and I knew they had hiking trails.  I looked on the preserve's website this weekend, asked the kids if they wanted to go on a trail walk with me Saturday morning--they declined. (I will get them out there eventually.)

So this morning, when I woke up late and grouchy, and after I yelled at the kids one too many times--yeah, so not mother of the year today--after I dropped them both off at their respective day camps/care, I called Mark (my husband and boss) and told him I needed a few mental health hours.  I knew as soon as I hung up that I was going to do my first ever trail run.

I go home, get ready, and drive to the preserve.  I had left my map at home, so I stopped at the visitors' center and got a map and asked for some advice.  The lady showed me the trails that should take me about an hour.  They weren't more than 2 miles combined.  I thought an hour sounded like too much time since I was going to mostly run the trails.

Did I mention this was my first trail running experience?

The first .6 miles is paved, then it splits into the wilderness--I had a choice to take the lake trail (.9 miles) or the back country trail (1.6 miles).  The lake trail connects to the back country trail about .4 miles in, so I figured I'd start there and if I was feeling good I'd take a right and get on the back country trail instead of coming back around to where I started a mere half mile later.

I had run most of the .6 miles (which has a huge hill in it, and I had to walk some of that) and a fair bit of the first part of the lake trail.  At one mile in, I felt awesome.  It was beautiful--lots of green, not a human in sight.  I decided, of course, to take the back country trail.  I am runner--hear me roar.  I thought it would be fun to go the less traveled path, not to mention more challenging. 

I wanted to be worn out.  I wanted the frustration and anger and hormones in my body and my mind to be wrung out like a wet towel. 

Man, did I ever get what I wanted. 

The lake trail had been rather tame.  The guide said there were gentle slopes.  I had told her this was my first time at their trail; she obviously listened to that and ignored my 2008 half-marathon hat (which I wear b/c it has a zipper where I can store my car key fob) and my running skirt and my running watch, and she suggested the tamer route.

As I headed onto the back country trail, I knew why she'd suggested the other.

Holy crap. I have never climbed so many hills in my life. They were steep, and they were muddy.  Around two miles, I didn't know if I could finish.  I was worn out, just liked I'd hoped for.  But I was still more than a mile away from the trail head and the blessed relief of pavement.  No other choice but to keep moving, so I kept at it. 

After the first mile, the hills were relentless.  There were only a few times that it was flat enough to run, for like, 30 seconds at a time.  The rest of the hike was a HIKE.  No running involved.  Only climbing up and tippy-toeing down. 

I got past the wall of being worn out, and just plugged along, checking the map, checking Garmin, to see how much further I had to go. When I finally saw the steps down to the pavement, I almost shouted for joy.  I found it in me to run about .25 miles of the last .6.  And I realized that I had, in a small way, accomplished what Vickie talked about on her zip-line post-- I was "beyond normal."

It felt amazing. 

Here are my times, which are interesting to note:
Whereas the first mile was pretty decent on time for trail running--13:48, which is awesome considering my flat pavement time last week was 13:20--my second mile took 20 minutes.  My third mile took almost 22 minutes; the third mile I spent about .25 of it running, so the bits in the woods were s-l-o-w.  Garmin had a hard time keeping up with me a few times.  The trees were pretty thick, and I moved slooowly through some steeeep inclines often, and Garmin went into "pause" mode enough (it stopped recording movement, even though I was still moving) that it threw off my total distance by about a tenth of a mile (as compared to what the map said I covered). 

I am going to go back and do the "easy" trails to see if they are something my kids could do.  Frankly, I think the hills on the pavement would have them complaining like mad.  So I may keep this one to myself for a while and do another nature trail with them that's closer to home, and not hilly.  I can save the big trails for when they are older.

I'd like to make trail running a regular part of my schedule, maybe every two weeks.  I am anti "drive to go running" when I can help it.  I don't like spending 30 minutes in the car when I could have spent 30 minutes on my feet.  Plus, my shoes are muddy as heck.  It's going to be fun cleaning them up for my next pavement run.  Which, I guess, is going to feel like a piece of cake compared to today.  Sweet.