The trail run

Yesterday I did a trail race through the woods of New Jersey.  It was a beautiful trail.  Up and down hills and through woods and there were waterfalls and other things of nature that many people can appreciate.  The problem was that the trails were full of ice, snow, rocks and mud.  All things that I normally like.  However, yesterday was not my day.

I felt kind of miserable from the start.  I had a sort of "what am I doing here" attitude.  It was a 10 mile run.  I have not done 10 miles since the marathon.  In fact, the most I have done is 8 since I had my knee and eating issues.  Whenever I find myself feeling like the first mile is endless, I know that it will not be my day.  I walked a fair amount.  There is nothing wrong with walking, but I just don't like when I have to.  I have found through exhaustive research that walking makes the whole experience take longer.  In other words, running makes the run go faster and be over sooner.  Here is the other thing...I am a slow walker.  I am a relatively fast runner.  I am a very slow walker.  My family all make fun of me in normal day to day life, because they say I walk so slow. "How can you just have run that fast in a half marathon and you are three aisles behind us in the grocery store?"

When I walk, I feel every ache and pain that life has thrown at me.  I am like the Quasimodo of walking.  Hunched over, depressed, people throwing things at me.  I remember being in high school, my teachers would mock me and throw books at me.  That is one reason I became a sprinter.  To get away from flying books, but that is a story for another day.  The point here is that I did not enjoy much of my run yesterday.  At a few points I told myself just to relax and appreciate the scenery and revel in the fact that I am alive, healthy, running and amongst nature's beauty.  That attitude lasted about a half a mile and then I said to myself, "so what?  You're 52.  You've seen lots of trees and rocks.  This sucks."

For a while, I was running with a group of people who I did not know.  There were a couple women, probably in their early twenties, that I was behind in a pretty narrow stretch of trail.  It was not an area that was easy to pass someone, so I was kind of close behind.  One of them said, "would you like to pass us, sir?"  They were being polite and were using some running etiquette that many runners do not have, but I was thinking, "how do they know I'm a sir without having turned around and looking at me."  I wondered if I had old sounding feet.  If my breathing sounded like a man in the latter stages of life.  Or maybe I just smelled grandfatherly.  You know that smell of Old Spice, shaving cream and old skin that comes with being old.  I don't use Old Spice, but as we age, we take on smells that we aren't even exposed to.  My father smells like pine.  He isn't a woodworker and is mostly indoors, but he smells like pine.  Anyhow, they knew I was elderly and I responded, "no thank you, I am in no hurry, but thank you."  From that point on, we became sort of friends.  The cool thing about running in the woods is there is a bond that comes from not wanting to get lost and the comfort of knowing others are around to find the right path.  I had my Garmin and they would ask me on occasion how far we had gone.  At about mile 8, they took off.

The other cool thing about runners is that we will help each other if absolutely necessary, but we all would rather not stop and interrupt our run if we don't have to.  I think they sensed the potential of me falling, dying or crying and took off.  I appreciated that, and figured I would do the same if it were them.  On trails, you see a lot of people fall and you kind of step over them and/or do a little reach out for them and ask them if they are okay as you step on their leg for traction.  You truly hope they are okay, but you don't really want to know if they aren't, because that means stopping.  I was behind one guy for a while who kept falling on the larger patches of ice.  Like three or four times.  I am not the brightest guy in the world, but in those areas I would find alternate ways to get over the ice.  This guy kept falling.  In my brain I named him Falling Waters.  It seemed funny at the time.

I'm going to have to end this, because I'm getting terribly bored.  I've come way to far to delete or edit, so it is going to print this way.  Suffice it to say, that I lived, I did ten miles, I spent a good part of the day with good friends and I am left with the knowledge that I got through a rather difficult run and am ready for my next one.  Just not today.