The trail of tears

Today: 4 miles on the TM. Nobody else in the house is interested in running, not even the dog.
Yesterday: epic adventure! We were at the beach! In the woods! In the fields! On dirt roads!

My husband planned this run; he wanted to check out the trails by a lake that isn't too far (50 minutes?). We took the backroads to get there and at one point ended up on a gravel road with signs that originally said "Gravel Ends" but were edited to read "Dead End". I am apparently an optimist because I'd thought that the gravel would return to asphalt; my husband was curious to see if it was just a prank; the dog was asleep. The gravel indeed ended at an overgrown dirt road with fallen branches all over it.

We eventually got to the lake and started to run. A few minutes later, I was feeling pretty horrible, out of breath and feverish. After a few more minutes, I told my husband I had to walk; I told him to go ahead, but I was feeling off and needed to collect myself. This was not-so-coincidentally up a steep hill, which he was more than willing to walk up. During the ascent, I remembered that I had had a flu shot on Thursday and was probably feeling its effects. This realization made me feel better enough to continue running once we were at the top. Except for a short portion in a zone, I never felt good, but the discomfort became mild enough to mostly ignore.

This section of the trail went up and down forest hills and along the sides of fields. It was an interesting combination of terrains, and it makes sense: why would someone till a hilly field?

Eventually we got close to the lake again and we walked over to let the dog drink and cool off; we drank some water as well, though not from the lake. This was a really nice spot. The lake was large enough to be clean, not murky or slimy like smaller lakes and ponds, and the coast was somewhat rocky but still wide and clear enough to walk on. Our stop was after about a half hour of running: my husband was stopping his timer for the walk portions and for this sit-by-the-lake portion.

Eventually, we got going again. We ran through more woods, through more fields, and at about 59 minutes of running, we were at a road that lead back to the lake. Should we turn around here? I was feeling well enough that I suggested that we go an extra 10 minutes just to get over the 2 hr run barrier, but this wasn't the best decision. The portion of the trail ahead of us was kind of boring, as well as less-tended and through more overgrown and wild fields: we got a bit scratched up from the sharp grasses but that was nothing compared to the ticks. Lots and lots of ticks. We didn't realize this until we turned around and stopped again by the lake and saw a bunch of ticks on the dog.

(In total, we must have pulled off three dozen ticks in various stages. Most of them hadn't latched on, fortunately. The dog does have tick repellent on! I had a few ticks on me and my husband a few more than that...no bites, fortunately.)

It was hard to resume running after another lakeside sojourn, but after a short walk along the lake (oddly enough, this stretch of shore was littered by onions!), we picked it up again and both I and my husband got into a lovely zone for a couple of miles or so: the path at this point was forest, but light forest with plenty of light and little green plants on the ground, and the path itself was not too rough. At one point, we we went around a curve into a patch of sunlight and I entered into a perfect moment. My discomfort was numbed by endorphins and I was with my loved ones and the path felt so gentle and soft; a second or two after that, a cloud obscured the sun and it wasn't the same, but that abrupt close encapsulated the moment wonderfully and, well, perfectly. I have had very few perfect moments that I still remember because most of them trailed on and out too gradually, I think.

We returned to the first lakeside spot, pulled more ticks off the dog, ate and drank a bit, then finished the final return portion, with the steepest hills. Eventually, we decided to walk the last mile because the fields at this point were well-mown but the equipment had created little ruts that were tiring to run on--the dog was eager for another gear, though, because there were deer in the fields now, big healthy bouncy ones.

We had been out for a while!

This called for hamburgers, and we were twenty minutes away from Local Burger. I offered to forgo the trip in case my husband wanted to get home sooner, but the proposal astonished him. Not go to Local Burger? Madness.

We got our burgers; the town, a college town, was crawling with people wearing green and a few degrees of drunkenness. Ah, uni days! It was the perfect day for St. Patty's Day revellers too, nice and sunny and not windy. All of us got a good dose of Vitamin D.