(no subject)
No Earthbound Thing
So not yesterday but two Saturdays ago, I found myself badly in need of an attitude adjustment and decided to take myself for a run on one of my very favorite trails up in the foothills. This choice of dubious wisdom was made based on the fact that we have now had enough snow in the Colorado high-country to close most of my favorite hikes to me, eliminating option 1 for methods of attitude adjustment, and also on the fact that my piddly little rehab runs I'd been doing around the neighborhood for awhile were mainly so discouraging that dragging myself out the door to complete one had become akin to submitting to having teeth extracted sans-anesthetic, transforming the runs themselves into dull, soul-crushing death-marches ineffective for uplifting one's spirit, thus eliminating option 2 for methods of attitude adjustment.
So I applied half a roll of athletic tape to the mouth of the snivelling two-year-old that is my right ankle, who for too long has limited me to short jogs on only the smoothest of pavement, laced my old track flats over the top and set out at a jog from a parking lot near Morrison under bright, peaceful, forty-degree morning sunshine, promising a pleasant day. The trail is one I've been on a number of times while training with one of the local high school cross-country teams (not my own) the summer following my own graduation, however I never saw the entire trail until I went up there just to hike it by myself a couple years later. Never managed to run the whole thing. Surely I've run longer and harder courses, but there was just something about it that had my number.
I like this trail not only because it's not too far up in the mountains (I am a cheapskate about gas and I hate having my feet wet and cold from running in snow) and easy to get to right off of I-70, but because it starts out up a decent hill, which helps me with my pacing problem of liking to go out too fast. Not twenty yards up that hill, the apprehensions I'd been having on behalf of my bum ankle regarding the rocky sections further along the trail doubled themselves; the "easy" part of the trail (footing-wise) up that initial north-facing slope was a sheet of ice. I was flooded with doubt, positive that my ankle would wait to break until I was at the very furthest point on the loop from my truck, leaving me to die a cold lonely death, (on this extremely well-used trail in a fairly well-populaed area) which would be preferrable to another career setback due to injury. But I didn't turn back.
There was another runner, an older guy, who started up the trail at the same time as me, and we chit-chatted for a little while as I tailed him up the hill, using him as another pacing aid. I told him about the horse-racing accident that had torn my ankle up "about as bad as you can without having to get it fixed," which in all reality I probably should have had done anyway, and probably would have done had the track's insurance company and incompetent employees not been jerking with me, and about not being able to run much for the last seventeen months because of it, since every time I got all enthused that I was finally able to start back, the damned thing would get unreasonably sore and I'd have to quit, and about how I wondered if maybe I should have anticipated the ice and worn spikes. Then I tried to shut up cuz I thought maybe I was impeding the peacefulness of his run.
Half or three-quarters of a mile into it, we hit a nice long, mainly level section of trail where the footing was decent and the guy put on a surge, his yellow beanie and black stirrup pants (not kidding) striding effortlessly away from me. I resisted the urge to race with him and increased my pace only slightly for the flat ground, which was easier than I remembered, having actually given my legs time to warm up for once. The trail wrapped along the hillside, making some little downs and ups, more ups than downs, actually, and a few switchbacks before crossing a frozen creek (which I walked) and making a fairly steep incline up to the fork in the trail. I came up this grade just in time to see yellow-beanie-guy disappear around a curve down the lefthand fork, following the flatter section of trail. He'd be making his big climb up the back-side of the mountain, on a south-facing slope where the footing would probably be better thanks to nice Mr. Sun beaming on the snow. Seeing that the other runner hadn't opened as big a gap on me as I would have expected stirred my long-dormant competitive streak, and I made the quick decision to take the opposite fork, reasoning that, since we'd both be going slow as f**k uphill anyway, I might as well do it immediately, while I still had some legs left, up the part of the trail I already knew would be icy, and let gravity do the work for me on the far side of the trail where, I hoped, the trail would be dry so I could make up some time while yellow-beanie-guy had to make a much more cautious descent.
The climb was tough, as always. I took two or three ten- to twenty-second walk breaks to navigate rocks and switchbacks and steps amid the ice, and found myself at the top of the trail sooner than I expected, although I was certain the walk-breaks had cost me vital ground in the race I was having in my head. I was sure that any second now, yellow-beanie-guy would pass me, travelling the opposite direction on the loop, with a smile and a wave and go breezing back to the parking lot like it was nothing to him while I shuffled along miserably barely a third of the way done.
But I didn't get to think about that for long because the flat section at the top of the trail was so rocky that I had to give my full attention to my footing as I was again able to move with reasonable speed. Almost before I knew it, I was across the open space along the top of the ridge and breezing down the switchbacks on the other side! Yaay me! But now I really had my work cut out for me, I realized, remebering that yellow-beanie-guy had asked me earlier if I was running the full loop or just out and back, it occurred to me that maybe HE had just run out and back, turning around before we met each other in passing on this side of the loop. Before he'd even made a hard uphill section! And now I had to catch him?! Not a chance, unless he was a really conservative downhill runner, I thought disappointedly.
Momentarily, though, I heard him breathing hard a couple of switchbacks below me. He was just starting his ascent! Meanwhile I, as I'd hoped, was able to make good time downhill on a dry part of the trail, a luxury my opponent would not have! Yaay me! I'd neglected to start my watch at the trailhead and hoped he had remembered his. We paused briefly to say hi. He was surprised to see me already, and said he never ran with a watch. Rats. I regathered my focus instantly as we parted ways on the trail. He knew I was ahead of him now, I thought, and would most likely be striving to make up some time on that flat section up on top. Better not let up now.
Letting up was not a problem for me; it was almost all downhill now, and I was sailing, holding back just a little out of fear that my ankle wouldn't take what I was doing to it, but gaining confidence little by little. Each time I got a chance, testing it, a little faster, scrambling and darting from rock to rock, only skidding once, and then I turned a corner and crested a hill and was back on the ice that had led up to the fork in the trail. At the bottom of the hill, the trail switched back across the frozen creek and proceeded up the next hill across from it; I could plainly see that section of trail from where I was, and I could plainly see that yellow-beanie-guy wasn't on it. Either he hadn't come off the upper fork of the trail yet and I was just ahead of him, or he'd already rounded the corner on that next hill and I was way behind. I ran down the snowpack and had a hard time stopping to make the turn and cross the creek. I ran up a short, nearly-vertical chunk of trail, switched back again, and started across the slightly easier incline of the other hill. And then I saw a yellow beanie come bouncing cautiously off the upper fork of the loop across from me.
"I'm winning! I'm winning!" I called jubilantly across the little gully between us, happily suggestive that he should chase me. He laughed and I knew the race was on. I sped up and rounded the hill, not a mile from the parking lot, trying to put some ground between us before he turned the corner and could see me again, a bullseye on my back. It was fast, I knew. All too fast and all wrong for my ankle or for my fitness level. I knew I couldn't hold the pace I was setting for a mile. No way, said the reasonable part of my brain I rarely listen to. But I was burning in places besides my legs and lungs. It had been a long, long time since I had a shot to win at something, and I made up my mind that I would hold the pace as far as I could and then try to hang on. All the little ups and downs I'd already covered once on the way out began to brutalize me on the way back. I'd go flailing down the little hills just asking for a fall, couldn't slow down if I wanted to, then stop like I'd slammed into a wall when it was time go back up. My fitness showing, weak and weary. Finally, on what seemed to be the biggest hill of the entire trail, like running up Mount Everest!- I gave up and walked, ready to relinquish my trophy, unable to go on. Then I turned a corner and could see, clearly, that it had definitely been the last molehill on the course and I was a short, 200m sprint from the parking lot. In the same moment, I heard yellow-beanie-guy's rhythmic breathing as he bounded up the hill, right.on.my.heels.
And I broke into a run. And I knew it wasn't gonna be fast enough, so I ran faster. I was sure with every step that the next one would surely be my demise. I would collapse, ass-over-teakettle, tumble down the hill, rebreak my back- or worse- my ankle! Surely that ankle wouldn't take what I was doing to it. Surely I would never run again.
Then I told that reasonable voice to shut the hell up- I've got to find out how much it'll take sooner or later, and if this is gonna be my last run then I'd damned-well better make it a good one, and I ran faster. I felt light, sailing down that hill. Like I could take off and fly any second. I couldn't feel anything. Not my bum ankle or that sore spot in my back or the hip that's out of whack cuz I've been limping for so long or the fatigue in my legs. There was my breath, and the sound of my feet pounding down the perilous strip of mud alongside the sheet of ice I'd started up earlier that day in another lifetime, and yet there was silence. An eerie quiet, like I was the stillness in the center of the storm even as I was the storm, raging down that trail in all my fury. There was peace. And there were my legs, confined too long to the cardio machines at the gym that are nothing to them and all along craving this, this, this freedom. My form was falling all apart, couldn't have held it together if I'd tried. A lot of the muscles I needed weren't there, long gone slack from lack of use, but my legs, they knew what to do. They could do it without me. All I had to do was keep breathing and they would get us there.
I thumped gracelessly across the bridge, overstriding badly, and staggered the last few yards up to the sign-map marking the trailhead, and had a hard time breaking back down to the rhythm of walking. Like I might step right out of my body. I was leaning on my knees and breathing raggedly as yellow-beanie-guy jogged up to me in decidedly better shape.
"Admit it, you let me win." I said, beaming.
"No, you were awesome. You were flying on those downhills, man, you are fearless!"
The signmap, as I read it, indicates that the course was exactly a 5k. I'm rather glad to not know the time because I think it might have lessened my joy. You seriously could not have caught me with a butterfly net for two days afterward. I was that high.
The Ankle was PISSED. Not only would it not have approved that trail, or anything that distance, for that matter, had I bothered to consult it beforehand (rather than putting half a roll of athletic tape over it's mouth) but I let some stranger pull me along a lot faster than I intended to go, further risking The Ankle's safety. For what? For the sake of my own glory? For what basically amounts to vanity? Yep. And The Ankle didn't break. It has now been eight days, and The Ankle is considerably less pissed.
The guy's name was Dean. We had lunch at Village Inn, and hopefully I have a date to go running next Saturday.
Attitude successfully adjusted.