Do spider webs have calories??

This is a question I jokingly asked myself many times yesterday. I decided to tackle the trail that the race I'm doing is on. I had read something in the description about spider webs and since I run into them all the time I wasn't really worried. Why do I keep underestimating this whole trail running thing? I kept running into them during my run. I had them in my mouth, hair, ears, everywhere! I'm hiking crazy trails running along wondering if this counts as breakfast. I just told myself over and over (and over) that surely real spiders don't live in these webs. I know they do, but let me have my illusions, mmmkay? During the couple of times I had to stop and gasp for breath before dying rest I carefully picked them off of me. I'm sure those weren't real spiders. Some mean person had clearly placed toy spiders along my route to tease me.

I was doing an out and back and smugly thought to myself, "well, at least I'm knocking them down now and won't have to deal with them on the way back." Ha! Spiders are efficient little suckers. By the time I came back they had rebuilt their mansions.

Unfortunately, I came back earlier than I wanted to. It had rained the night before and silly me thought it was still a good idea to run on the trail. I am a stickler for a schedule. Or I'm completely anal and have to do what I planned. You can decide which one it is. By the time I had a solid inch of mud all over my shoes and was facing a long muddy trail that it looked like Big Foot had been traveling on I decided to call it a day. I ended up running 2 miles instead of 3, but had run bleachers at the football stadium the night before, so I tried to tell myself I wasn't a lazy slacker.

Some good news: A friend of mine found out I was doing the race (not sure how. It's not like I talk about it here and on facebook a lot) and she knew a couple of people who ran it last year. She suggested I contact one of them so I did. He gave me some advice and assured me I'm not totally crazy for taking this on. Now that I've actually been in contact with a survivor I'm feeling even better.

On a side note, my son Ryan has a great future as a drill sergeant. Last night while doing the ab workout on boot camp he decided he would help keep me going. He yelled at me through a hollowed out bat stuck right in my ear and hit me in the head with it when I stopped. Needless to say, I didn't stop very much.

Happy Running!

~Mel