17 miles of mud and miserable shoes

Yesterday's long runs was one of my worst runs to date. My original plan was 15 trail miles because that's all I had time for if I didn't want to run in the dark and I really didn't. That trail in the dark freaks me the hell out. I mean, it has bobcats! At some point Friday night I realized if I ran to the beginning of the trail I could add 2 miles and I didn't mind running 2 miles on the road in the dark. The two miles ended up being 2.5, because I took a back road rather than the highway, which would bring my total to 17.5 miles. Yay!

The run started out great. I was listening to Another Mother Runner podcasts and loving life. The first section of trail is 5.5 miles. It was sort of muddy, but not bad. I was moving at a good pace and still happy. I got to Oak Ridge, which is where blacktop intersects the trail I had stashed a powerade the night before so I stopped to drink some of that and text Rick to let him know where I was. BTW, I have a funny story about the powerade stashing for later. After I left Oak Ridge it got MUDDY. Like, your feet weigh a couple of extra pounds muddy. Less than a mile into this part of the run I fell. I had to sort of walk down a rock as it's too big to go around. Due to the muddy feet I just skied down it. I landed at the bottom in a super deep squat, which hurt like hell. I hit one hand on the rock pretty hard and one shoulder on a rock next to it. I took stock and decided I was fine. I kept getting texts and thought it might be Rick so I stopped again. It was his hunting buddy trying to find out if they were going hunting.  I called the house to yell at dh to turn on his phone. I told him about falling and got a little weepy, b/c it still hurt and I'm a wimp.

I kept running and it just kept getting harder. The mud was so thick. I had to keep stopping to get it off my shoes because it was just weighing me down. My goal was to get past the road where it's easy to bail. The road is about a mile long and I can walk up it to blacktop and have Rick pick me up. I was determined to finish though and didn't want the option to quit. After you pass this road you are stuck. I got past it doing fine. About a mile later I fell again! This time it was just me not paying attention. I was actually on the smoothest part of the whole trail. I was looking around and suddenly I was flying. I turned my body and landed on my back. With my hip on a rock. OUCH! First I stopped my garmin and then layed there taking stock. Anything broken? No? Can I get up? Yes? Any blood? Nope. Ok, I'm good. But I'm tired. So I start crying. Good grief this sucks. Why do I run again? I quickly realized that's not helping me at all and jump up and start running again. By that time my feet hurt though. I got new trail shoes last week. At first I was a bit concerned they were too small, but after a couple of runs and wearing them around the house and running errands I thought they were fine. They weren't. They are way too small. They smashed my toes together sooo bad. They also rubbed a blister on my big toe.

With 4 miles to go I sat down on a rock to take my shoes off for a few minutes to sort of check out my feet and see if maybe I could lace them different or something. My toes had been smashed together for so long that I had to peel them apart! The last 3-4 miles of this trail are the hardest on the whole thing. Or the first 3, depending on how you run. Anyway, it was going to be hard. Lots of rocks and climbing and my feet were in so much pain. I decided to go back to the road and walk up it and have Rick pick me up there. The mileage would be the same but the terrain would be slightly easier. With 3 miles to go my feet hurt so bad I contemplated taking my shoes off and going barefoot.

When I got to the road I called Rick to tell him I would be at the top at noon, which is the time he was originally going to pick me up at the end anyway. I had called him when I turned around and told him what I was doing, but didn't make myself clear. I got to the top and he wasn't there. Hmmm. I had heard a bunch of sirens as I was walking up the road so I immediately freaked that something happened to him. He called right then to ask where I was. Ummm, at the blacktop?? He said, no, I'm driving down the dirt road and I didn't pass you. Crap. He's on the wrong road. He misunderstood what I told him. He's pissed. There was a fire and he needed to go help with it (volunteer firefighter) and now he's stuck on this really rough road and still has to come find me. He finally found me and we drove to the fire, which is actually on our way home. They weren't letting anyone through because the house was really close to the road and there was so much smoke you couldn't see through. DH jumped out and went to help with the fire and I drove home. I couldn't go retrieve my powerade bottle because that area was blocked off, but I promise I'm not just going to leave it. I do not litter!

Anyway, if you got through that novel thanks for letting me whine. I ended up with 17 miles for the day. Long, hard, painful miles! Next weekend I will do as many as I can before Adam's basketball game on Saturday.

Psycho Wyco Run Toto Run 50K is in three weeks. At this point I don't know how I will possibly finish, but I've done it before, so hopefully I can do it again!