Trail Running

I'm in love. There you go, I said it. It's out there now. No more sneaking around. I can now embrace the forest with my head held high. I love trail running. Wow, that's a weight off my chest. Go figure.  I knew I was in love before but today sealed the deal. Sharon, Jen, Robin, and I arrived at the Redmond Watershed around 9:00 and after a short warm up, disappeared into the forest. It was my longest trail run at 90 minutes but it certainly didn't feel like it. That's the magic of the trail.

I should back up and say that the drive to the trail was amazing. Trees are embracing Fall and Fall is doing her best to strut her stuff. I use "her" because a man would simply have no patience for changing colors. We'd cut to the chase, drop our leaves, and hunker down for the winter. Now we all appreciate Fall colors but Sharon...Sharon nearly slips into a trance with each and every tree. She sees the sheer beauty of each and appreciates them for what they each have to offer up, almost as if they had a personality of their own. The rest of us enjoy them as well however we found our job being more of a "hey the lights red"...."we should drive in only one lane at a time"....you get the picture.

The trail. We started out on a skinny trail covered with hundreds of beautiful leaves, piles of them. It was fun to run through them. I always think of those car commercials where the car drives though leaves and they fly up as the car rushes by. I looked behind me as I ran and saw very little movement....The down side to the leaves is that they cover up rocks, twigs, and the ever frightening pile of horse poop. Yes, you know you're in trouble when the leaf pile squashes down a little too far. That's why I don't drive to the trail - my car and 'squishy' don't do well together.

It was an incredible experience switching from one trail to the next, around corners, up and down, as the trail wound throughout. Everyone did great. Jen and Sharon pushed the pace from time to time as Jen is working on building her 5k speed. She did really well.  Robin set a PR today, running for the longest time ever! She did great. Robin has a way of finding her pace and pushing forward. Determination is a mainstay on her face - love it!  Jen ran a couple weeks ago and today was night and day - she rocked it. Sharon ran a zillion miles as she would run back and forth to make sure everyone was staying together and no one got lost. She had me pick up the pace with her for a short stretch and I was right there with her. For a minute anyway. Then she does whatever it is she does and with little apparent effort she was soon well ahead of me. Note how I like to phrase it that she is fast so I can avoid the nasty thought that I might be slow...I am not!  Just not as fast as some...

After the run we headed to Starbucks for our post run treat and consumed our rewards on the drive back home. We laughed so hard that I nearly had a 180 degree, non-fat, no foam latte find it's way through and out of my nose. Robin and her "Mr Hankey and the Christmas Poo" started us off and it never stopped. It's clear that we are very funny people! I won't even start with the fake accents.....I had a great time on the run and great people make all the difference in the world. Today was definitely a good day and I look forward to many more. Right now though I need to find a shower and scrub the trail off my body, clean some very dirty clothes, and sooner or later spray off the bottom of my running shoes. Seems that I landed in more than one "squashy" pile of leaves today.