Have you ever had one of those mornings where you wake up
and know that you need to run, but have no desire to? Well that was my Saturday
morning. The only thing I was looking forward to was hanging out with Cheryl.
When Cheryl showed up at my house, she warned me that she
was in a mood and needed to run. (It is always nice to warn your running
buddy).
We drove for about 2 hours to Silver Falls, Oregon. We were
going there to scope out the trails since we will be running the Silver Falls
Half Marathon in November.
Once we arrived at our destination (said in a GPS tone) we
got out of the car and gathered our stuff. That is when I noticed that my
Garmin was dead. Ugh! It would be a naked run for me, but Cheryl had charged
her Garmin so we would be fine. Yay! Cheryl.
Made a pit stop and then we tried to figure out where the
heck the start would be. We gave up and headed out on the Rim trail. Wow it is
beautiful and hilly!
Gorgeous day for a run. As we were heading down Rim Trail we
started to see more and more people out hiking we had a gentleman tell us how
great it was that we were able to run these trails J We felt pretty
awesome.
At one point Cheryl was behind me (due to the trail being
narrow) and yet out of the corner of my eye I see her start to pass me on my
right L
Then I notice that she is stumbling and out comes the parent arm (you know when
you swing out your arm to block them from flying forward) I missed and I
noticed she was headed for a tree. So what do I do? That’s right I shout
“TREE!” (like she didn’t see it) She was happy to see the tree, it kept her
from falling. And then we were off again on the trails and at this point
wishing we saw a porta-potty, I was looking for a good bush too, but our
choices were very limited. Up a steep hillside or down a steep hillside, plus
the trail was just too crowded.
I really don’t
remember what I was talking about as we rounded a corner, but my mouth was wide
open and a winged bug flew in straight to the back of my throat. I came to a
complete stop and started hacking like a cat trying to cough up a huge hair
ball. It was not working, so I drank some water and washed the protein down. At
this point Cheryl is laughing so hard she is about to wet her pants and then I
join in with her. I am glad no one came up the trail at that point, two women
crossing their legs and laughing so hard they were crying, might have scared
them. We hugged and decided we really needed to find a potty. And off we went.
Again we were told how awesome we were that we were able to
run the trails. It is a great feeling, and that is why I love to run. It makes me
feel amazing.
About mile 4 the trail was really crowded, lots of bobbing
and weaving. And then I went trail surfing. My left foot caught a rock and I
just could not recover. I just had too much forward motion, I came crashing
down on the rocky trail. OUCH!!!! I got up and we headed back to the pottys and
her car so I could clean up. My knees
are scraped, two sores on my hands and a few bruises. After I got cleaned up
and put on some Neosporin (Thanks to Cheryls first aid kit, Thank you Cheryl).
We decided to call it a day and go get some food.
While in the car getting ready to head out of the park we
started laughing about the bug I ate. It was funny. At this point we are also
drinking our chocolate milk. Cheryl made the cat coughing up a hair ball sound
and we laughed some more. Then we composed ourselves and started laughing again
and that is when the chocolate milk came out of Cheryl’s nose. You guessed it
we laughed about that too.
The thing is, is that even though this was a horrible run,
it was the best. We both needed to run. It didn’t matter that she ran into a
tree and coughed chocolate milk out of her nose or that I ate a bug and went
trail surfing. (I could have done with out the bloody knees though). We felt
better.
So there it is, the Best Bad Run Ever!
