The Best Bad Run Ever!

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!