Awesomely Unproductive Weekend Pt. 2 - Running

Part Two of my Awesomely Unproductive Weekend involved a trail half-marathon, and it was amazing!  In January I saw an email for a Desert R.A.T.S. trail running festival in Fruita, CO and thought, "That's sounds excellent."  I enjoy the little bit of trail running I've done, I've heard good things about Fruita, and I'm partial to the term Desert Rats.  Altogether, this race seemed like an excellent idea, even if the timing coincided with the crunch-time part of my semester.

Ed Abbey wrote about the desert rat in his book Cactus Country, here are a few of the descriptions he included in the essay "What is  Desert Rat?"

Your desert rat is basically just another poor bare forked featherless biped, like the rest of us, but he has certain distinguishing features: a permanent squint, a hide well pricked with cactus acupunctures, the big toes all purple and dead from kicking stones, and inside the skull hardly any viable brains left.
The desert rat loves water but prefers to live, like his four-footed cousin the kangaroo rat, where water is rare as uranium.  The rarity makes it precious, therefore lovable.  For this rat the finest of all music is the tinkle of seep water trickling into a tin cup, the periodic drip of unseen waterdrops falling in the shadows upon tympanic stone.
He doesn't mind a landscape composed mostly of naked rock with some scrubby-looking plants creeping cautiously out of the cracks; in fact he tends to find green pastures and grassy lawns and trees--especially the fat sort with bushy green foliage -- stifling, even claustrophobic.  

Ah, I love Ed Abbey, such a cranky, desert-loving writer.  I highly recommend reading Desert Solitaire.  And you can read the essay I extracted the quote above from here.

Brent and I drove all the way to Fruita so I could run this race and we got up at 5:00am to make sure I got to the start line in time to pick up my race packet.  At that point, it seemed silly to go to all that work to run on a mountain bike trail.  And temperatures were in the low 30s.

Trepidation and awesome tights

 But then I started running and almost immediately lost all my reservations.  This link will take you to a description of the different trail loops they linked together for this race.  My emotions tended to change with the elevation profile below.

Marathon and half marathon elevation.  Can you believe people ran that marathon, or that some others ran that twice for the double marathon?  People can be awesome.  

1.  Bliss.  Around Mile 2 we started running on a single track bike trail through washes and then along a bluff over the Colorado River.  It was the most scenic running view ever.  I'd found a good pace (by following someone who set a good pace - a super awesome woman who had actually run the marathon the day before, that's hard core), the sun was out, and the view, THE VIEW!

2.  Lost.  While I run trails I tend to get tunnel vision, focusing on the next obstacle in my path.  And during this race, I was also following the woman in front of me.  At some point between miles 4 and 6 we (and 5 others) missed a turn and found ourselves about 300 feet below the rest of the runners.  So we all walked straight up the hill.  It was hard, and heartbreaking to realize that a few miles before I was in the front half of the crowd and now I was in the back half.  Plus we shleped up the hill the hard way only to run down hill.  And then...

3.  Trudging.  There was an aid station at mile 7 with soft chocolate chip cookies.  Best aid station ever!  The timer there actually told us, "You have a really good section of trail ahead, you'll end up back on the saddle you were on before."  I'm not sure if she was lying to us, or just looking at the bright side, it was really good that there was a trail to lead us up the mountain.  Despite the 700 foot elevation gain over 2 miles, it was still fun, in part because it always looked like we were almost to a point we could start running again.  I made up for some of my lost time here, but it was still pretty slow going.  And so hard on the joints.

4.  Elation.  The 1.5 miles of serious downhill running were the best of my entire life (no exaggeration)!  It was the kind of carefree running I've found happens rarely in adulthood.  If you've run the R-Scape trail series, it's like "The Luge" but for much longer (and a little trickier).  I couldn't wipe the silly grin off my face and was overcome with the desire to sing.  At one point, despite not wanting to antagonize the people around me, I had to sing along with the Cher that was playing on my iPod ("If I could turn back time....").  There aren't enough words in my vocabulary to accurately capture how happy I was here.

5.  Heart break.  The last 1.5 miles are back on a dirt road, and it looks like it's all up hill.  The sun was blazing, the trail was no longer interesting, and I suddenly felt tired.  Literally, I rounded the corner and said "Bummer."  The only thing that kept me running was wanting to get off that godforsaken road.  Brent was there at the end, and probably treats, and then I could stop running and tell everyone how much fun I'd had the rest of the time.

Then I finished, and Brent gave me a kiss and there was good snacks at the finish line.  I teared up a little thinking about how unhappy I'd been that last mile and how happy I was before that.
 

Then we went to get my car fixed and drove home with the excellent memories of the best half marathon ever.  The end.