Day Six - The BIG run!

This was the day I was looking forward to. I'd been running a bit and really discovering a love for the single track technical stuff. The run up the "Phone Line" was suppose to be epic!!
I was going to test out my new camel back!!
So I woke feeling pretty good. Still not sleeping great but it wasn't too bad.
Churchill pondered that stupidity should be painful.
Today it proved to be.


Coach Pete, prepping the gang pre-run.

We were all standing around the trail head. While Pete was carefully explaining the directions to take I was monkeying around with my camel back. Gatorade was running down the back of my legs and I knew that would make for an uncomfortable 1:45. I had two litres of sugar water back there and it was coming out fast.
We started off and I made it 30 seconds before deciding I had to fix the problem.
I stopped and the gang pulled away. I wasn't worried though. How hard could it be to catch up?
I determined the problem and fixed it in under 60 seconds. Off I went.
Within a minute the trail T'd into a road. I could go right or left. Right pointed up into Sobino Canyon, where we wanted to go. The choice was easy and the choice was wrong. After about 7 forks in the road I calculated I had about a 1 in 350 chance of being on the right path. But like I said, I'd been wrong from the beginning. I ended up following a creek - walking and running in ankle deep sand and jumping from head sized bolder to head sized boulder. My legs were bleeding from the hostile shrubbery.

Getting lost has its advantages. One of them was running here.


And here.

After about 20' I saw some people on the other side of the creek. I waded through and discovered a road. I remembered something about the run finishing down a road so I headed up. Soon one of the campers came rolling down the other direction. 15' later I managed to find the trail and camper after camper coming the other way. After an hour of being out there I turned around and descended back to the parking lot for 40'. I didn't really get the feel of the intended run but I ended up enjoying the hell out of the day despite. I know someone back home, very dear to me, who would have LOVED that run - lost or not!!!


Paul coming down from the Phone Line


The trail back to the parking lot - 40' more of running!

The afternoon called for our first swim. Everyone was pretty tired so we kept it to a quick hour.
I enjoyed the outdoor swimming but 25 yards is not a lot of fun. Too many flip turns.


Paul showing us how it's done!