I got up bright and early at 2:30 a.m. to join jun and scottw for a long early morning run in Cedar Valley. I helped jun map out a course that would allow him to do big miles, returning to the car or use convenient stores for aid stations. It worked out great. I'll let jun tell the details. I ran about 9-10 minute miles. I did the first 2.5 loops of the course, putting in a little over 21 miles, all in the dark. As we passed by ranches, we would wake up the dogs and they would go crazy. The temperature was cool but fine, probably about 26-32 degrees. It would vary with some warm pockets.
Here is where I ran
All went well, until we finished the 2nd loop. Jun was about 100 yards ahead and scottw about 300 or so yards behind me. jun stopped at the car, but I went on ahead to get seven more miles. But as I continued running up a very straight road, I couldn't see jun or scottw's headlamps behind me. Where were they??? I continued on, then thought I saw at least one light. At the 3.5 mile mark from the cars, I turned around, and in less than a mile ran into jun. He said scottw never returned to our cars!! How could that be, he was so close behind. jun went on and I ran back to the cars. No sign of scottw!! His car was still there. I shined my green light all over.
I concluded that somehow scottw had taken a wrong turn near our cars. Come to think of it as we had been running, he had mentioned that he was all turned around and had no idea where we were. I jumped in my car and drove all over Cedar Valley, on all the roads within three miles of our cars. No sign of scottw. Wow, what happened? I was sure he was fine, but if he got lost, I realized he would have a devil of a time figuring out where the cars were. I could imagine his frustration trying to explain to someone that he had been running around in the dark with some guys, got lost and had no clue where his car was.
I drove on the first loop we did, thinking he took a wrong turn and ran that loop again, but no sign of scottw so I drove toward the Ranches and found jun. jun told me not to worry. He was going to continue to run. I was worried, so I drove back to the cars to search some more. Thank goodness, scottw was sitting in his car. Sure enough, he had taken a wrong turn and ran loop 1 again and then got confused in Eagle Mountain city center which way to go.
Now that it is over, it is REALLY funny. How in the world can someone get lost in a wide-open valley without any trees, as flat and flat can be where you can see for miles. I said goodbye to scottw and then drove and found jun still running. We had a good laugh. Amazing. Lesson to be learned. Whenever you do a crockett aventure run, you must study the map and even better take a GPS. Something always goes wrong on crockett's adventures. You can get lost, even in a wide-open valley without trees.
p.m. I took a vacation day in order to watch the NCAA games. It was worth it. That BYU game was amazing. I did an additional 5 miles while listening to the post game. | 