Patience; the new endurance sport.

There is nothing I love more to do while on vacation than run.  I run easy, I run faster, I run long.  I don't know what happned Saturday Morning (besides pushing a 21 miler exhausted) but today was specatuclar and easy-breezy (well, I did pretty good Saturday up till 15). So today, I remembered all my best dead people and made some of the foods they loved. Happy Memorial Day!  It was a great weekend. 

I am going to miss my baby toenail.  It was bruised after Boston and it hurt. I was pretty sure it was going to fall off.  But then it never did. And so finally, with the onset of sandal weather, I  celebrated by getting a pedicure. But when the girl was cutting and filing my toenail, it fell halfway off, hanging onto just one side of my toe.  Surprized, she looked up at me appologetically like it was her fault.  Now what am I supposed to do?  Tear it the rest of the way off and paint four nails?  Paint a pretened nail in the space my nail used to be?  I had her paint it and leave it on, but it's only halfway attached.

Besides a warm up and cool down mile, I ran 100 Yard strides once a mile for 4 miles while my daughter rode her bike along with me.  She's a big soccer star now and wants to learn to run and do sprints/explosives to be better conditioned for next fall. She's got a big team try-out tomorrow.  It was nice to think I could have my daughter running with me sometimes.  What a beautiful day!  I love the post-rain air and the green so lush it shines in the morning sun.  Whenever it feels like this, I close my eyes and make-believe I'm on the East coast. 

It was cloudy and cool, so I got up late.  Ran down the trail, bridgemakers be darned, I wantonly trespassed. I am sick of them on my trail.  There is still a lot of humidity from the rain earlier in the week.  Felt great on my skin.  Everyone on the trail was happy today, especially the guy with the 3 legged collie who I had to stop and pet.  So cute, hobbleing along on his 3 legs.  I love animals, they just keep on-keeping-on.  No memories, no regrets, just moving forward however that can be accomplished--happy to be on the leash, happy to be outside. Later in the Day my friends Nancy & Jim, here from Colorado for the Squaw Peak 50 Miler, took me to where I will walk up Big springs 4 miles to Aid station 9 to meet Jim tommorrow.  I'm a little nervous.  I will have to hike 4 miles by myself along a trail I am not familiar with, and then run 10 miles down with Jim who will most likely be delirious.  I asked him what he wanted me to do should he be delirious or hammered beyond capacity.  He said I was welcome to carry him on my back the rest of the way down the mountain. Hilarious.  I should have told him I'd smear his face with bacon grease and just leave him to the mountain lions.  I'm actually looking more forward to tommorrow's trail running than UVM next Saturday.

I am at a loss abot how to blog about today.  I thought 12 m/m on a trail would be a step down from trying to run distance alone and all I can say is Marathon running is child's play compared to bushwacking.  Holy effing frick-n-frack.  Seriously.  K, first of all, I ran a mile up the wrong hill, and the young man who instructed me to do so, ran all the way after me to let me know I had gone the wrong way.  Nice save....I would have run 4 extra miles up hill and I would have been eaten by mountain lions.  He felt so guilty about misdirecting me he offered to go with me to aid station 9 about 7 miles from the bottom.  I want to say, it was the most beautiful, amazing back woods, Wasatch Mountain magesty, but truly what I want to report is HOLY HECK, how in the world do they do that for FIFTY, count 'em FIFTY FREAKING miles.  I want to cry right now just thinking about how hard  my 17 was.  On the way up, ran into Davy Crockett who was heading down in about 15th place.  He looked totally nonplussed.  Oh Hi! Luzy Lew, 46 miles over knee deep snow and 45 degree incline, 6,800 foot altitude--no big deal. Sure. I was fine for the moment once I got to the aid station after climbing through mud and snow for over a mile and a half.  I did not even notice the multiple scraps and mud caked onto my lower legs, or worry about my wet muddy shoes and socks.  My new friend Matt had run up the whole mountain without water, I noticed when we arrived.  So I shared mine with him.  He was such a sweetheart and did what he could to protect me from slding down the rocky cliffs and  just be there when the three homeless guys came out of the bushes. Seriously, if Matt hand't come with me, I wouldn't have made it all the way up to the aid statin (a), and (b) I would have been all alone in a scary back mountain 5 miles from freaking anywhere.  I would have been lost out there at least 4 times.  Bless young, handsome Matt and his Great Harvest bread making, Unviersity Psychology studying, from a hog farming from Missouri little self. Were it not for him, I would be strapped to a tree by three sunburned homeless guys wondering how I got way out there in the mountains by myself. The run down was rough.  I slid down that snow and mud and almost tripped myself off a cliff at least a hundred times.  I wanted to cry and only kept thinking of Jim ahead of me who had run over 40 miles.  Since I was 'the pacer' I had to be all strong right?  I was the 'fresh' one.  Mother of all that is holy, coming down that mountain started to make me think of that guy Aaron whats-his-name who cut off his own hand when it was pinned under a rock for 3 days.  It's not like you can even DNF that race.  Whose gonna come get you?  You still have to go down the mountain on your own two legs, even if you're not running anymore.  It was the scariest thing I think I've ever put myself up to and it makes Marathon running look like eating an ice cream sundae in a fancy ice cream parlour.  Jim's wife Nancy met us at the last aid station and paced us to the bottom.  I was 100% out of gas.  I thought this was going to be an easy, slow down hill run.  I ran 21 last Saturday and was not expecting the challenge that I faced today.  Once we finished I dove into the fishing pond  at Vivian with my Blackberry still in my back pocket.  I was so tired and filty from the trail I didn't  even care.  We said goodbye to my dear friends Jim & Nancy and took off.  I have NEVER, in all of my life wanted to get into the bathtub more than I wanted to today.  I can't believe I didn't die today, in so many ways.  Whoa. Who knew Squaw Peak 50 miles actually translates to like 100 regular road miles.  Man, I am a BABY, a tiny poppy diapered whiny baby compared to those guys.  Wow.