We had a weekend visit from Natty, a friend from Canada (and a “booger” for those of you who know the reference) and her new husband, Jeff, as they were interested to come to our home conditioning trails at Allegany State Park to do a conditioning RUN (yes, on their own appendages) for an upcoming 50 mile RUN in Hell, Michigan.
(Do not think that the location of this RUN has escaped me. Me, who would find a place to HIDE before she would RUN from an axe murderer. Hell? Really? Um, yeah.)
Natty is an eventing and dressage rider from way back, and we’ve been internet friends for years, but only get to see one another in person on rare occasions, so getting to see her and to meet Jeff was fantastic! I owed Natty for coming to a Canadian 100 to crew for me and Ned, so marking a measly 30 miles of trail for them to RUN seemed small re-payment. (So I fed them too.)
As luck would have it, Ace succumbed to a stone bruise turned abscess (yes, his second one from the ride in WV, this on the other front foot) and I have learned the Life Lesson about Padding Ace For Rocky Rides deeply and truly well. I think it will stick. He would not be accompanying the RUNNERS.
Ned was still proudly wearing the shoes from his 100 on July 1st. Proudly, I say, because he’d managed to keep three of four on as we waited for him to grow foot at his usual glacial pace, but one cursory look at his four feet made it obvious to me that he was not up to doing 30 miles or anywhere close to it with the RUNNERS. Nope, not on those balding, out-of-alignment tires. No way.
Which left me borrowing Sarge, my husband’s horse, for the task. And leaving Richard at home, no doubt secretly gleeful he could work himself into a puddle on some yet-unnamed household/yard project.
While the trails at Allegany are officially “marked” it doesn’t take much to get one off-course on a non-designated trail or to miss a turn, or not realize that two trails that appear to intersect on the Park map really are, in fact, a good 1/4 mile from one another, so I planned to mark some critical corners for Natty and Jeff while doing our own 15-16 mile conditioning ride. At no point did I have any plans to hop off Sarge and RUN. You know, voluntarily.
I explained to Natty and Jeff that I had no intention to even RIDE Sarge 30 miles. He was coming off a tough 50 mile ride two weeks prior, and a couple of hours of riding 15 miles at Allegany are challenging enough to equal several miles or hours more on a more standard trail with more forgiving elevation changes and kinder footing.
This is the sort of thing, however, that one must experience for themselves to appreciate, not unlike “lake effect snow.” Something else we somehow manage to survive.
So I headed off on Sarge, yellow/black surveyor tape in our pommel pack, just a few minutes before Natty and Jeff set off on foot behind me, with their salted and boiled potatoes, PB&J sandwiches and overnight survival kit on their persons. (I guess they were somewhat suspicious of my trail marking skills.)
I got the first several miles of the first of their two loops marked, and as I rode, up and down, and up and down, started thinking about what might be a more “forgiving” second loop for the runners. I worked it all out in my head, calculated in my head the best way to mark that loop without actually riding all of the miles and was pleased to see Natty and Jeff, looking fresh and moving along at a healthy pace shortly after I turned back toward camp.
I told them of my plans, mentioned that I was “certain they’d get their money’s worth” out of RUNNING this trail, and set forth on the amended course, hustling a little bit in the hopes that I’d meet them in camp with the trail totally marked as they came in from the first of their loops. (They were riding an entire section that I skipped, and which I believed was pretty clearly marked.)
Of all three of our competing horses, Sarge is the one who is the least attached to going home. He actually pouted a bit when I turned back away from the loop that Natty and Jeff were to run, and happily turned AWAY from camp to mark the new second loop of trail. That was not to say that he did not pout as we climbed what I like to call the “gnarly climb” from ASP 2 to Trail #2 near Thunder Rocks, nor is it to say that he didn’t get a happy fart-buck in when I let him gallop the last section of Trail #2 back to the Summit. But it was pleasant to ride a horse solo who neither spooks (I thank the Morgan half for that attribute) nor seems to have an internal odometer that tells me when I am getting close to running out of the requisite quarters to continue the ride.
We’d all left camp about 9:15, and I completed what I figured to be ~15-16 miles (with lots of trail marking stops) at shortly after noon. That was a nice ECTRA-paced conditioning ride on tough trail, a good final ride for Sarge before the VT CTR on Labor Day. I cooled him out, let him graze and kept glancing toward the trail where Natty and Jeff would be returning from their 17 mile loop. I’d figured a 12:30 return time, but when they hadn’t returned by 1 p.m. I left the note and map I’d highlighted for their new loop tied to their Subaru with surveyor tape and hit the road for home with Sarge.
Natty and Jeff arrived back at our house at roughly 4 p.m. and all smiles, looking as though they’d just gone to lunch and had a little antiquing excursion. Honest to goodness, they looked fresh as daisies. Turns out that they too decided 30 miles was more than enough conditioning at Allegany, so settled for climbing the BIG hill out of camp upon their return, then called it a day. Ah, common ground! Knowing to quit when you’re still having fun!
We immediately cracked open red wine (more in common!) , started in on chips and homemade salsa, and compared various notes about carb-loading, electrolyting, resting, BCAAs, tapering, chafing, and a new favorite rule that I am going to adopt from now on –
“If there was no eye contact, it didn’t happen.”
Critical stuff for people who spend a lot of time exerting oneself together out in the wilderness and have to deal with all manner of bodily function at one time or another.
It’s a keeper. Bumper stickers, anyone?
Or maybe as a replacement for the politically-incorrect WTF bracelets that I wanted to manufacture to supplement the WWJD bracelets so many wear?
Rich, finished toiling away on the farm for the day, joined us on the porch with a cocktail. Like us, he smelled bad.
Natty and Jeff, no strangers to idiosyncratic animals, put up with our — 1.) drooly and profoundly hairy, 2.) ancient and howling rather randomly, and 3.) black hole of need — canines as we sat on the porch, showing off bruises, past injuries (missing toenails, anyone?) and bragged in an entirely self-effacing way about the stupidest things we’d done “out there.”
I got my first experience using the little massage balls that Jeff swears by, rolling them under my feet and finding exquisitely tight and painful connective tissues that I didn’t even know I had!
More food, more red wine, and Natty and I had a good laugh (and a great photo) when Jeff headed for the guest bedroom at a rollicking 8:30 p.m. and fell into a deep open-mouthed slumber.
Jeff savors slumber after his conditioning run, a pound or six of pulled pork and wee bit of vino
Natty was visibly disappointed when my camera battery was too dead to capture a close-up of Jeff’s open gob, or the tragically funny moment where Echo (see above re: #3 “black hole of need” canine) discovered that we’d left the guest room door ajar and before we could stop him (no, really, we tried VERY VERY HARD) kissed Jeff with great enthusiasm on said open mouth. (Jeff, the next morning, recalled none of these events, but Natty and I swear they happened.)
Natty and I managed to stay awake until 9 p.m., thus preserving bragging rights to our husbands that we were in fact the tougher and more ruthlessly partying better halves.
In the morning, more food plus COFFEE (mmmm!), more dog wrangling and horse observation from the porch, and I got to see the slide shows from Natty and Jeff’s trip to Cambodia, where they RAN and raised money for a well in one of the villages they passed through:
http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/One-Filter-One-Family/
Since most of my herd was retired, gimpy or operating on fewer shoes than actually required for a ride, we skipped our planned hack and Natty and Jeff headed back off to Oh Canada. We did check to make sure they hadn’t smuggled Echo with them.
I’m pretty sure that it was the kiss that made Jeff fall in love.
So much in common with these other endurance sport fanatics.
But THEY are CRAZY!
Happy trails.