Sillyness

There is not a lot to report this week, a nasty cold has brought my training to a complete halt and I’ve been catching up on rest. Feeling better this morning, I was itching to go out and run something, anything, but I’ve only just started to feel better…so I let myself rest… By noon I could wait no longer and found myself driving wildly toward Ellis Brook.

My plan was simple enough, a bit of light hiking, “there will be no running.” I told myself.

“I must recover before I start running again” I stated, I was wearing jeans to further cement my commitment to keeping this outing sensible. Parking my car in the “Honey Eater” car park, I slipped on my Montrails and gazed skyward at the goliath climb that snakes its way to the ridgeline. I took a deep breath, and set off. My lower extremities are very used to running this path so I indulged them for a few minutes, falling into a gallop to get it out of their system. “At the base of the climb I’ll stop and hike it.” I thought.

I hit the hill and started to power hike, I was making damn good time. I soon reached the ridgeline and on feeling the flat my feet instinctively again started to run and hop over rocks. “Oh, well” I thought, they’ll tire soon enough.

A descent approached and instead of working my way down it slowly, and sensibly, I sprinted, and the more I sprinted, the harder it was to stop sprinting!…so I just kept it up.

“This is starting to look more like a run!” a voice was saying in my head.

“This is starting to get more FUN” another replied.

And from then on it was a run.

I’d have looked pretty silly sprinting around in blue jeans and with no water…I’m sure I was mistaken for a lost hiker with “Canyon Fever” when I finally saw another person half an hour later.

“Oh who cares?” I thought, I found another hill…a big one…a steep one, I saw it from a few kilometers away and spotted the narrow trail to its summit, it called to me.

I ran what I could and hiked the rest. On reaching the summit I was astounded at the view, absolutely breathtaking…and then I made a familiar mistake, I went exploring.

I was totally out of water and about 5km from my car, but I trudged on, following several dead end trails, before finally having enough sense to backtrack back down the big hill.

I’m home now and itching to go out again, I’ve even debated the benefits of backing up today’s adventure with a quick 20k, but I know that will not help me get over this cold, it’ll make it worse. I’m looking forward to getting back into again later this week.

Happy trails.