Yesterday was a day like that. As I have mentioned, we are training for a marathon in South Dakota in early June. In preparation, we’ve been trying to do longer and longer runs; last weekend we ran ten miles, so this weekend we were going to go for 12 miles. We thought it would be fun to go up to the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena and do a trail run around Brown Mountain – easier on the legs than asphalt or cement, scenic, and Mia could be off leash. We met some running friends at the Hahamongna Watershed parking lot, and headed off. 4 miles into it, we were all pretty pooped. The trail was, in many places, single track and quite narrow and rocky. Footing was pretty tricky and tough-going. Two of our members turned back at that point – they had places to go, things to do and more commonsense than us.

Five hours later we trudged back to the starting point. We had crossed fifty streams, or maybe it was the same stream fifty times. We had encountered a LOT of poison oak, crossed the path of one snake (eek!), and made it across more than one treacherous trail that was mostly washed out. I developed a juicy blood blister on my big toe (which we later gruesomely punctured), and another on my instep. I foresee much moleskin in my future, especially for the marathon. Chuck kept ahead of us for a lot of the latter part of the forced march run as he knows how I feel about single track trails (I don’t like them) and knew darned well that a lot of the course he had mapped was, in fact, single track trail – he just chose not to tell me. As the little kid in Meet the Fokkers“was so fond of saying, “Asssss-hooooole!”

We survived and woke this morning to stiff limbs but no poison oak (no doubt the poison oak was washed off in one of the countless stream crossings). I do know that I can remain upright and moving (albeit slowly) for five hours straight. Chuck’s big defense/comment after we finished was, “Well, we’re now a lot more ready for the marathon!” Uh-huh, tell it to my feet.

Pictures here. But trust me, they don’t begin to capture the total pissed-offness that I was feeling for Chuck by the fourth hour. I must admit it was a very nice day weather-wise – cool in the morning, clearing to blue skies and warm temps by noon but we were in the shade of the canyon by then.