ANOTHER YEAR OLDER
I think it’s safe to say that my family and friends know me all too well. This year for my birthday I got running pants, running jewelry, and even bought myself a new pair of shoes!
My good friend got me the greatest necklace that has embellished pendants for every distance I’ve ever raced.
The distances include 3.1, 6.2, 13.1, and 26.2 Technically I haven’t earned the 26.2 yet, but boy am I excited to complete that one on April 18th!
With all the marathon training that’s been happening in the last few months, my shoes sure have been taking a beating, so I treated myself to a new pair of Altra’s as a little Happy Birthday to me gift.
A WEEKEND “OFF”
The furthest I’ve run so far is 18 miles! Woohoo, this is fantastic for me since I typically start to feel pain by the time my training takes me to 14 miles, and oftentimes get stress fractures by the time I hit 16 miles. But today, I am 18 miles and pain free. To keep the positive training going I decided to take a weekend off from any long runs.
The trouble with this came on Valentine’s Day. I found these fantastic hot springs online I really wanted to check out, and I figured, hey! that could be a great Valentine’s Day date.
It was only a 1 hour drive a 2.2 mile hike in to these springs; so we set off for what we had no idea would turn into an intense adventure! At one point my GPS said we were still about a 20 minute drive to the trail head when we ran into a closed gate and a few cars parked all around the gate. We were bummed thinking that it was probably closed for winter and we didn’t have a backup plan of what to do for the day.
Next thing we know the car behind us pulls up next to us to ask us questions about the gate; they were headed in the same direction and had driven a whole lot longer than we had to get there. We chatted for a few minutes discussing our possibilities, when we finally decided, why not! let’s go on an adventure and hike the full 9 miles to get to the springs……yeah, that wasn’t the smartest choice, especially since it was already 3 in the afternoon.
But! we set off in that direction with our new found friends and in the beginning things didn’t seem so bad. It was a hilly hike, with a little bit of snow here and there but not bad. That soon changed as the snow got thicker and the hike got more intense. We enjoyed chatting with our new friends and we all got to know each other really well really quickly.
A few hours later, we ended up on a small little muddy trail, and by muddy I mean slippery guck that makes you take one step forward and slide 4 steps back, that went straight up a mountain, when the sun began to set. We were about 7 miles out at this point and I didn’t feel the need to go any further in the dark, so we turned around and began our hike back to the car.
Once back on the road the sun really began to set, it was beautiful for sure! But without the sun, in my cute little running shorts, hiking through the snow was a tad bit chilly.
Luckily after a long tiresome 15 mile hike back in the dark, we made it to the car by 8:30pm, and it was a glorious site for sure!
I definitely didn’t expect to go on such an intense 15 mile hike on my weekend off of marathon training, but it sure made for a good adventure story!
What adventures did you go on this weekend? Were they running adventures? Or just for fun adventures?