The Standoff

It was a curious thing. The rain had begun to taper off and a veil of mist floated in front of my headlamp. The clouds behind the trees glowed a soft orange, not from the sunrise – too poetic – rather from the streetlamps reflecting off the low ceiling. My footfalls crunched evenly, a gravelly metronome – ratch! ratch! ratch!.

I slipped easily through the pre-dawn hours, impervious and invincible. Limbo. That perfect place between consciousness and daydream.

The thing was, I had no idea.

It was like falling asleep while reading a book. When the words on the page blur and suddenly come to life, somewhere between waking and sleeping, until you realize it couldn’t possibly be real and you’ve crossed over to the other side of sleep, only to be jarred back to reality.

That jarring moment came when my headlamp swung onto a pair of yellow eyes. Before it could register, a hoarse shout came from the darkness ahead. I snapped to attention watching the glowing eyes close the gap between us. A shiver coursed through me. The eyes disappeared but the shouts continued to get closer, each one more audible than the last. “Cody!” I finally made out.

I slowed to a trot and then finally came to a stop. A dark shadow – Cody – trampled through the grass with furious intent. I used my headlamp to sweep the ground in front of me. The eyes were back, but they had stopped too. I switched my headlamp to the softer red light and waited. Cody watched and began to snarl. A low rumble gurgled in his throat that he collected and hurled at me with a sharp bark!. Plumes of breath rose from his mouth with each warning.

Thoughts whirred around my head: do I go to him? Do I call him over? Do I stand tall? Am I going to get torn to pieces?

The voice approached though not as fast as I would have liked. “Getoverhere!” it said. I could see the reflective piping on the voice’s jacket now, hear the same rack! rack! rack! on the trail.

As the voice got closer, Cody grew braver and let go one more bark before trotting over to me. I braced but extended a hand down to him – a peace offering. The beast approached. I winced then realized I needed to lower my hand further to his tilted up nose because he wasn’t more than 35 pounds.

Cody sniffed eagerly at my glove. His owner buzzed by me, “Morning,” he said. Somewhat annoyed that he didn’t apologize, I just let him pass. Cody trotted off behind him and as I turned to go, he stopped and hurled one last bark for good measure. “Getoverhere!” the voice seethed and the footsteps faded.

I switched my headlamp back on and noticed that the mist had turned to a steady rain again. I heaved a sigh and continued on. But something was different. That dreamy euphoria had vanished with the mist. I was suddenly aware of everything: my footsteps, the cars rushing by on the other side of the woods, the rain against my jacket, the effort….

The noises fell on me all at once and I struggled to reach back and remember exactly what it was I had been thinking about before the showdown. But like the dreams that dissolve with the dawn, so too had my “running dream” slipped beneath the surface.

Back on Trail

A dark, ominous forest -- or how I looked at trails until
yesterday

Two miles in. Two fingers up representing the completed 800s. Six more fingers to go. I bounced on the curb as the Tuesday night rush hour crawled by. I took alternating glances between the green light and the headlights. I had zip in my legs and energy to burn off. But it wasn’t the next interval I thought about. Instead it was the road ahead, which wasn’t a road at all but a crushed gravel trail, the Big Rocky Run trail to be exact. I was nervous. The light jumped to yellow. I took one more sip of water, waited for the last car to zoom by to make the light, then…I took off.

I suppose it had to happen sometime. I just wasn’t sure it was going to happen yesterday, and perhaps, in hindsight, that was best. The calendar called for 8x800 with a 200m recovery. I decided that could take about 7-8 miles with warmup, recovery, and cool down factored in. So I started to plan my route accordingly. Over the past few weeks, that meant getting creative trying to avoid the trails, thinking that I still needed to rebuild the strength in my ankle. But with the daylight lingering longer, the ankle sprain more than eight weeks ago, and the first of four trail races just over two weeks away, the time had come.

I wrestled with the idea all day, knowing full well that it was time to set foot back in the ocean and run the route that I’d left so many footprints on in the past without a second thought. And why make it a casual jog when I could go all in and turn it into an interval workout? No dipping my toe in the water. This was a full on swan dive.
When the walk signal burned ahead of me, I clicked my watch and bolted across the highway, took a sharp right and began my descent onto the trail. The bare branches reached up toward the clear, dusky evening. The temperature dropped noticeably and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the cold settled on me. I made one hard plant with my left foot and heard the first crunches of gravel beneath my trainers.

Focus on your footing but don’t dwell on it, I thought. I made small adjustments to my course as the size of the rocks got bigger or where trenches had formed. A shower had passed through in the late afternoon, soaking the ground and forming stray puddles.

I stole a look at my watch and marveled that a quarter mile had already gone by. The trail rose to meet a neighborhood cross street. I surged and shot across it and back down into the woods. My legs started to tie up from the effort but I pumped my arms harder and repeated Keep it neat, meaning my form, and felt my legs turn over quicker.

Those tired legs carried me across the creek where the watch beeped and I hit the brakes bringing the pace to a halt. I trotted on suddenly remembering that I had been previously worried. I acknowledged the thought, snickered, and went about enjoying the brief reprieve. The sun had nearly gone down but it set the sky aglow in a palette of pastel pinks that receded to purple and finally what would become the night.

I tossed a wave to another runner coming the opposite direction with an eager dog at his side. The creek burbled from the afternoon rain, and though the temperature was mild for the winter, I knew the water would be perfect for an ice bath.

When I looked at my watch again, I had just another few feet until…beep! I folded my three outstretched fingers into a loose fist and took off down the trail. One more for the set, I thought as I roared away.

With .2 to go, I huffed on, A marathon finish, I thought, whizzing by the orange post that marked the end of that trail section. I made the soft turn onto the sidewalk and carried on up the hill allowing myself a smile that I’d come through unscathed and left some new footprints behind...along with some old fears.

The Golden Forest

I call it the golden forest. For 50 weeks out of the year, it’s just a 1.5 mile segment of the Big Rocky Run trail. But for two weeks in mid-late October, the green canopy of leaves turns yellow, and the path glows.

Last Thursday I did an interval workout on the roads that led me, as most of my runs over seven miles do, through some segment of this trail. It became the quintessential autumn run. The scene was one that photographers might search for, writers write about, and most of us probably conjure in our heads when we think of the fall.

A thick roll of dark-bluish clouds tinged with purple stretched over the sky making the fall colors even more vibrant. The air raised goose bumps on my arms every time I stopped at a light and a small plume of my breath formed in front of my face on the deep exhales.

I clicked my watch at the two mile mark and waited while traffic zoomed by. I eyed the clouds, wondering if I’d make it through the workout without getting rained on. Cars pulled up next to me and I watched the drivers negotiate whether or not they could complete the right on red without getting rear-ended. The light turned yellow, then red. No time left to think about it. I gave one last glance over my left shoulder to make sure the cars turning right actually observed the cross walk/walk signal, then I trotted off across the parkway.

The path runs parallel to the parkway for about 200m before bending to the left and eventually snaking down below the road to the woods line. There’s a noticeable temperature drop. The air feels damper as well as cooler. The creek burbles from the rain earlier today and a pack of deer eye me to determine if I’m a predator or not.

Despite the cloud cover and the setting sun, the path ahead is unusually bright. It's as though someone flipped the light switch on in an otherwise dark room. I looked around and not one leaf is any color other than yellow. I started my quarters and though I was working hard, the effort, the traffic, the noise, the distraction all seemed to slip away on the breeze.

Leaves spiraled down in slow motion from the swaying branches and I could hear the wind gathering in the trees ahead of me. Suddenly it’s on me all at once, and running through the clusters of falling leaves is like swimming through a school of fish. Puddles dot the path and I splash through them, kicking both water and mud up my calves.

Everything about this trail depends on the run. That is to say, some days it’s a frolic through the woods while others it’s a slog that disrupts your rhythm and form. Some days I dread running on it and use a checklist of landmarks to get back up to the street. Other days, it calls to me when I haven’t run on it in sometime.

On my final recovery after the final interval, I ease back on the pace just to enjoy it for a couple extra seconds longer. When I come back to the woods-line, those dark-bluish clouds tinged with purple are spitting cold rain.

During these two weeks in the fall? It never lasts long enough.