Jodi needed a running buddy this morning for her final challenge course, and I was the best she could do. We didn’t get as early as a start as we wanted to (I just didn’t want to get up this morning), so we were not on the ground until after 9am. Last week this time, I admittedly didn’t think she had even the slightest chance of getting the challenge done She still had so many left to finish and so little time to do it. Couple that with it requiring far more miles than she had ever covered in a single week and it just seemed impossible. Then, as of Friday afternoon, she only had this one. “Only”!
We elected to start the Treman side first, and it stayed cool inside the trees for most of this run.
I used the time to experiment with trekking poles, different footing techniques, and some new stretching strategies. I have a very long race coming up next weekend and the loss of fitness over the past two months as a result of injury has me in a heavy heap of worry. I found that If I stop for one minute every hour and stretch out my groin, calves, hamstrings, and shins, that I seem to be able to stop the debilitating cramps I keep getting. We’ll see if that continues to work over longer distances.
At the first turnaround, the smiles were still pretty genuine. We were both feeling fine and ready to put it into reverse. Jodi was amused to discover that a few of the miles she covered on this side were some she had already run on a trail race a couple months back.
After a brief stop at the vehicular aid station, we made our way up Lickbrook. We got to the train bridge and Jodi said “I’m not running over that”. Then she promptly ran across it.
I chose to run up the stair portion as fast as I could to get a decent hill climb in. 153 Steps in total on the blue section of this climb. Counted them up and then re-counted on the way back down for good measure. Here Jodi is approaching the last set of steps on her way up. At this point, much of her sense of humor had withered and she questioned why anyone would willingly subject themselves to this.
As we neared the turn around sign going through the last stretch of forest, we ran into these right smack dab on top of the trail. These were not there the last time I had run this. Why would anyone put a camp site literally right on the trail. It was awkward.
Regardless, we pushed ahead and made it to the final turn around sign. She squeezed out a smile on this one, but the sincerity might not have been there this time. At any rate, it was all down hill from here and simply making it back to the car meant a challenge completion. So on we pushed.
The downhill went smooth. We saw a few challengers along the way. This time I think the smile was in fact genuine and fueled by relief and a sense of accomplishment.
Afterwards, we skipped up the road just a bit to visit the Ithaca brewery for some burgers, flights, and bacon nibs.
As often happens when I am drinking beer and loading up on food, I came up with the idea that we should head over to east hill and run that course so that I could seal the deal on my second challenge completion. Jodi, as usual, accommodated my ill advised plans and off we went in search of more punishment in hotter temps.
I can’t say enough about her dedication in getting this done. She ended up with 48 miles this week, and is easily more than double her previous mileage record. She went a total of 18 miles today (running half of east hill as well), also easily eclipsing her longest of 13.1 in the few Half-Marathon’s she has been in. She did the vast majority of these alone and completely killed it after being injured herself and having to start almost from scratch to regain her fitness. I had hoped we would get to run all of the courses together, but I will have to settle for running with her on her first, second, and last. Our spontaneous run on Taughannock after Forest Frolic a couple weeks ago seemed to re-light the fire and give her the confidence that it would be possible to complete the final eight.