Beyond the Blog Day 7 (May 4): Soaked to the Bone and Laying Down On The Job

Reading through my blog post for this day, I am amazed at what I did not write about.   In retrospect, I was bottling up a lot of the negative emotions I was experiencing, which of course, is not a viable long-term strategy.   But I did this for many days, until it all came pouring out in my blog post two weeks later, on Day 21: I haven't been completely honest here.  My posts are observational but not introspective.  But after today's challenge....

But Day 21 wasn’t the only tough day.   Day 3 was brutal..I was 100% convinced of my own impending failure and didn’t have Cheryl to prop me back up.  It got better in the following days, but with 48 hrs of non-stop rain and some punishing climbs, Day 7 was another end-of-day emotional wipeout.    

I’ll start at the end...me laying down at the top of a muddy trail in the Normal Wilder Forest, my rucksack about 100 ft down the trail.  Rain pattering my face, I’m completely soaked with no dry clothes available.   My only friend was a wild turkey who left me 10 minutes earlier because he found my whining annoying (that is half true).   I mention the wild turkey in my blog but not the lying-down-on-the-job part.  Without Slappy, even.   The hike up through the forest, as beautiful and rugged as it was, just sappped whatever I had left.   Joe and Matt had followed about 10 minutes later, but I never saw them.   I picked my sorry self up off the trail, recovered my rucksack, and plodded down the pathway to meet them 30 minutes later.   This was the one day when I really fell short of my 25 mile mark, getting in about 21 miles.   How did we get here?

Given how treacherous Rte. 25 had been heading to Hendersonville, Joe and I searched out some other possibilities for getting in the miles.  At the same time, Cheryl was doing some research for us and sent this email: “I think this is a good idea for tomorrow – It’s a greenway in Hendersonville – 3.5 miles one way – so 7 miles out and back – paved the whole way. Lots of rest stops, parking, bathrooms.  So 3 times up and back will be 21 miles.” So we were off to the lovely Oklahala Greenway, and as I wrote in my post that day, “it's a 3.25 mile stretch that winds around the river and through fields and ends at athletic fields on one end”.  The Greenway was very well-maintained, with plenty of benches, viewing areas, and river views.  There were so many different kinds of birds flitting around and always something around the next bend.  I could have spent all day just on that section, but the weather soon turned with thunder and lightning, so we had to abandon after a few circuits totalling 14 miles.

I didn’t mention in the blog our stop at Burger King en route to our next random destination. There weren’t many food selections in this part of the Foothills, so we took what we could find.   I don’t think I’ve had a Whopper in about 20 years, but that 1,000 calorie meat-bomb actually hit the spot.   Joe and Matt didn’t have the luxury of being able to run it off, so a few hours later they were still feeling pretty whopped-out.

I randomly picked our next destination, Lake Summit, because the map showed a road circumnavigating the lake, which I had never even heard of.   But it seemed like it was in a remote area that could be interesting, so we set the GPS and off we went.  What we did not realize is that the lake is totally private and the only access roads were not paved.   There are also no street signs to let you know if you are close, which is by design.  These people like their privacy, and here we were, rolling in with our two-car caravan in the middle of a driving thunderstorm.   We didn’t see much traffic as we stopped on the side of the lakeside road, but while I was off and running, Joe and Matt were approached by one of the owners and questioned.   Again, thank goodness we had our official event signs on Joe’s vehicle, it made all the difference in terms of establishing our credibility.    

I was shaking from the cold, driving rain and trying my best to ignore the crashing lightning and booming thunder.   It was the wildest scene I’ve ever ran in, without doubt, like trying to run in the shower with the water turned on full-blast.    I eventually warmed up somewhat, and the thunder and lightning tapered off, but there was still a good hour to 90 minutes of rucking around the lake.  The road veered off into some backwoods areas, away from the water, so once I got 2.5 miles in, I turned around.   Matt got some great photos because the storm made for a dramatic landscape, but I was happy to head out for our final random destination for that day, Norman Wilder Forest.  As I said in my blog post for that day, “This is truly beautiful country and the trail took me through waterfalls, ancient tree strands and even a few ruins of homes from the last century.  Also I followed a wild turkey, who marched nonchalantly in front of me.”  Eventually, the turkey left, as did my energy and sense of purpose, and this is how we ended the day.

I don’t remember anything about our lodging for that night, except that we were in Hendersonville, I believe.   We were certainly not at the Rodeway Inn, that is for sure!