If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

... I shall bound over it, like a graceful gazelle... or mostly likely... trip and try to make a quick save ;)

I've begun a new love affair.  It consumes me.  I dream about it.  It exhilarates me like nothing ever has before.  It's like a drug.  It must be the real thing. I've discovered trail running.

I have a friend... let's call her Tina... well, we may as well, since that's her name... Tina the Trail Queen is what I call her, although affectionately I call her Pigpen.  She is an ultra runner.  She enjoys training runs of 30-40k+ (that's an easy day for her...) so that she can race 80k trail races.  She just completed the Haliburton Forest race and did very well... this was her second 80k race this summer.  She aspires to do a 100-mile race in 2011.  I cannot fathom how she does what she does and does it so well... but I'm beginning to understand how that love affair got started for her...

Tina took me out for a trail run (my very first) a couple of weeks ago.  It was a day when, after 5 days of extreme emotional stress (we had a very sudden and unexpected death in our family), I just needed to get out and spend some time with a friend.  Some might have taken me out for coffee... Tina introduced me to the trail.

This was a week after her 80k race and so she said she needed a 'recovery' run.  OK... I'm slow but figured that my pace might suit her needs... so we hit the trail at Hilton Falls in Milton, ON.  We talked and ran (slowly) for about 1:25 but deducting the bathroom stops, it actually was about 1:15 in total.  Until then, all of my 'long' runs had been based on 10 and 1's... this was something very new... (especially since I was only supposed to run 30 minutes that day... oops!)

I will never be the same.

Is it just me, or is there about 100% more available oxygen on a trail?  I felt like I could have just gone on and on... pure magic!

Imagine my delight to see that now JJ is adding 'trail run' to my training schedule!  I hit that same trail again this past weekend and did the loop in 1 hour (no bathroom stops this time).  It was the first time I had ever been scheduled a 'steady run' for an entire hour.  I actually did it!! By the end of the trail, I felt like I could fly... my stride opened up... I had a huge grin on my face for most of the time... like a happy labrador retriever loping along in the leaves...

I haven't yet attempted anything 'technical' (I'm pretty clumsy, anyway...) but I think that I'm going to be enjoying this love affair for a very long time to come...