After the Riverrock in May of 2009, I was feeling pretty good. I continued my normal activities of riding my bike and running. I did not have any daily fitness goals and I was not necessarily paying too close attention to other aspects of being fit. I probably could have been eating better and getting better sleep but really I was probably healthier than a lot of people so I really could not complain. But I did want to do an ultra marathon someday and I had one on the calendar that I had not signed up for yet so I had a lot of work to do yet. Before signing up for the Ultra. I decided to do some training first to see if I could build up the miles.
During the summer, we work 4 ten hour days with Fridays off. In 2009, it was my first summer with this new schedule. I decided I would get up early on Fridays and drive to the Shenandoah National park to run on the Appalachian trail. I was also playing summer soccer. We would play Tuesday and Thursday nights after work and then Friday I was up early and out the door to drive to the mountains.
The drive from Richmond to the SNP is a very easy Interstate drive. Once you get past the West End of Richmond, there is not much traffic. I would listen do a jamming CD and fuel up with granola, banana, bagel, and Red Bull. When I got to the park, there was hardly anyone there. I often saw deer along the road as I drove to the trail head of the week.
My intent is not to detail each of my runs but rather just give you some of the highlights. I ran variable mileage but my time was usually about the same. I usually ran about 2 hours. Most of the time I was the only one on the trail. Every now and then I would run into a thru hiker-a hiker hiking the AT from Georgia to Maine. Sometimes I would chat with them briefly about their hike before taking off up or down the mountain.
I always enjoyed seeing wildlife and I always had my camera with me to snap a few pictures if I came across anything interesting. Here are a couple of pics.
Not too exciting but still interesting to me.
The most interesting animal I saw was not the kind that has you reaching for your camera. I was running up a climb that I had done a few times when all the sudden there was a big black bear about 10 yards in front of me right in the middle of the trail. The bear saw me and trotted a few feet off the trail. I kept running. Not sure why. I could still see the bear just a few feet off the trail. He just watched me run by. The bear did not look scared but rather curious. We actually made eye contact. It was a strange experience. I just nodded my head as if it was just another stranger on the trail. Everything you read about black bear encounters emphasize that you should not run from bears as running will cause them to chase you down. And I knew that. But it just seemed natural to keep running. Nationwide there have been 60+ black bear fatalities in the last 100 years and black bears rarely bother people. In fact, Melissa and I saw multiple bears every day of our 7 day hike in 2007. In all but one case, the bears saw us first and always ran away. But still, it is a bear and you just never know.
This particular bear was not the only bear I saw on my many runs in the mountains. But he was the closest I have ever been to a bear. Mostly I saw deer and the occasional turtle and of course the snail in the above picture.
I mentioned the thru hikers that I came across. One day I came across a dirty looking hiker by himself. He had a full pack and looked like a thru hiker. I made some noise as I approached him so as not to startle him. As I passed him, I said my usual greeting of "how's it going?" The guy responded, "could be better" in a pathetic sounding voice. I was a little worried for the guy so I slowed down and looked him in the eye and said, "Are you doing ok?" Just then, he started a diatribe of crazy talk. I will leave out some of the bad words one of the things he said was that he was living in a sea of human filth and being held against his will. That was only part of his rant. I laughed nervously as people do sometimes in these situations (a topic covered in quackenblogger.blogspot.com). And then I sped off into the woods.
This guy seemed a little nuts and I did not really feel like finding out if that was true. So I took off, scurrying down the trail, hopping over logs and really putting distance between us. He had a full pack so I doubted he could keep up. Plus I was pretty fit at the time and there were probably not too many people out there who could have caught me. I chose a turnaround point where the trail crosses the road. I went down the road a little and waited for him to cross the road. He was hiking pretty fast so I did not have to wait long. Then I reversed my direction and ran back to the car. What a strange encounter.
Whenever I returned to the car after my AT runs, I always felt so great. I stretched and drank my chocolate milk and changed out of my clothes. I did what swimmers call a "deck change" which entails wrapping a beach towel around your body and changing underneath it. There was never anyone around anyway. Then I would sit for a while and listen to the sounds of the park and then head on home.
After several weeks of doing these runs, I realized that I did not have it in me to do the ulra so I decided I would go for the Richmond Marathon. I had a great base of summer training that would set me up nicely for the marathon.
Before I finish this installment, I want to give you a link to one of my runs. You can see the path I took and the elevation changes. I record all my runs on my GPS and then upload them to a website. It is fun.
This particular run was one of my longer runs although not my longest. The longest was a 14 miler. It took 3 hours and when I was done, I was pretty spent but also felt amazing.
Next time I will talk about some of the pitfalls of mountain running.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/10683098
2 comments:
Very interesting reading and very interesting pictures!
Strangers on the AT do have a very scary reputation because of the occasional killings they perpetrate. Although females are most at risk, you are wise to be on your guard! Actually, you have been well-treated by strangers several times while hiking. However, as is human, we tend to only remember the spectacularly evil things that do rarely occur.
Actually, having done some AT hiking, I can appreciate that a run (or walk) along the AT in nice weather is one of life’s rewarding pleasures.
very interesting. i had a close encounter with a poisonous snake once while running on a trail--by myself--and often wonder what i would have done if it had bitten me. i was a few miles from anyone. also, as you can probably surmise, the lack of hills in our area of virginia always hurts our cross country teams when we get up to the state level and compete against teams from the mountains. keep up the good blogging!
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