coded ruminations

The plan was simple: go for a ten mile run. The plan was sensible: start out in KSO’s and have sneakers on the ready for when the feet start failing me. This is what I vocalized to my wife on the phone before I left the office. Little did I know what was about to happen on the ride home. A strange electric shock must have hit my car, convulsed through my body and warped me back to 1990. I know that this is what happened because the adventure that followed does not happen to mature 38 year old men. Things like this happen to people who don’t think past one goal, without carefully considering all that is required to reach that goal. Things like this especially happen to 19 year holds who for no particular reason assume way more risk into their lives than is healthy; boys fueled by hormones, adrenaline, invincibility, and a great deal of stupidity.

I made it home okay, in some of the worst traffic that I had ever seen in the year since I had gotten my license. I ran through the house grabbing water, scarfing down a single power bar. “I better hurry,” I thought, “sunset is at 7:07 PM, and it will be completely dark an hour later.” It was about 6:15 PM. A ten mile run usually takes about 2 hours. However, nineteen year olds don’t notice such details.

“Better grab a second water bottle,” I thought to myself, after all ten miles was nothing to scoff at. I quickly examined the backpack that I for some odd reason was going to take, although I couldn’t remember why. (This happens quite a bit to me.) It didn’t look like it would be comfortable to run with at all! What on earth would I even put in there? I grabbed my sneakers put those on, enough body glide to completely finish off the stick to prevent chaffing, raided the laundry room for some shorts, then packed my license, car key, house key, and cell phone into the small zipper pocket of my water bottle holder. Finally, this 19 year old was ready to go!

A thought crept into my young brain, “wait, better check the route first or you won’t know how far to go.” I was pretty certain that the trail started from 92nd Street and Mitchell.

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It was one of these old trails that had crushed limestone on it in place of the rail road tracks that used to be there. Later on it turns to pavement and becomes the New Berlin Recreational Trail. I used gmap-pedometer.com to quickly map out a simple 5 mile out and back route, memorized the mile markers and the turn around, and I was off!

I parked the car excited to put on the Vibram 5 fingers. “Why did I even bother to put on sneakers?” I wondered. “I’ll just go a few miles and then turn around, go back to the car and put on my running shoes.” Happy with this plan I set off, after guzzling half of the water from my reserve bottle and storing it in the car for later. I checked my cell phone time as I started on the trail: 6:37 PM. “Hmmm… not the crushed limestone I was expecting,” I thought as my arches were stabbed by the occasional jagged piece of gravel. A particularly large stone that I didn’t notice made me wince as my left foot recoiled in protest. “Balls of the feet, not heals, keep to the balls,” I reminded myself. The trail went along for about half a mile and then went under the highway next to rail road tracks. Graffiti covered train cars that sat idle, as well as concrete barriers between the path and the tracks. “A little sketchy,” I thought, and as a foolish precaution I took off the ring on my left hand and added it to the water bottle zipper pocket for safe keeping. I was wishing for limestone, and wondering if I shouldn’t go back for my running shoes? “Nah,” I told myself, “it can’t get much worse, can it? And the rocks only occasionally poke at my nearly unprotected feet.” At the one mile mark a little trail veered off up the hill, while the main path went down to a busy road: 108th st.. “I wonder where that trail goes?” I asked myself, as I bounded down the asphalt path to the street.

I hadn’t ever run on asphalt in the KSO’s before. I was surprised that it didn’t feel jarring to my body. I remembered how it used to feel when I wore shoes that I deemed were not sufficiently padded: my shins would cramp, my achilles ached, until I surrendered, stretched, and then it felt like I was running on marshmallows–for all of 5 minutes. Repeat. Repeat. Buy different shoes and throw the dice again. The one thing different was that I needed to run striking mid-foot, and not with the balls of my feet. For some reason I was finding this to be a little difficult on asphalt. My heals always wanted to come down first.

Around the two mile marker the trail turned to asphalt. On the plus side there wasn’t any sharp gravel further irritating the sore spot that lingered under the arch of my left foot, but on the down side I had the difficulty of trying to run on the hard surface. At this point I remember looking around and noticing that there weren’t any lights, and for a brief moment wondered how much I would be able to see on my way back. “Don’t worry about it,” I thought, “you figured out before you left that you would have about an hour after sunset, while a little dark, you should still be able to make out the trail.” Nineteen year olds apparently don’t think about the gravel that just assaulted their feet, and how it might be a little difficult to see said gravel. Nor do they think about the sketchy graffiti laden underpass they passed through a short time ago.

In the grass I could make out a little bit of a beaten down path to the right of the asphalt path. “Let’s try that,” I said and darted onto it. The difference was amazing. For one, I could run a lot faster, which seemed to make it easier to run more towards the front part of my foot. The one irritation was that parts of wild flowers would get stuck between my toes. After getting tired of stopping to pick them out, I adapted hurtling over them, or darting around them. You feel like a little kid: toes digging into the dirt, bounding around like crazed jack rabbit.

I was having so much fun that I didn’t notice that the sun had gone down. That is until I reached the four mile mark. What to do? A sensible person might turn around, after all, so you run two miles less, what is the big deal. “No,” I told myself, “you set out to run ten miles, and you are only a mile from the turn around. How dark can it get in the middle of a city anyways. Besides, maybe the moon will be out?” Silly young boy. Or rather stupid, stupid, young boy. The boy didn’t remember that he was going to run back to the car and switch to tennis shoes. The boy was not thinking straight. “On to the five mile mark!”

I turned around and started back, and noticed that it was hard to make out the little bit of a path that showed up here and there on the side of the asphalt. Never mind that though, because I was able to run so much faster it was a risk worth taking, right? My cell phone time said 7:27 PM. Wow, ten minute miles? That is quite a bit faster than I had been running. I continued to run as fast as I could without feeling exhausted next to the asphalt path, alternating between it and the grass. My toes were starting to ache a little, and I wondered what blisters and sore spots awaited me when it came time to take off the 5 fingers. “Maybe I should have turned around earlier?” Too late for that now! Press on! I passed a couple walking with a flashlight. Now there is something that would have been useful to take along! I made a mental note that something like the headlamps described in “Born to Run” might actually be a useful thing to have!

At 8:07 PM I reached 116th St, and looked back to see how much daylight was left on the horizon. There wasn’t any. Up ahead there were lights from a large facility next to the trail, those might help pick my way through the gravel that I was now revisiting? Funny thing. When it is really dark and a bright light shines at you it makes it harder to see the ground! Who knew. I slowed to a walk, wondering if I would have to walk back the rest of the way. A short time later I came upon a path going up the hill, and remembered the one I had seen on the other side. Below was 108th street, a busy road that is never much fun to cross on foot. So why not take the bridge that the path obviously led to? Someone who isn’t young and stupid might answer with: because that bridge is meant for trains, not people. This thought didn’t occur to me until half way across I had this sudden mental image of a train barreling down the track at me at top speed. Dumb da dumb dumb dumb!

The end was near, my feet were sore, my abs hurt, and my right calf muscle was tightening up. I made it through the highway underpass freaking myself out by wondering “what is in those box cars?” Spotting a small trail branching off that led to civilization (a street!) I took it. Unfortunately this street dead ended. The cell phone told me it was 8:26 PM. Little did I know how close to my car I was, until a nice lady trying to chase down her dog told me I was close to 96th St. Would I mind helping catch the dog, and then I can get a ride back to my car? The trail didn’t sound like a fun place to return to at this point. I had my fill of pointy little rocks. The dog was secured, as was the ride back to my car. I stepped out and immediately was transported back to 2009. What a trip. My old 38 year old body could feel every rock that I had landed on.

I pealed off the KSO’s threw them in the trunk for another day, sure that my feet were blistered, and perhaps even bleeding. However, after arriving home and a close inspection of said feet there were no sores or blisters, nor was there any blood. How very odd? Moreover my legs were a little stiff and a little sore, but there weren’t any stabbing pains. My arches were sore, and a blue bruise was under the left one. But the thing that was the most sore was my ego: did I really just run on a path I could barely make out risking all sorts of injury, across a train track bridge, and enough gravel to fill a large parking lot in the dark? almost BAREFOOT?!? FOR 10 MILES??? But wait, that wasn’t me… not the grownup me anyway, not the 2009 me. That was the nineteen year old me, the 1990 me.

I’m booked on Delta and flying to Utah on the 18th of September 0800 hours. The excitement isn’t that I was able to reserve the window seat 20A (I always have loved the back corner of a plane), nor that I get to see old stomping grounds after a long hiatus. This trip is all about Mount Timpanogos. Last I was in Utah was 5 years ago for a NFJS conference, also in September, and I made a point to have the Sunday of the conference off to visit Timp. It had been 14 years since the first and only other time I hiked the mountain, but it seemed like last week. I didn’t make some of the same mistakes of my first hike: late start, little water, almost no food. Then again it was 14 years after my stupid year, as I now refer to it with some affection.

The first time I hiked Timp I didn’t respect her at all. Then again I never intended to reach the summit. I had hiked the trail up to the large waterfall a couple of times, and once to where the concrete ends, and just wanted to go a little further. I had a single small round insulated container of water, and four granola bars. Of course the granola bars just had to be shoved in with the water because it would be silly to grab a bag of some sort for just some granola bars that were going to be consumed anyways. Of course I didn’t consider that this meant I was carrying much less water than I should have been. I started hiking late morning, and made it to the lake in the early afternoon. There were people milling about, and I remember asking them how much further it was to the summit. Two hours? Hearing that was the equivalent of a third base coach waving me on as I rounded third base: don’t think about it, just press on.

I remember the first time I looked over the saddle of Timp. There isn’t a way to describe it in a sentence that doesn’t sound too melodramatic and grandiose. I didn’t have any idea of what to expect, or how high up I was. When you are hiking up the mountain you go from somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 feet to almost 12,000 feet, covering almost a mile in elevation change, and 7 miles in distance. During the hike you lose the sense of how high you are rather quickly. At about 10,400 feet you loose sight of Deer Creek Reservoir as you head over to the the rim of Timpanogos Basin. Everywhere around you there is at most a thousand feet in elevation change. Then, when you look over the saddle you are met with a 7,000 foot drop and can see past the Pinyon Peaks to the south west. The summit is almost anti-climactic after the impact of that view. Almost.

However, even if this trip doesn’t give me the view I’m hoping to get, it is worth it to spend some time with the mountain. This is one of those times when there is more to gain by laying aside hopes and expectations and accepting the moments as you encounter them. I know that I can’t take Timpanogos with me, but I think that will add to those moments. Knowing that the experience is temporary encourages me to savor the trail, take frequent stops, and be thankful for this time even if there isn’t a next time. Like last time, it will be much different than the first time, before I realized the impact that the mountain makes on my life; how it reminds me of priorities that I had long ignored: like the outdoors and my health. This time, like the last, I will again refuse to take the mountain for granted. It will be the meal that you savor (Balistreri’s Bluemound Inn), the movie you watch over and over (Princess Bride), while at the same time something different—-I love beer, but on some nights pineapple juice helps you think with greater clarity.