Mile 429: Rock-Hoppin' Runner

Huh. It's been a while since I last posted. I'll catch us up a bit with the stuff that happened between then and now:

I ran.

Ok, now that's out of the way. The reason I finally decided to post something now, is because I had something mildly interesting to post about. Until roughly 7:30 this morning, running this week has been kinda dumpy. I won't get into all the dumpy details - I'll just talk a little about when it turned around.

I was around 16 miles into a very lonely long run in unfamiliar territory. For the second time this week, I'd planned a route that included a road closed to public access, so I was kind of winging it, just trying to get the miles in and not get too lost (like Thursday... but I'm not talking about that). I happened to be near a beach, and I ran out to the end of the parking lot where there was a trail leading off around a big sand dune.

Soon, I was running through the sand, and not liking that one bit.. but there was this big rock seawall next to me. It looked interesting (and stable), so I hopped up onto it and started running out towards the ocean on these big, 3-6 foot boulders with maybe 1 foot gaps between them. There were plenty of opportunities to take a colossal, season-ending digger. I am not sure what possessed me to make a little game out of it... I tried to run as fast as I could along the rocks (which according to Garmin was about a 10 minute mile - it was not easy going). By the time I got to the end I was out of breath and giggling a little bit. I stood there grinning like an idiot for a minute and taking in the nice ocean view, then decided to run back the way I'd come (grinning and giggling).

It doesn't sound like much, but it was probably one of the most exhilarating moments in my recent running history. Sure, it was also the stupidest thing I've done on a run in a long time, but it was completely worth it.