McNaughton Park 2010

Fat. Out of shape. Wishing I hadn't played that pickup game of basketball and f'd my back up for a month so I could run McN this year.

Oh yes, it was 75 and sunny. It was dry. It was trail running heaven. Oh no, I didn't sign up for any actual race cuz I have no fitness.

At least the slackers can always pace. So I paced my buddy Stan Zygmunt from Indiana (he's a Physicist, wow.). Ok, didn't really "pace" per se, Stan didn't need "pacing," but I ran along for 19 miles. 19 glorious miles of trail running heaven. We know spring is early, the bluebells are popping, it's fricking 100 shades of GREEN, the creeks were perfect, not too high, not too low, not too cold, you get it. At least selfish me got to run for 5 hours or whatever it was. Some in the day, a little at night. Not enough.

Stan, well, he finished the 100 in 28 hours and change. Congrats, Stan.

FreeRun

My grandfather bought this farm 55 years ago. There is a plot of 20 acres where Mill Creek flows under the barbed wire from the cattle ground. Once hardwood forest, then years ago cleared and pastured, now an area of 50 foot locust, orange osage, bur oak, a few big cottonwood. We've cut a fun little mile and a half trail system up and down the creek bluffs. Bluffs is used loosely, we're talking 20-40 foot climbs. This waterway is young. Spring is the time to run there. No itchweed, the bugs aren't out yet, no breeze in the valley is ok when it's 65 degrees.

Blossoms just hinted at on the dogwoods, maples, shrubs in the underbrush I can't name and don't need to today. Sun. I start on the south end, across the creek at a spot where it's only a couple feet wide. Chilly water welcomed after the winter we've had. Short loop around the back section, something enveloping, comforting about skirting through the thickets, no humans to be seen or heard, even if they were, they couldn't see you even from the ridge top. Back across the creek, scramble the muddy hill past the fallen apple tree that doesn't know it has fallen and still gives fruit despite. Around and into the creek bottom where clover is planted for the deer. They die in October. Run this now before it grows to seven, ten feet tall in a few months with the onset of the summer heat.

The train of the valley opens here, a re-entrant, slight but visible if you look, it's where the stream enters the land from the north, valley train running the other way like it forgot for a second where the water was flowing, too late to turn back. Multiflora rose, raspberries, thorns waiting to prick and pierce. Easter was yesterday. Over the fence, soft run through a now green pasture, cattle trails crisscross. Pick one that heads west and follow. The hills roll here, although you wouldn't know it from the road, prairie we have, sometimes rolls if you know where to look for them, if you are patient enough to understand what you've found.

A lightning bolt shape, the creek bed here. Most trees stripped long ago by hands I can't be angry at, now a few osage the only sentries. Up the hill and scale the gate. Fields, field edge. The valley widens out into wooded bramble. Wider still, expanding, a Gordian Knot complication of underbrush, trees, another world away from the one down the dirt road. Around the serpentine contour of the bean field. Cut into the knot on a slight game trail. Duck under the branch. Out the other side. Maybe an eighth of a mile wide here. A labyrinth. Nah, you couldn't really get lost, but it feels like it and that's all that matters.

Running. Scrambling. Churning up some loose mud from last night's rain. Mud, yet it doesn't grab at you. The kind of mud that is soft and forgiving on the shoes. It's ok you're here, please don't linger. Around the next bend the woods disappear, the creek narrows, opens up as small prairie streams often do, into really just a ditch, not a creek by any definition we would apply.

Turn and run it again. This time I cut south at the cattle crossing, up the hill behind the old barn. First week of April and the grass is green, so green as to banish gray for a season, that gray that's all we've had for months. That gray. But not today. No pasture here, just woods now, a ford, water only a foot deep here, cross, back on the connector trail that connects the deer, coyotes, me, back from the hardwood forest to my little patch that used to be Oak hardwood forest and now can't be. To the south is a hissing, sounds like a cougar, but can't be. A feral cat? A bobcat? A badger? Don't know. An interesting sound for noontime sunshine, usually relegated to deep night.

Pace quickens slightly up that last slight rise ( I admit it). Back to the four wheeler, water. Only four miles, but renewed. A FreeRun.

February May Well be the Cruelest Month

Cold, gray, Illinois. Not a whole lot to write since this has mostly been a blog about my running and frankly I haven't been running a whole ton lately, for reasons that you wouldn't really care about. My last really good "long run" was sometime early last fall. I'm ecstatic to get out for an hour here or there. The plan is to work back into shape and do some fun stuff in the summer. There are indeed miles to go.

Cold, gray, Illinois. All of those things, yet I still miss the trails for hours and hours even on bleak, frigid mornings. One thing I do love about winter is the sense of hibernation, the atmosphere of burrowing in and having free time to think or read instead of do. About the time that wears off, warmth is coming and outdoors becomes home. All the burrowing has allowed to sneak in a few books. All read over the last couple months and recommended:

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford: A good basic study of the Mongols, but flawed in his over-the-top revisionism and recasting the Golden Hordes as creators of everything from accounting to the postal system. Still, worthwhile.

Go East Young Woman - A true story about 125 years of life in the Russian steppe of Bessarabia by German farmers, and how it ended during World War II by Karl Horst Schwarzer

The Emigration from Germany to Russia in theYears 1763 to 1862 by Karl Stumpp

From Catherine to Khruschev-the Story of Russia's Germans- by Dr. Adam Giesinger

Tracing Romania's Heterogeneous German Minority from Its Origins to the Diaspora- by Jacob Steigerwald

Yes, I have an obsession with Eastern European and Central Asian history.

Tales From Out There by Ed Furtaw-- Really cool new book with everything you ever wanted to know about the Barkley Marathons

Flurry

So it flurried last night, a half inch of powder on the trails by the creek. I guess this is sorta how those lucky bastards out west feel upon the first snow when the slopes are reopened.

The last few months have been sporadic running-wise. Soft tissue leg thing due to a dumb newbie training error, teaching two new classes, life stuff. Haven't run "long" since September. This really is ok, I kinda like free-forming it with the runs, just short stuff, nothing over five or six miles. That injury hasn't flared in a few weeks. Fitness lost, but not completely vanished. There are runs where things are hazy-- those moments of reuniting after some time away are awkward. "Where've you been??" This used to be easy, now we labor up that hill and over that log. No matter, I'm running in the snow and really loving it again.

Dances With Dirt--Devil's Lake

Ran the full marathon ++ of this one yesterday up in Baraboo, WI. DWD, Hell, MI is one I've wanted to do, but Baraboo being closer to IL made this an easier commitment. They advertise the DWD races as "insane terrain," and while is there is a smattering of truth in the marketing, there are runnable spots here. Still, make no mistake this is a tough course.

The early section is a nice steady uphill which eventually crosses a glacial deposit area, meaning rocks and lots of them. There is some really nice single track until you get to about 10 miles, where it's straight up I'd guess about 600-700 feet on rocky trail to the ridge overlooking Devil's Lake. There are some big, more steady climbs after this, then about a two mile bushwhacking section right around 12 miles.

While the trail is marked with ribbon, it is a bit confusing, as you have white, pink, and blue ribbons depending on the course you're running. The turns also aren't marked well and if you're looking down it's easy to go off course. I veered off course after the Steinke Basin aid station and stupidly didn't backtrack soon enough, adding two plus miles to the 'thon. The turn wasn't marked well, but then again, I should have been looking up. Ended up getting a bit dehydrated and draining my bottles before I realized my error. Finally made it to Tower aid station with 2.7 left and ended up hammering it home sheerly from being pissed off about going off trail. Word after the race was that I wasn't the only person who did this by a long shot.

My finish time was somewhere around 5:50, good for 8th place overall and 3rd place age group. 8th sounds impressive, but overall there were only around 30 some thoners. They had around 150 half thon and then a pretty good crowd of 50k and 50 mile. 50 k was an option, but didn't want to plunk down the extra 40 bucks for 5 more miles. As it stands 28+ miles is going down in my book as an ultra finish anyway.

I would recommend this race. Not being a skier, I didn't know the area was so cool. The race starts right at Devil's Head ski area and I think the 50 k course concludes up on the trails around the top of the "mountain." The only possible drawbacks are A. You have to really watch the markings or not be as dumb as I am. It is possible in spots to lose the course. B. A few spots are unrunnable bushwhacking through off woods terrain. If you are for some reason racing or running this for time, that could be annoying. I just thought it was fun. C. There wasn't a lot of grub postrace. Again, a minor complaint. On the positive side, the park is really gorgeous, the aid stations are great, and the shirt is one of the best I've gotten from a race.

There aren't too many better ways to spend a Saturday.