A Whole Lot of Nothing

It has been quite awhile since I have posted anything, and quite a long time since I posted anything interesting... though I am not sure I ever had anything interesting to post anyway.

I guess I'll start with last weekend:

John and I had decided it would be a good idea to go down to Brown County and scope out the race location and maybe run the first leg to get an idea of the hills. Well, let's file this under, "It seemed a good idea at the time..."

We found Mike's Dance Barn (the home base for the race) and proceeded to look for orange ribbons that mark the first leg of the race. After finding a couple that didn't seem to go anywhere, we went off the course description and felt comfortable that we were on the right track. Climbing up a 250' abandoned double black diamond ski slope was quite a challenge, but we got to the top only to have to go down a hill and then back up another, though not as steep. Once on top of the ridge, we found the trail that lead us through the woods and onto a trail. We were convinced we were on the trail and proceeded to follow it out since it was just under a 3 mile loop. The terrain wasn't bad at all. There were a few hills, but nothing compared to what we had just encountered, or anything we hadn't been running on for the last month. We continue to follow the trail, I kept track of our distance and it seemed we "lost" the trail. Now, we never left it, but it turned into a fire road and we thought we were still on it, but there were no tell tale orange ribbons to guide us. Had we brought the quasi-course map, we might have noticed we needed to loop back and head back to where we started right then and there, but the road seemed to curve around and we thought we were headed in the right direction, all along just getting farther from where we started... what kept us going was the fact we saw blue and pink ribbons, which marked other legs of the course, so we knew we weren't lost. We kept going looking for the orange ribbons and we found some, so started following them, but each time we found a series of them, they seemed to just stop in the middle of the woods, and we had to back track.

Now, by this time we were at 3 miles or more and no clear sight of where we started from. I wasn't concerned, but I do remember saying that I didn't want to become the lead story on the 11 o'clock news... not long after this we ran across a hunter who was in the woods, his ATV with gun case strapped to the front was parked on the fire road. At this point we should have turned around and retraced our steps back to the start, but we kept going, never thinking about that hunter and whether or not we were in danger of being shot accidentally...

We found some more ribbons and tried following them, hoping the end of the trail was just around the bend, so we then decided if we didn't see anything in 5 more minutes, we would turn around and run double time back. About 4-1/2 minutes later we run into 2 more hunters who were sitting on the side of the horse trail taking a break. We decided to ask them where we were and if we were getting close to Mike's Dance Barn. They looked at us incredulously and said that we were far from there. John and I looked at each other in amazement... they offered to walk us out to their camp as they were headed back anyway and give us a ride back to our car. When it was all said and done, we had gone 8 miles and somehow gone form one side of Brown County State Park to the other. We later found out that we were on one of the other legs of the race and had come across yet another leg that happened to be marked with orange ribbons too... oops.

Lesson learned. In hindsight, we should have turned around after a mile and a half, but we were so sure were were curving around the ridge... we also should have had that quasi-map that show the shape of the path, it would have indicated the sharp turn back towards the beginning that we ran past and dismissed as the wrong way -- which brings me to another point - my directional instinct is non-existent (as is John's). Anytime my instinct tells me to go right, I should go left...

So that was last weekend... well, most of it. I then relapsed and became sick again on Sunday, with the same chills and congestion I had previously. Most likely due to too many hours at work and not enough time sleeping. I never really recovered. Currently, I am still feeling congested in my head and am having trouble hearing out of my left ear. I am on a stronger anti-biotic and a few other medicines to combat this "creeping crud" I have. I don't think it will affect my race next weekend, but I haven't run in a week... I hope to get out for at least a few miles to loosen up. If it is nice enough, I am planning on getting the jog stroller out for the first time and Lilli and I will go for a run together.

Oh, and Lilli turned 6 months this past week! Wow, how time has flown by. She's been eating baby food for the last month and has graduated to peas... kind of gross looking, but she likes them. So far, she's like everything, though the fruits tend to be a bit too sweet for her to eat them straight.

That is all for now I guess. I am looking forward to next weekend's race and blogging about it... then the following week is a half marathon that I am not sure I am ready for, but I am running it anyway...stayed tuned for that experience.

Until then, keep on running.