Posts
More on the Art of Moving Slowly
Early last week I intended a post on the subject of slow and stopping to pick now-ripe raspberries, but I was slow in getting to that and the weekend happened first, and in this case, the weekend's hijinx started on Friday morning. I know, so tough.
My friends Amy and Liam were staging a new trail running race up in the hill town of Asfield. I'd helped a few weeks prior on trail work to get the paths in shape and was reminded just how nice those woods are. This past Friday, I volunteered to help with marking a section of the course, and as a 50k loop, the course had a lot of sections, and I was charged with most of the last two.
Bonus, in addition to reconnecting with those trails, I also enjoyed the lovely ride up there through the burgs named Northampton and then another credited to William. From there, the road presented one of my favorites, a steady climb following the course of a brook. That had me at the trailhead early in the afternoon, where Liam had left bags of clip-on and staked flagging for me.
Bikes are great, of course, but one isn't always the easiest item to have along when completing a task that uses the hands, like trail marking, but I was starting near the south end of the course and planning to camp near the start at the north end, so pushing wheels in one direction was a much better option than an unencumbered round trip, and as a bonus, a bike with panniers served as a reasonable mule for toting to-be-used flagging.
Yup, I like those woods, but the trees that make them don't always enjoy rain and wind, and about half way through my first section, I came upon a blockage in the form of a two foot plus DBH (Diameter at Breast Height, for those who don't share my forestry nerdiness) tree that had dropped its middle across the trail. Middle, that's key, as there wasn't an obvious best choice for which side should be the short term long distance bypass for the next day's race.
I opted left, the high line, and not just because my default tactic in picking lines mountain biking is "Go high, potential energy is your friend," but also because the low option held a high potential of wetness. Luckily, trail runners are more adept than most mountain bikers at hopping over two foot logs, so I didn't have to reroute all the way above the root bulb, but the cutting, clearing, and heavy flagging took me closer to an hour than a half, and while we're just past the longest daylight of the solstice, I was still concerned about finishing my full allotment of trail marking before dark.
Part of what makes Ashfield lovely is a lot more trees than people, and that means a lot fewer customers for cell phone companies to amortize tower costs, so there are fewer of them and bigger gaps in service. Luckily, my first section ended at the Bullitt Reservation, starting point for the earlier trail work, and I knew there was phone coverage there, so I worked on to there, switched out of battery conserving airplane mode, and called Liam to update him on progress.
The course, continuing from Bullitt was about four miles of road, thankfully almost half that with a dirt surface, but with few intersections, so Liam and I agreed that could suffice with minimal marking, allowing me to truly use the advantage of having a bike and focus on the last section of trailb speeding my meeting up with Liam who would work backwards until we met, about a hundred yards before I finished the section, it turned out!
That was just before sunset, leaving me exactly the right time to continue along the last section of previously marked course to the Edge Hill (former) Golf Course, now owned by Franklin Land Trust, and the race start location. From a road to the north, I found an woods road/path heading in a promising direction which led me down to the outer reaches of the old course, back into the woods, and then to my campsite with a babbling brook to sing me to sleep!
But right, slow, that's my subject. Last weekend's long run was a test to see if I wanted to race that far, 50 kilometers. I enjoyed the test and never broke down to a sniveling pile of mush, but I also didn't feel race-ready for that distance, so I picked a new option. I volunteered to run sweep for the full race, taking two slots of the duty intended as just half the course distance. That way, I could run those lovely trails, help my friends some more, and have almost no impetus to go so fast it hurt.
Yay, slow! Slow too often has a negative connotation, but moving slowly on their feet for 50 kilometers is a lot more than most people do, and the people who attempt that, knowing it will include struggle for them, are my hero's. I spent more than half the day in the company of Wayne, a fine gent who had also joined the trail work outing of a few weeks prior and also had the sensible outlook of start slow and just keep moving.
Slow also means conversational pace, so we traded lots of stories in those hours, and one of those included the fact that he had once run a marathon decades earlier, but this event would by far be his longest day running, and at the slower pace of trails to boot. He did awesome, eventually succumbing to wise judgement and withdrawing from the event when we arrived at the Bullitt Reservation aid station. Most importantly, he has happy, breaking his goal of covering at least twenty miles. Yahoo, way to go!
Sweep duty is a form of very intermittent intervals. I asked the aid station attendant how far ahead was the next runner, whom we had seen earlier on the road up to the fire tower in the DAR forest. Ten minutes. Ok, I ate somebody food, drank some water, letting that gap climb to eleven or twelve minutes, then started my true hustle up the road to catch the now-last runner.
I figured a twenty to thirty minute effort, and while it was on the low side of that range as I was feeling pretty good with my twenty-four mile warm up, I was truly pleased that the stride of the runner that came into sight, with the long blue socks I recognized, still looked smooth, efficient, and comfortable. While I hadn't discouraged Wayne's withdrawal, I had been relieved at his choice, as the degradation of his gait had me concerned about possible injury, but as soon as I saw Bridget's steady lope, I knew that would be no issue.
Bridget was also happy to finish her final miles with company, even if it was mine, so I was treated to more conversation and stories, which included her diagnosis with a rare heart arrhythmia which had doctors tell her, a marathoner, that she should stop running. At first, she'd obeyed, but found that she was protecting a life that no longer had the same value to her once the physical challenges were removed. She had even had her first return marathon earlier in June, now toting a defibrillator implant in her chest as a ready-to-go emergency backup.
There you go, that's whom I call my hero. We will all die, and some activities can increase the probability of that happening earlier than hoped, but sometimes those choices, that can be made with intelligent caution, are the very things that make our lives worth living at all. Bridget finished those miles, with a smile and a collection of course markers she'd let me clip to her hydration pack, waving another pin flag in her raised hand! It's worth saying again: HERO!
Comments
Post a Comment