Stumbling Around in the Dark

I heard once that "You should do something every day that scares you." This statement was probably coined by a sixth year senior trying to pick up freshman girls at Helaman Halls or something. As someone who is usually not too scared of things, I try not to live by this mantra. I'm sure if I did, my life would be over by now and/or I would have even fewer friends.

I did something tonight that has been on my mind for over a year and yet I have never gotten over the abject terror that comes when I give it more than a casual thought...

I live near the deep dark woods. Winter is really the only time to enjoy them. Summertime here means poison ivy, ticks, chiggers, briars, and copperheads in the woods. Though the neighbors swear the woods are still full of panthers, cougars, black bears, booby-trapped pot plantations, and deranged banjo players, I'm convinced winter is the safest time to be out among the oaks and maples with that soft carpet of fallen leaves. In winter the ground cover dies and the snakes and bugs all go underground. The only real problem is the darkness... I get home from work just after the sun sets... Ever since we got to Kentucky I have toyed with the idea of night trail runs. Sounds like a great idea, come home, put the kids to bed and go glide through the forest.

The logistics of actually going out there is where I get hung up... My neighbor Josh has run some of the trails and he tells me how he always packs heat. Nice little peashooter tucked in a back pocket right next to a power bar is enough courage for him...in the day time. Should I take my pistol? My rifle? An axe? What kind of light source? Panthers? Seriously? If I break an ankle could I get out? The mental map usually goes something like that until I find myself curled up in the comfort of my couch wasting time reading blogs or something. Luckily I had an incident recently that pushed me from my comfortable sofa.

If you have followed this blog you know that Andrea and I have been involved with our local running club. Ever since we have been with this crew of locals there has been a smoldering interest in trying a little trail running. After several requests I organized a group run that would involve 13 miles of single track to a lodge on the edge of a beautiful waterfall with a decent buffet. The trail is scenic as anything and fairly well maintained but not necessarily groomed. I sent emails out and got a few responses from the stronger runners in the group. Every one of these guys and gals had at least a half marathon under the belt in the past month with respectable times. To be honest I was really worried about keeping up with this crew. I gave us plenty of time with an average 12 minute mile to cover the distance to the lodge with a nice time buffer before darkness. The weather was going to be fantastic; High 60's and sunny! Most of the group ran a charity 5K that morning and were excited to hit the trail around 2 PM.

OK, so while doing the vehicle shuttle for the trip back to the trail head I was a little late but I don't think the ten minutes of daylight that I cost the ill fated group really made the difference...

We had finished our warm-up routines and were just headed out of the parking lot when another club member (who had not ever run 13 miles on the road let alone dirt) arrived with her 11 year old son in tow. She said that he really wanted to come along and that she could not talk him out of it. I exchanged a few worried glances with some of the other runners but as our motto is "A place for every pace," nobody, myself included had the sense to say, this might not be the day to try to set a personal distance record. Soon enough we learned that there is a place for every pace even if that place is shivering in the pitch darkness rather than enjoying a nice quiet evening at the DuPont lodge dining room.

We headed out enjoying the fine afternoon with golden sunlight filtering through the last leaves that were still hanging in the trees. Each step was through 3 inches of a crunchy root and rock hiding leaf carpet. It was magic. I was so proud of myself for pulling this off. After we all enjoyed the next few hours of this beautiful day we would be planning our next adventure over a well deserved meal. I looked back at the string of 8 runners as we headed up the first hill to realize that my pace was a little fast. A few of the group was walking up the first small hill. Hmmmm. Well I hoped that they would soon get into the rhythm and pick up the pace. Of course it never happened. We got slower and slower.

At mile 3, our tech guy who runs fast marathons and loves stats runs up to inform me that per his GPS watch we have averaged 18 minute miles. He is bored with the pace and wants us to pick it up. I agree that we need go faster, not because I'm bored but that at mile three our extra time cushion of daylight is now gone. I ask the mom/kid duo if they can pick up the pace. They assure me that they can go faster and decline my offer for them to just go back to the parking lot. I tell the guns up front to kick it up a few notches. They go a little faster...the slow duo start struggling...another runner starts limping with IT band pain. Yikes! We are now doing 15-16 minutes miles, further from the car, nowhere near the lodge, nobody has a light, extra food or more than a T-shirt for warmth. I start doing the math, re-doing the math and starting to regret being an inclusionist. Did I mention that I was the only one of this group to run this trail before? That few had ever run on dirt before? I steamed all the options in my head before deciding on a course of action.

There is a branch trail that I had seen on a map that goes about 2 miles up a side canyon before intersecting a forestry road. Never mind that I had never been on this trail. I would take the now walking wounded up the trail and the fast crew would run to the lodge, then drive around and pick us up. It really was the only option that did not involve all of us out in the cold dark night. I relayed my plan to the fast runners and sent them off to what I hoped was a quick finish as there was more than one fast runner with some pent-up frustration at having to trudge along at minimal speed.

My group on the other hand, was stumbling around, led by me trying to find the side trail. We crossed the creek several times, blundered through rhododendrons, climbed a few cliffs, chased floating shoes down stream, and got generally soaked in freezing November creek water before finally locating the right path. It then took us the remaining two hours of daylight to go the two miles to the road. The path followed a meandering stream past waterfalls, big cliff overhangs, and old growth timber and I might have enjoyed it had not the responsibility for an impending disaster weighed heavily on my mind.

I kept doing the numbers, if they did a 12 minute mile, they will pick us up at...or if they did a 10 minute mile, they will pick us up at...OK worst case scenario, 15 minute mile... We made it to the road and my friend with the IT band pain was really suffering. I gave her the choice. It was now getting dark and colder. We could stop walking to alleviate her leg pain and suffer for a half hour or so of cold before our ride arrived. She was a trooper and decided to grit it out and keep walking. I'm sure that her tank top and running shorts helped encourage her to keep moving. My best calculation was that we would only have to walk the road for about 35 minutes tops. After two hours of trudging down the road through pitch darkness sometimes with the now exhausted 11 year old on my shoulders, I started to get worried. Something must have gone wrong with the fast group.

The third car to pass us in two and a half hours did not look too scary and the driver was not playing a banjo so we convinced him to give us a ride to the lodge. I was not prepared for the scene that awaited me in the foyer. Angry wives, husbands, and families that I had forgotten were going to be waiting at the lodge poured out of the front door and demanded an immediate explanation for the lateness of the hour. To my absolute horror they also informed me that search and rescue from two counties were on their way to both trail heads to begin the search for survivors. In my efforts to get my walking wounded out of the woods and keep their spirits up I had completely forgotten that there might be worried families involved. My wife was on the front row of a Broadway theater in Manhattan watching "Wicked" at this exact moment so I had not prepared myself for this twist in the plot.

The "fast" runners had never made it out of the woods. I was stunned. If any one should have made it, it was them. They had no lights, food, or warm clothes and had now been in the bottom of a pitch black gorge for about two and a half hours. Now I joined Team Worry and had the fun of giving a report to the ranger dispatch about the last known whereabouts of the missing runners. It was nice to be able to cross my name and the names of the people I brought up the side canyon off of the official "missing Persons" roster. Well since search and rescue was already out there, there was nothing left for me to do but mind the buffet and soak up some of the heat by the massive stone fireplace.

They finally came in some time later much to every ones relief, just after the buffet closed for the night. They had navigated about two miles by indiglow watch light and were found by the search and rescue party about a mile from the trail head. A sore finger, that later turned out to be broken, was all the damage they had to show for their time in the darkness. Luckily the publisher for the local paper was among the formerly missing so at least the story would not hit the news. They said that the trail was just too technical and that because the leaves covered all the obstacles they could not maintain the needed 12 minute miles to get out of the woods before dark. Many things were discussed in the lodge and on the shuttle back to where we started but future trail running plans were not among them.

I really felt bad to have put my friends in a position where they needed to be rescued. I agonized for days over what I could have done differently and how I would plan future trail runs. I realized that perhaps trail running alone is actually safer. The biggest danger was never in the woods, it was facing the angry families and friends that I felt I had let down.

I knew I had to get past the panthers and banjo players and go out into the woods alone to at least redeem myself from my own internal torment. After a bad enough day at work I came home and informed Andrea that tonight was the night. I changed from my work clothes straight into my running clothes. I set out my gear. We had dinner and I put the kids to bed. I almost backed out. It was raining, pitch dark, and cold. Had there really been a black panther hit on the freeway last year not 5 miles from here? Ridiculous! I swallowed hard and told Andrea my plan and that she should not worry for at least two hours.

I decided not to take a gun. I could never live down the headline "Podiatrist Shoots Self in Foot" if the wind happened to rustle the leaves wrong. I did take some pepper spray that had worked wonders on some neighborhood dogs recently. I took a new watch that records time/pace/heart rate as you run. I took a blinking red LED light that I put on a belt so that panthers would at least not confuse me with prey as they followed me through the woods. I figured that if the banjo guy tried to follow me I could clip the belt to a tree and run off in another direction to get him off my trail. I took a very bright headlamp that is very effective at picking up the reflective eyes of animals that are watching you in the dark. I had proved its use for this purpose the night I directed pepper spray right into those angry glowing orbs of the poor neighborhood dogs.

The run starts at a cemetery. People should really not put Mylar/foil reflective flowers anywhere someone might be trying to get their nerve up to do something stupid. I would have been creeped out enough without them. I got moving and wet leaves on top of slick sandstone were much easier to handle than the mental strain of controlling the raw terror that kept threatening to rise. I was about 2 miles into the run when I maced my first deer. I probably didn't hit it but anything with eyes was going to get a jet of liquid cayenne pepper as fast as my finger (which never left the trigger for the entire run) could hit the button. I maced another herd a mile or so later. A weasel or ferret or some other poor creature also was attacked by a strange apparition that appeared in the rainy night. I'm sure he preferred banjo music to what I gave him. I was never attacked, eaten, bushwhacked in a pot plantation, or even told I had a pretty mouth the entire time. I made it back to the car after 5.3 miles and only fell down once. It was during one of the many times I quickly turned around in a attempt to catch the panther about to pounce and stumbled on a rock.

With my new watch I am able to download all of the data from my runs to my computer to get a visual readout of the workout. It lets me graph my heart rate and speed and things. (Hey, I did get a four year degree in exercise physiology so leave me alone on this one!) The most interesting part was you could not only look at how my heart rate responded to the hills and speed as expected, but my maximum heart rate for the entire run was right at about mile 2. The pace indicator showed that I was actually stopped at the time. Stopped to fire pepper spray where the deer had so recently been resting peacefully. It again jumped where I attacked my next herd of deer. The pace chart, to my shame, also showed the times I stopped in my tracks to turn around to try to glimpse the fangs of the panther that I was certain was in mid pounce.

So the truth is that I am the most dangerous thing in the woods. I pity the poor creatures curious enough to look at me and my can of mace in the dark or go on one of my well planned trail runs. I have no intentions of changing my shoot-first-decide-if-you-are-a-deer-later policy but you all should change your "Hey-that-sounds-like-fun-I want-to-go" policy. I also have no intentions of doing something that scares me every day...but if I could get the stones to go running terrified through the woods blasting innocent woodland creatures with mace at night....that would truly be a whole new level!!!