Leadwoman – Eve-ville was born

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next 4 days were like an out of body experience.  We vacationed.  Instead of training, we ate poorly.  We played. We drank beer.  And wine.  We put a puzzle together.  We met foxes, deer and guinea pigs.  We watched live music.  We hiked to through the fairy forest.  We helped a guy get to the hospital that had clearly broken his clavicle.  We hot tubbed.  We had fun.

It was on the 13-hour car ride back Sunday that I decided I was still going to run 100 miles.  Screw them.  They can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.  This has been my attitude about life as far as I can remember.  Of course, a lot more than just deciding to run 100 miles was going to have to go into that decision.  Over the next week (really a few days), something amazing happened.  I will spare the tiny details, but I decided on New Mexico. I don’t do heat well.  And that was the closest place I could get to in the near future that would have cooler weather.  I picked Ruidoso because there was a 21.6-mile trail that showed up on the hiking project app.  I’ve been using that app for years and it’s never done me wrong.  I started planning a route from the city up to Sierra Blanca summit and back down to another group of trails.  It was 100 miles.  I had no idea how I would get aid, etc.  I had already received several yes’s from Kimberly, Shane, Sheila and Jello to be crew. I off-handedly asked Gary, not expecting him to be able to go with all the traveling he’d done over the summer. He was in.  It turned out one of LP’s good friends, Mark, owned a home in Ruidoso.  If we did this he and the girls would have to stay in a hotel or somewhere other than camping.  They would have to come in really late on Friday night after school so camping wasn’t an option.  Mark came through on so many levels.  He offered them a place to stay.  He was planning on being there that week anyways so now he was just going to come in a little earlier to be part of the fun.  He also told me my course was not a good selection.  There were fires there several years ago and he was unsure if that Sierra Blanca trail had even been groomed back and how well traveled it was. He was sure there would be a lot of “wild life” on that route.  The planning of the route was becoming a little more complicated than I’d hoped. He suggested two other options. Grindstone Lake area and Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area.  The bad thing (that turned into the good thing) was that Grindstone would be loops.  As I’ve mentioned, I don’t like loops.  Somewhere between 11.5-13.7 mile loops.  This is where Gary got roped in.  He did his enginerd stuff and we had a course picked out.  I really did not want to run a loop 8 times.  I had secretly found this little off-shoot trail  (on the apps) that added 2.2 miles each time and I was planning on doing that.  That would get me down to 7 loops.

These weeks in between the ride and my planned run were the biggest emotional roller coaster.  It was unbelievable.  I think my body thought we were done.  But, I wasn’t.