This week I cut my mileage in half in order to taper for my upcoming (and my first-ever) 50k race. Distance is my game; the first three miles of a run are often a slog for me but I positively float later, so as my mileage has dropped down to about five or less daily miles, and with multiple rest days, my spirits have plummeted as well.

Aching to put some real ache in my muscles, I leapt at the chance to join my trail running club for an informal group run. I aspire to roll-with-the-punches, laid-back, awesome trail runner status, but I’ve only ever run trails in races, never just for the simple joy of it, so I can’t rightly call myself a real trail runner. I can’t even grow a bushy mountain man beard to help my trail cred.

The planned route for this weekend was about six miles. I decided I’d run to and from the start, about five miles each way, to give myself a solid 16 mile workout and get the long run gorilla off my back.

Funny thing about plans when you’re trail running: you can’t depend on them working out.

When I woke up this morning, I felt like crap on a cracker. Yesterday’s BFit workout involved 150 air squats and 100 kettlebell swings that left my quads and lower back feeling like they’d been hit by a train. Walking was a struggle,
let alone running. Looking at the outside temperature, a bracing 28 degrees, didn’t inspire visions of a fun romp outdoors. Somehow, I talked myself into lacing up anyway.

The hilly miles en route to the group run meet up spot were murder on my already torched quads. An incredibly steep downhill descent the length of a city block further stressed my already fatigued braking muscles. The nearly five miles to the meet up location were tough and slow — so slow that I missed the appointed start time despite having left ample slack time based on my usual speed, but luckily the group hadn’t left yet.

The run itself was an adventure: we clambered over large rocks, scuttled beneath a low bridge like gnarled old trolls, and even hopped a fence. Everyone was friendly and smiling. Trail running is all joy. At one point, the run leader told us that we could up the mileage to seven if we took a small detour. More run, more joy, right? After some grumbling about not having brought water, and about having been lied to too many times on trail runs, the group agreed to tack on the extra distance. It wound up being closer to eight, rather than seven miles. We stopped a few times during the run to let stragglers catch up, so although it was by no means a walk in the park, it wasn’t overly challenging.

Nonetheless, when it was through, I knew that my quads were not up to the punishment of reversing the hilly route back. So rather than run about five hilly miles, I opted to run about eight miles on a flat, paved trail.

I’d eaten a Clif Builder’s Bar before I laced up, then a pack of caffeinated Clif Shot Bloks during the wooded trail portion of my run, for a total of less than 500 calories. Those had been burned off miles and miles ago — my stomach growled ferociously on the way back. I was wearing lugged trail shoes on pavement, with socks I’d worn before, but never in those shoes, and big blisters were growing on the balls of my feet. I drank every drop of water in my hydration pack and thirsted for more. The final miles of this run were far from physically comfortable, but I at peace. Not only that, but I was having the time of my life. I was on a long run, and the taper monster was calmed, at least for the time being.