Stonecat Wanderings

I knew Ryan was likely hoping to get a medium-length run in today to complete a good back-to-back for the weekend, so I suggested going over to Willowdale to run. As we had left Sam with Irene and Dana all morning yesterday, we chose to go later in the day today, leaving once Sam had gone down for her nap. This would enable us to get in at least some of our running when she wouldn't miss us, and would give the grandparents a bit of a break too :-) I know they love her, but Sam is a bit high-energy and that is tiring at times! Anyway, we didn't get onto the trails until a little after 1:00 pm. The sun had finally come out and temps were in 50s, but I was still chilled when we started. The gloves stayed on for a few miles at least, and I never really felt like I sweated much.

As we were running the start of the Stonecat course, I asked Ryan, so, do you know where we're going? To which he replied, you are the one who has run the race here! True. But seriously. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bit directionally challenged. Once I've run somewhere a number of times, I can remember a route, same as with driving. But, despite having run the race last year, I would not say I knew the course. Oh well. I would give it my best try. Luckily we found that the race crew had put up pieces of reflective tape at intersections and key points along the trails, and we were able to pretty easily follow the course for the first few miles without having an issue. The crossing between the two beaver ponds/bogs was deep and really really cold! We had no choice but to splash right through it, and in a few of the deeper spots, the water actually splashed up to my knees. Brrr! It took a while for my feet to warm up after that.

Somewhere around mile 5, we noticed we weren't seeing as much reflective tape. But I remembered bits here and there, and thought we were on course. What I didn't know was whether I had us exactly on track, or not. We just sort of winged it, and it was going fine, except that around 7 miles in, I was starting to feel that my stomach was not very happy. And I was getting hungry, but the GU I had in my pocket would have been a bad idea at this point. And we didn't know where we were. I got a bit grumpy. I was upset that I felt like I was supposed to be leading us on a route I didn't know well. Of course, Ryan said he was expecting me to get lost, but I wasn't sure that really helped :-) Anyway, we snapped back and forth a few times, and after I took a bio-break, Ryan took over for a few minutes, we made our peace, and ended up back on track.

From there, I remembered the way, and although we skipped a few of the late in the loop single-track additions by design, we kept on course. We ended up back at the school with 10.75 miles, and since I was hoping for between 8 and 10, that was more than enough! Despite the "bad patch" around mile 7, it's always good to be out in the woods! I felt strong running, and was happy to have the chance to get in another nice trail run with Ryan. Grandparents are awesome :-) Thanks Irene and Dana! We really appreciate it!