Beauty and the Beast (The Beautiful Loop Is a Beast?)

Ian.  Gotta love Ian.  He came up with the idea of turning the Beautiful Loop's 15.5 sometimes treacherous miles (condition dependent) into 20.  Of course, being the founder of the TMs, he couldn't just add more distance to the loop; the added miles would be .83 mile hill repeats up Lunch Break Hill.

 
The insane thing is this was received with enthusiasm not just laughed at.  Then came the lousy weather that erased a lot of our trails around Scoutland.  Mindy and I had planned to meet at the Brad at 7 to get a jump on the BL+, but I was worried that we wouldn't be able to follow the BL; that the trail might be melted.  So, we decided on a couple of changes.  We'd meet up with the rest of the TMs at 8 so we'd have BL pros to follow or, as a backup, if the BL wasn't runnable, we'd do the AL a couple of times and still tack on the hill repeats to get 20.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I realized I was the last one to get there again.  Damn.  The group consisted of Ian, Jeremy, Zak, Jamie, Jim, Andy, Mindy and me.  The guys went out faster than Mindy and me.  It was a fast group.  That's ok, it gave us our path to follow, plus clues to where there'd be post-holing.  I say clues because though we did see where they went through it didn't mean our path wouldn't have it, too.  I was so happy to find the trail was runnable.  We cruised along pretty well for the first 5ish miles, catching up on things.  Mindy was in PA last Saturday so we had 2 weeks to go over.

Then things started to get interesting.  There was lots of water beneath ice that was either very thin and/or melting.  Again, the guys footsteps gave us clues, but we still tried to find better ways.  Mostly, they'd found the best ways or pointed out the bad ones.  I don't think we actually said it, but both of us seemed to know that we couldn't do our normal trail appreciating (following little animal tracks, lounging in stray chairs, making snowmen, etc); this run was going to be long enough.  Doesn't mean we didn't notice tracks, the neat network of mice tunnels visible beneath the thinning snow, or our very inviting recliners.  We did have to stop to visit our highland coos (they were right by the fence) and throw the ball for Zoe, the border collie, but it was a much shorter visit than we'd normally do.  Oh, but, I jumped ahead; I should still be back in the power lines with all the impromptu rivers.

There was one particularly wide river/bog near the electrical substation that had us stumped for a while.  We decided to go where it looked like the guys had gone.  Mindy took one step.  Yikes!  She went down.  Adrenalin burst!  I think I pulled her out instantaneously.  She weighed nothing.  It was kind of like the anti-tantruming (as Calvin would say, "verbing nouns weirds language!") two-year old who goes limp and is almost impossible to lift.  She'd gone down to her knee without hitting bottom yet.  OK, we wouldn't be following those tracks.  We took a little too much time trying to decide where the best place was.  Then I came up with this brilliant idea to run back a few 10ths of a mile where the snowmobile trail branched off slightly.  I thought it might by pass the water.  I felt very smug when it looked like we had out smarted the terrain, only to find the water between us and the road crossing.  Again, we spent a lot of time trying to find the chink in its armor.  Then I notice a driveway-like road to our left.  It must have belonged to CMP.  Well, it went to the road.  We bush-wacked to it to get to the road.  I'm sure we were as wet as if we'd just sucked it up and crossed.  Speaking of being wet, though my right foot that got soaked first was cold for a bit, it amazed me how they would rewarm once our pace could be maintained.

I think it was as we approached Pownal Elementary that Mindy wondered outloud if we'd see the guys on their hill repeats.  I didn't think so, however, about half way up the steep hill, we saw Jeremy bounding down.  He was all positive and high fives as he ran by.  Yay!  It wasn't too much further up the long hill that we saw Ian, Jamie and Zak heading down.  More encouragement and high fives!  We took a second at the summit to appreciate our climb, then headed back down.  I found the down harder than the up.  Jeremy was almost all the way up, when we saw him for the last time.  He was done!  Again, the others weren't all that far back.  We/they cheered.  So impressed with how strong they were still running.

I was playing with the math of the whole thing and announced we were going to have more than 20 miles if we summited every repeat.  We could just do the 1/2 mile climb on one of the four.  Mindy, I'm sure not wanting to actually scream, "Are you kidding me???", said something to the effect, "would we be as badass?"  Of course, of course we would do the full hill repeats every time.  It's just my head was wrapped around the 20; it needed to recalibrate.

The second climb was probably the hardest for me.  I struggled to stay with Mindy.  The weird thing is I wasn't all that great on the first climb either.  On the 3rd and 4th, I seemed to do better, a lot better.  I think it was being in the lead.  Weird how following could affect me that much.  I sensed Mindy was better when she was in the lead, too.  She was having hip flexor/glute issues.  All the pains I had seemed to be overshadowed by my feet.

We were so proud of ourselves when we summited for the 4th time.  Can I have a BADASS?!  Yup.  We went to Edna and Lucy's for some needed refueling.  The warm, hardy Sweet Potato and Barely soup was just what our depleted bodies needed. And, I have to admit, I was even prouder when Ian posted he was proud of us :D