Great LSD

I dressed warm because the National Weather Service told me that the wind chills would be in the single digits for the entire run.  When I pulled into Brad's parking lot, I think all the other Monsters were already there.  Ian asked what I was thinking.  Um, I just thought we'd stick to the plans to run 15ish around the park.  Alan had been out already and reported that the trails weren't good and the snowmobiles hadn't been out.  Ian saw some evidence of snowmobile activity on a road along the Beautiful Loop.  So, the plan was to attempt the loop.

I'm not sure if it was a conscious plan, an inevitable occurrence, or just lollygagging, but Mindy and I were trailing the group (Ian, Jeremy, Zak, Nathan, Alan, and Ben) immediately.  I told Mindy right away that I was a little tired and, maybe dehydrated, from my late night out; I'd been to see Christine's husband's band play at Buck's Naked (they were really, really good).

It seemed like a bad trip.  Mindy and I were working hard, yet, when we looked at our Garmin, we'd only gone 1.8 miles in 30 something minutes.  Ugh!  The Beautiful Loop is 15 miles.  At that rate...OK, we'd keep going and could reassess at the next road.  We decided the Animal Loop would be our out.

So I mentioned that NOAA said it was gonna be cold.  Not so much.  It wasn't long before I peeled off my outer layer to short sleeves.  I was really glad I had included my Inov8 gators; the crust on the snow was really mean to the ankles.

At the first road, Mindy and I opted to continue.  We started to enjoy some of the run by noticing the animal tracks.  Still, the going was rough.

A great thing of running with Mindy, we talk so much about so many things, some of the hardness gets pushed to the background.  I almost said, "pretty soon".  Ha!  After a looong time (remember LSD?  the long was the time more than the distance), we reached the powerlines.  We were sure that would be easier.  Ha and Ha!  Neither of us had been that far on the BL before.  How long before we reached the next bail point?  By now I had my outer shirt back on.  I was still warm enough, but my arms were getting raw.

I think it was when we finally crossed route 9, we were rewarded for staying the course with wonderful, wonderful ATV(?) tracks.  It was the firmest footing of the day.  Ah, the trip began to turn to a magical, mystery tour.  Did we find the recliners first or see the eagle first?  Who knows?  Who cares!  They both happened.  We felt like we were rewarded for being badasses.
 

The miles our Garmin displayed still seemed to be a cruel joke, but we were now having lots of fun.  We identified deer, coyote, fox, and lots of rodent tracks.  We appreciated to snow adorned trees.  We laughed at missteps, wet feet, and falls.  We had to stop to find the tracks our fearless fellow Monsters were laying down.  We actually thought a few had bailed cause there were so few tracks.  We should have known, since breaking trail was cruel, they'd be sharing footfalls.  Oh, and, given who was out there, we should have known they'd keep running.

I'm not sure how early in, but Mindy and I had decided to go with the time we had expected to run to determine when we'd call it a day.  So, we'd shoot for 3.5 hours at least.  By the time we reached where the power lines of the Connector cross Elmwood, we realized we'd better take the road back to the park.  Instead of the 15 miles of the BL, we'd get in 13.8 instead.

I have to confess that I started to feel it in the last few miles.  It seemed like Mindy started to feel it in the exact opposite way; she was getting stronger and stronger.  She really pulled me up those last couple of road hills.  Scout and Squirrel make a good team.  So the long, (very)slow distance run was pretty epic.  We met back up with the guys at E&Ls to tell the tales of the trail.  Yep, epic.