Death Marches, Loops, and Appalachian Trail Magic

In my life, July 4th weekends have a storied history and this year was no different.  Given that this month is going to be the zenith of my training for the year, I was itching to get in some serious base miles/hills last Saturday and Sunday and fortunately I came to discover the running club I belong to, Virginia Happy Trails Running Club, had some training runs scheduled.  Buttabing!

Last Friday, the affable Vince Bowman kindly allowed me to crash at his place in what has become my new home-away-from-home, Harrisonburg, Virginia (Sidebar: Try The Little Grill restaurant if you are in the area.  This is my type of restaurant, what with the scent of patchouli oil, dreadlocks, fine hemp clothing, and most importantly, kick-butt healthy food!).

On Saturday morning, Jack Broadus and I headed out to the so-called Sophie's Death March organized by Sophie Speidel.  In a nutshell, this training run is a 24-mile clockwise loop run out of Whiteoak Canyon in the Shenandoah National Park.

My heart yearns for thee!

There is nothing like a Death March to keep you honest about one's level of fitness and to act as a gauge in one's progress in training for an upcoming ultra.  (Sidebar: My favorite Death March was one I used to do in the Spanish Peaks Wilderness when I lived in southwestern Montana.  I had an elk hunt I liked to do on the eastern side of the wilderness area that required a middle-of-the-night wade across the Gallatin River, a long slog up a drainage with deadfall up to your neck, followed by a vicious scramble up a rock slide to get into position before the sun came up.)  There were over 40 runners congregated at the trailhead, ready to get after business.  After the run, I would meet a nice guy (Matt Bugin) who would say it best when he said a big reason he enjoys ultra running events is being able to meet interesting people.  Here, here!

In any case, we started west up Whiteoak Canyon towards Skyline Drive.  This was a steep, intermittently rocky climb along a lovely creek with waterfalls.  Pretty quickly, the runners strung out along the trail.  It didn't seem like too long at all before the group of runners I managed to tag along with topped out on the ridge line.  We crossed the the drive and headed over to Hawksbill Mountain, the tallest mountain in the park, for some cherry views.  The pace was a bit too quick for my weekend agenda, so I decided to peel off and run by myself heading north up the Appalachian Trail (AT) to Skyland Drive.  There, I kibbutzed briefly with some thru-hikers where we exchanged stories, Snickers Bars, and hugs.  Yahoo!!!  Now, here is where things got off track for me.  We were supposed to be take a cutoff trail back to the east (Corbin Cabin Trail) but inattentive me zoomed right by it and continued north on the AT.  Pretty soon, I came across a trio of thru-hikers in a picnic area (Pinnacles) that didn't look familiar to me at all.  Thanks to Harmony, Ben, and Barack and the official AT Data Book they had, we determined that I had just upgraded my run by an additional 4 miles (sniff, sniff).  With my tail between my legs (after all, I am Lost Dog), I headed back south where I successfully hunted down the cutoff.  I then headed waaayyy down the trail to a scenic cabin near a stream and came to the Nicholson Hollow Trail.  It now came to me that I had overestimated the amount of water on-hand and given the temperature and humidity had substantially risen, my mind became unsettled.

Continuing to head east, I startled a large black bear 20' to my left that exploded out of the bushes and ran directly away from me.  I don't know if it was due to the fact that I was thinking through a statistical proof at that time or just conditioning but I literally never broke stride.  (Sidebar: The first time I ever saw a bear was in Pennsylvania where I became so excited you would have thought The Rapture had occurred.  Years later, when I lived in Alaska, fishing the Russian River with a huge grizzly sow within rock-throwing distance wouldn't even merit lifting my head up to look.)  Finally, I hit the upper Old Rag parking lot and started to shuffle south along a fire road with a frankly annoying rising grade.  I was now down to meting out a sip, i.e., thimbleful, of water every 10 minutes or so to try to quench my thirst.  Once I got to the Old Rag Trailhead, I came across a pack of other runners that had been turned around.  More or less as a group, we ran down to Berry Hollow and arrived intact back at the original parking lot -- whew!

Afterward, coolers of beverages were unleashed, many bags of chips broken open, fruit cut into bite-sized chunks, etc., etc., by many nice, happy people.  Very cool!  I met and chatted with several of these fine folks, all with their interesting stories and perspectives, for a couple of hours easy (Matt and his girlfriend Holly, Nicholas Hamblet, Christian Dahlhausen, et al.).  Back in Harrisonburg, I ended up eating dinner with several friends, including Dave and Erin Frazier, and capped the evening with a great conversation with my friend Eva over a fine white wine.

Saturday, it was time to get after some more running near the town of Luray, Virginia.  This training run was organized by Quatro Hubbard and was called Jeremy's Run Loop, held in the northern part of the park.  At 21 miles and with less elevation change, this run was relatively easier in difficulty than the previous day's run.  Nevertheless, I felt somewhat tired and my legs didn't have their usual spring as I started up the ever-rising Neighbor Mountain Trail.  If I had to make a guess, I'd say there might have been 40 people in attendance?  While I ran with several people in this stretch, of particular note was running with the cool Rob Colenso, who had recently run the MMT 100 and was training for the upcoming Grindstone 100.  It was in this stretch that another bear encounter occurred; namely, we saw a sow black bear with two cubs hanging off a tree and many excited Japanese tourists with head nets on.

"What in darn tarnation is going on here?"  Credit: Rob Colenso.

Once we got to the Appalachian Trail, we headed north to the Elkwallow Wayside whereupon I snarfed down an egg muffin in a nanosecond.  (Sidebar: Properly planned, an AT thru-hiker could damn near dispense with carrying food through the entire park and subsist on food from lodges and waysides.  This has the added benefit of being able to eat something other than the standard thru-hiker table fare of ramen noodles, oatmeal, gorp, etc.)  After heading over west via a cutoff trail, several of us continued west/southwest along the Knob Mountain Trail.  Personally, this was my favorite section as it wound its way down towards Jeremy's Run, a lovely creek.  Some good convos with both Sophie and Rob, some lively downhill trail running, classic Appalachian views ... life was grand!  Whereas the heat and humidity were pretty brutal, many of us opted to take a soak in the creek before heading back to where the cars were parked for a post-run feed.

All told, these two runs provided all the solid base miles and elevation change a guy would need in a weekend.  The "modified" Sophie's Death March had an elevation change of 12,000', while the Jeremy's Run Loop chipped in with 8,500'.

The next phase of my journey had me driving to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania later that Sunday night.  My former AT thru-hiking partner had flown in with his wife Alicia and his son Philip to visit Alicia's family who live in the area.  Ross and I had decided to spend some time on the 4th of July providing "Trail Magic", or random acts of support and kindness, to unsuspecting thru-hikers.  Why, you may ask?  Since we were the recipients of trail magic many times during our thru-hike, Ross and I feel it is important to pay it forward.  Accordingly, we loaded up on beer, pop, hotdogs, fruit, candy, etc., that night and were headed out the door early the next morning.  Due to Ross' diligent research, we selected a road crossing near the town of Pine Grove, and set up our grill and coolers.  It wasn't anytime at all before we had our first customer (WIP) followed closely by two more.  There could hardly be anything more precious (at least that I could think of) to see the look on a thru-hiker's face when you come springing out of nowhere with cold beer and juicy grilled hotdogs on a hot summer day ... mint!

Our new friends!  The clean-shaven Ross (Vast Horizon) is on the far left.

  One thru-hiker in particular (Rachel Delucas, aka Catalyst) decided to take an impromptu, so-called "zero day" and sat with us for hours!  A sharp, metallurgical engineer and MIT and Boston U graduate, Rachel was taking the time off to hike the trail to think about what she wanted to do in the next phase of her professional life, a not uncommon reason many thru-hikers cite as their motivation for hiking.  What an interesting person and I thoroughly enjoyed our interaction.  Thank you, Rachel!  I'll avoid those mealy Red Delicious apples and be on the lookout for the Green Shamrock cultivar :-)

Vast Horizon and Catalyst in the 501 shelter.

After a day of trail magic and dropping Ross back off at his in-laws, I headed back to Morgantown and arrived in time to watch the fireworks being shot off over the Monongahela River from my boss' deck.  So ended a great holiday weekend of good times with good people.

Kaboom!

Alas, on a closing note, the serenity of my country apartment environs was shattered recently by the building of a Pilot Truck Stop directly across from me.  Now I suppose this would not necessarily be a bad thing, particularly if you have that 2 AM urge for funny little vials of energy drink with ginseng, soft-core porn, or a Cinnabon cinnamon roll with enough calories to sustain the entire 82nd Airborne for a day.  Unfortunately, if you are an assistant professor struggling for tenure, who exercises regularly day and night and who doesn't sleep well to begin with, then this most definitely is a bad thing.  With over 3,000 patrons a day, and the accompanying incessant din of idling diesel engines and blaring jake brakes, it will be interesting to see how long I last.  My rent is so reasonable and my landlady is such a wonderful woman, that the tradeoff (so far) is worth it (for now).

Welcome home, Phil!  View from my front door.