Laughter at Wilson's Creek

That last post reminds me that I have had problems keeping up with walkers before. In the late 90s, my roommate McVey and I decided to go on a one day road trip with our best friend, Gruve. This trip started at midnight after McVey closed out for the night in downtown Fort Worth. Gruve and I were waiting in my 1990 Chrysler LeBaron for a drive of almost eight hours to a national park outside of Springfield, Missouri.

See, by this time, we had watched the Ken Burns documentary on The Civil War, read Shelby Foote’s trilogy, and watched Glory and Gettysburg a few times over. Already a guy who originally intended to major in history, it didn’t take much of a suggestion from Gruve to put these wheels in motion. And our wheels were pulling up to Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield right around the time they opened the gates.

We started at the visitor’s center and decided to take the self guided tour. You know the type. You drive to a numbered station, park the car, walk down a marked path, read some signs explaining what happened, then return to the car, drive to the next station, and repeat. We did this a couple of times until we were at a station on the opposite side of the park from the visitor center. The weather was great. It was still early, and the sun was burning off the morning mist. We were the only three people out there.

We set out from the car and walked down a well worn trail. It branched off, and we stuck with the one heading into the interior of the battlefield.

It would be some time before we realized that the folks at Wilson’s Creek had a unique sense of humor.
So unique, there is an unmarked part of the trail that intersects with a horse path. As if to show the genius of their comedy styling, the designers of the park have the horse trail run asymptotically closely to the rest of the footpath. So closely, that we did not realize the numerator was getting much larger than the denominator. By the time we did realize that we were walking away from where we were supposed to be, it was because we heard cars through the trees and could tell we were approaching the road.

Performing what could best be described as very sketchy triangulation, we figured we should just get back to road and walk to the car. This was our second mistake. Apparently, like a mathematical phantom of the opera, the planners for this battlefield tour had configured a double asymptote. The more we walked, the further we moved from the road into the middle of the battlefield. By the time we realized that we had placed ourselves in the least convenient location, we were not near a road or the foot trail.

What was visible to us, though, was another set of markers at the top of a nearby hill. Now we had a plan. We would take this hill, follow the footpath back to the road, and walk back to the car. No paths were necessary, we could at least tell which way was up. That was the direction we would go. Now walking through brush, I noticed that I was moving with more difficulty than McVey or Gruve. Gruve, being an unstoppable machine, was moving up the hill like a Roomba vacuum cleaner, kind of meandering, but moving forward, making odd sounds, and leaving a clean path in his wake.

McVey and I were on a different path. When I brought up the amount of exertion I was facing on this hill, he was very dismissive. “We’re both going the same distance.”

I pointed out that he was over six feet, two inches tall. He covered more ground than I did. He was even more dismissive. “Yeah, but they’ve done studies that shorter people just take two shorter steps twice as fast to keep pace.”

This was the story I recounted for Julie on our 5K a couple of weekends ago. And just so we don’t pin this on McVey, she had heard the same studies. The studies that basically say, “Short people perform twice the locomotive processes as tall people to cover the same distance. So what’s the big deal?

Back on our hill, I was riled enough by this to double my efforts. After all, I was training for the fireman exam and could run a mile and a half in under 12 minutes. Even though we had already walked for almost 45 minutes, this would be no big deal.

If you ever want proof that some people are just genetically predisposed to some things, I offer this as my shining example. As we approached the battlefield markers, I was redefining perspiration and sucking wind. Meanwhile, my roommate, who was almost smoking a pack a day, jogged backwards up the hill faster than I could double time forwards.

The good news is that the path from these markers eventually connected to the road. The bad news was that we were two stops away from where we parked. None of us had slept on the drive up, and we were approaching exhaustion after almost an hour and a half of hiking with no water. As a result, the walk on the road seemed interminable. What happened next is the one thing my friends remember from this day.

As delirium was setting in, we were laughing at everything that was said, seen, or heard. For one of only two times in my life, someone said something so funny, it caused me to laugh hard enough that the neural communicators emitting from the brain telling your legs to hold you upright just stopped.

I will credit McVey for saying, “We have walked so far, we are going to run into ourselves walking the opposite direction.” (Actually, my memory recalls that it might have been Gruve. Unfortunately, my judgment might be influenced by Dave, who once claimed that Gruve took all of his stories and just added sound effects.)

There was a split second between the time I heard these words and I was on my side in a quasi fetal position doing something between guffawing and chortling. To this day, that has only occurred one other time. Those words were also delivered by McVey in the city of Verona. I’m pretty sure that is an entire blog entry unto itself.

The Coldness of the Short Distance Runner

Last weekend, my wife and I completed a marathon event. Not an actual 26.2 mile marathon, but for us 3.1 miles counts as a marathon-type event. We were part of a group ramping up to a participate in a 10K with Team in Training, a fund raising group with the cause of finding a cure for Leukemia / Lymphoma / other blood disorders. The other members of our group are all former Olympians, members of school cross country teams, and lifelong joggers. At least that is what seems to be the case.

On an average Saturday morning over the last month, we meet with anywhere from fifteen to twenty other teammates along the Trinity trail. When we complete walking our two or three miles, most of our team is already back in their homes or eating breakfast. This is because they sprint with a speed that makes me think they are the infected from 28 Days Later. This is quite the humbling experience because our path takes us to a turnaround point and return to the start. The entire team passes us on their way to completion, usually within site of the table where we drop off our car keys when we begin.

As one of our tests, we have to take part in a 5K close to Benbrook Lake. I don’t think we foresaw what weather in early February would be like, but 28 degrees was a bit much. We had never participated in an organized run like this. There were not a lot of people there, but those that were seemed to be way too enthusiastic. While we were glad that it was socially acceptable for us to hug each other for conserving heat, there were some around us running practice 5Ks to stay warm.

As the time approached, we gathered near the starting line and a voice instructed runners to follow one of two paths, 5K to the left, half marathon to the right. There was also a warning that to the left, near the turnaround point, there was ice on the trail. There would be boy scouts warning as you approached the area. At the start, there was a quick separation between walkers and runners. There was also a quick separation between walkers and us. Before turning the first curve, we were walking dead last behind a family that we swore was just out for a daily walk and not part of the 5K at all.

We thought we had walked a decent distance before arriving at the split for the 5K and half marathon. Keeping to the left, there was a slight rise until a table manned by boy scouts passing out water. We were the last ones to the water station and finally saw Benbrook Lake. We were just at this point when the first runners were already coming back, including our coach. As we continued walking we saw more of the team, but also became aware of the sound of someone behind us. Apparently, someone that started the race late was also walking, and gaining ground quickly. We attempted to increase our pace when we got to the ice patch. Here, your options were to either walk on ice or step off the trail into a deep drop off of slush hidden by trampled down grass. We made the wrong choice. Just beyond it was our turnaround.

At this point, we were feeling ok. Ok enough that we decided to jog after we crossed the ice on the path. After all, we were halfway done, right? We jogged until we passed the walker ahead of us. We then resumed walking, then jogged again, and walked until we got back to the water station. This made sense. We weren’t last. We were close, but not last. Surely that was a testament to our walking two miles every other day. As we approached the split where we moved away from the half marathoners, we could hear the announcements from the starting / finish line. Except we weren’t being guided towards the finish line.

The walkers ahead of us were heading towards where the half marathoners had gone. The arrows for the 5K also pointed that way. It turns out that the reason they did not warn that there was ice near the halfway point was because the turnaround was at the one-third point. This had a serious effect on our mood. Instead of being almost finished and jogging a bit, we were one-half done, just about spent, freezing, with wet feet. It didn’t get any better. It turns out that the water station at the one-sixth point was the only one available. The rest of the walk was spent commenting on the fact that the woman ahead of us didn’t walk all the way to the second turnaround.

Thanks to the kids that thought they would rather see how much ice they could break by one of the pavilions, their parents that waited for them, the pregnant woman we passed by jogging, and the woman that started about ten minutes later than we did, we did not finish last. The only members of our team still around were waiting for the half marathoner still on the course. We stopped by the snack stand that was passing out cookies, pretzels, and hot chocolate to participants. Know the last thing I want after doing a 5K? Cheese nachos covered in chili. Instead, we grabbed some snickerdoodles and headed for the car.