I still fancied myself a long-distance trail runner and I felt great!
As I’m typing this, I’m realizing that I’ve grown old and tired and what some might call ragged. I at least need to start drinking more water and maybe getting more exercise than the distance between car and front door. So now I ask “why was I thinking,” but way back then six years ago it seemed completely reasonable after a night of no sleep that I should get up the next day and run 12 mountain miles across the Roan Highlands and back. And for the first 5-6 miles I felt fantastic. Across Round Bald and up to Grass Ridge Bald and back down because I took a wrong turn, then down the Appalachian Trail. Down down to that lean-to shelter and I’m feeling just topping.
But I was also trying to go low-to-no carb that week and thinking what better way to beat myself into low-carb submission than to eat a bag of nuts and nothing else before embarking on that 12 mile trek.
I began to feel my shoulders as the running pack–initially light feeling–feel like a sack of subtly tortuous sand with contents at that moment the value of sand. I considered ditching it to avoid the irritation.
Each step was labored up the hill that I had just an hour before gleefully flown down like a freaking gazelle. And back up on the balds, I was conking. I labored through each 100 yard segment with the constant temptation to lay down and sleep for a while. And then about 1.5 miles from the car I began to see the day hikers in their nice clean dry outfits. A lady offered me crackers from her fanny pack. I declined, for I had gotten myself into this mess. I would certainly not stoop to the level of charity after my stupidity brought me here.
I did eventually make it back to the warm car where a can of sardines awaited. I survived but I did come to the brink of understanding a little of how those skeletons found in the desert slowly crept toward that tragic end after beginning with so much promise.