I noticed yesterday on one thread relative sleep and training time that many ST’rs have young children and that dictates how much and when. I’m right there along with them with an 8 month old son.
Yesterday I came home from the office in the early afternoon to work from home for the rest of the day. The intention was for my wife to be able to sneak out for a run, as we are between part-time nannys.
It turns out that, through some circumstances of scheduling, that my wife became too hungry to run by the time I arrived and started on a late lunch (breastfeeding my hoss of a boy takes its toll). I was glad enough to have some extra face time with my family, but was granted an extra treat when my wife suggested that I sneak in a quick run.
We live in Fort Collins, CO on some property that butts up to the Coyote Ridge open space. If you are not familiar with the area it includes a trail head that heads mostly up for the front end of a 7.x mile, out and back hike/bike/run. By the time I covertly run through some “off limits” areas to the trail head, I don’t touch concrete other than to cross a road and aggregate a nice 8+ miler.
On my way up the trail, only 9 minutes into the run, I can hear bikes coming down around a blind corner. This trail, though “short”, has some magically technical sections. For whatever reason it attracts a lot of extremely unskilled, unprepared, clueless riders on weekends. I was about to learn that weekdays are no longer safe.
Three guys in their early twenties come cartwheeling out of the curve. I had gotten as far to my right as possible without going over the edge upon hearing them. All three lock up their brakes when they see me because the first guy is going to hit me and their staggering is going to ensure that all will be eating gravel. Btw, not a single helmet and all three are wearing basketball jerseys that would be too big for Shaq. Varied teams if you care to know and I don’t think any of these guys weighed more than a buck seventy.
The lead guy dumps right into me and I try to go over him. I catch his shoulder with one foot and sort of stumble down to a roll off the side of the trail into more rock and scrub brush. I come up absolutely seeing red with much adrenaline behind me.
I am about to render someone’s head concave when I realize that if I tangle with this cat, it’s going to eat into my run time. This is new for me.
No apology from the wannabe Roland. In fact he tells me that I need to watch where I run, though both of his friends are looking like they want nothing to do with me.
I tell him that he’d better start rolling his broken ass down the hill before something really bad happens to him. He considers me and decides that maybe I know what I’m talking about. I go on to finish my run bleeding from my knee, shoulder and thigh.
Good times.