The Couple Who Trains Together...

It's been a good week.

After eight days off following my inaugural 40 mile race I finally found the urge to run again. I was beginning to think I was suffering from ultraitis a fictitious illness befalling those in the weeks following ultra races where all desire to run is lost. Turns out I just needed to find my legs, and get a few runs in with my running partner.

Wednesday evenings we run trails. My charitable and uncomplaining mother-in-law comes over almost without fail to watch our growing brood on Wednesdays, has been for almost two years, and we are thankful and complain almost never about juice portions or snack frequencies. This affords Todd and I the luxury of running together in the mountains at least once a week though she’s often generous enough to come over at least once on the weekends. This week she came over three times.

That’s right Todd and I got three runs in this week together, all on trails in the mountains no less. Wednesday he was running late for the groups run so we started without him. After a few miles I left the group I was running with to head back to the parking lot for him. I was hoping to find him headed towards us but I ran the mile or so back to the car without spotting him. It was a good run up Monogram. I felt strong running alone, something I seldom do. When I reached the car and he wasn’t there I called him. He was running even later, wavering between coming to the mountain at all and heading home. I knew he’d worked a long day. I knew he’d been on a roof so that he could earn a living for his family.  I knew these things and yet I still said ‘I need my ten miles and the groups gone on without me, I need you here for six miles’. And minutes later he was pulling in, my knight in his Ford F-150. And we ran. We ran until the sun had set and my Garmin tripped 10 miles. 

I took Thursday and Friday off. Call it laziness. Call it lack of drive. Call it what you will I did little more than dance around the kitchen to fun. and the Avett Brothers the rest of the week. Saturday morning we planned a run on the Masochist course. I had yet to step foot on the course and was starting to get antsy about the unknown. With two other trail running friends we got in a little over 17 miles on the course. I could tell you I’m scared after Saturday morning’s run on the beginning of the race course. That I’m choking on self-doubt and fear, but I won’t, I’ll save that story for another post. 

Saturday evening I felt tired and drained but when Todd’s mom offered to watch the children on Sunday afternoon so that we could squeeze in another run we jumped at the opportunity. This morning we had a sluggish start, I found myself needing an extra cup of coffee and wasn’t even sure I wanted to run at all when my mother-in-law showed up bearing the pre-measured ingredients to make Pumpkin Bread pudding with the kids. Ready or not we pushed ourselves out the door to head towards the mountain for our ten miles.

On the way there I suggested a course to Todd. I never plan our run. Not the course anyways. I’ve never been familiar enough with the mountain to propose a route. After seeing the beginning of the Masochist course yesterday I knew what I wanted to do, I suggested that we start on Monorail and run towards Five Points, from there we would run down to Flames road then head all the way up to Clear Cut road then down and over Great Escape up Valley View road take a left down Monogram until Champion, take Champion to the camp where we’d take Camp Hydaway Road back to Panama all the way back to the car. He liked the sound of it. And thus the course we set upon was born.

We started on the single track section that is Monorail and Lower Dam, so many of these trails have been cut away and changed that I’m never quite sure where I am. We just followed the Deep Hollow signs to Five Points. I led for this section and I felt good. My legs felt strong and the weather was faultless. We hit Five Points and headed down to Flames Road without a word between us, I loved how we didn’t even acknowledge the plan having already worked out the details.

I was feeling invincible as we started the long grueling climb up Flames road, as we passed the turn we usually take and headed up the rest of the way to Clear Cut Road I started to get winded, I thought I needed a break, I started to walk. But did my loving, compassionate husband start walking with me? He continued plowing up the hill with those long legs of his. Not willing to be outrun I picked up my legs and started to run again. Turns out I wasn’t all that tired. Feeling the pressure I passed him on the downhill that is Clear Cut Road but slowed when he caught back up.

Are you going to run Hellgate this year, he asked. My first thought was Todd is foolish and I’m not that crazy. Hellgate is a 100k held one short month after Masochist.  I think you will if you run MMTR in sub 9:30, he baited. Did you just observe me walking up Flames Road, I jabbed, I’m not running a sub 9:30 at Masochist. I’ll be pushing it to finish in the cut off (12 hours) and no, I’m afraid no Hellgate this year. I’ll crew you, he offered. My second thought when he continued this line of banter was that he was just trying to make conversation. I think you’ll beat me at Masochist, I don’t know how you didn’t beat me at Douthat. Finally, my third thought, Todd thinks I’m better than I think I am. That realization was very heartwarming. Really to have a partner who I can run with, who I love to run with more than anyone, who thinks so much of me, who makes sure I get my runs in even when I don’t even want to run. Who pushes me and yet doesn’t push me off the sides of mountains when I break down from hunger and fatigue and start bemoaning and bitching. And I am competitive and I hate to admit it but I’m the jealous type as well. I get envious when he gets an extra run in, I want to run every race he runs, I want so badly to be as fast as him, as happy and easy going as he appears. I am nowhere near the runner he is let alone the person he is. I’m lucky to have him. I’m lucky that he puts up with me.

So finding this new found love for my spouse out on the trails today I immediately and at once set about to race him to the parking lot. It was unspoken, and yet he clearly and eagerly accepted the pursuit. I would bound up a short steep hill only to have to recover as he passed by me on the downhill. The long and final climb up Camp Hydaway Road was the best, I was falling apart, growing more and more fatigued with every step and yet I wouldn’t concede defeat. Wouldn’t walk, wouldn’t break. I kept on his heels to the very end.

And the course we’d laid was just over ten miles, and it was possibly the fastest ten miles my legs have ever seen on that mountain, and it was probably the most enjoyable ten miles in a very long time.

We went for an impromptu lunch after our run. Having run faster than we’d planned we had time to share a calzone at Vinny’s. During lunch we acknowledged the race like atmosphere we’d both felt out on the trail but agreed it had made for an invigorating run. I felt, for the first time in a really long time, that ‘runner’s high’ you often read about in magazines. And incidentally, I realized I’m just as in love with my husband as ever.

Like I said, it’s been a good week.

-Alexis