we scaled small mountains

i'm not entirely sure why i've never done this before, but sunday was my first trail run/hike/walk. i wish i knew why i'd never tried running on trails before, because now my main problem with trail running is that logistically i can really only figure out how to do it once a week. maybe twice. and that's not enough.

lucky for me, lindsey was more than happy to be dragged along on my quest for adventure and we meet up at 9 in rock creek park. unfortunately we missed cat, who was already out pounding the trails when we arrived. it was unforunate for two reasons: we would have loved to have her company and more problematically, neither lindsey nor i had any idea where these infamous trails WERE.

so, we did the only thing we could. we just started running around and looking for trails. fortunately for us, people who know about these things were right about the trails being easy to find (well, i mean when you are looking for them, they are. i've been to rcp many a time, and never noticed a single trail.)

so we found a trail and off we went! we quickly found ourselves in the middle of the woods, running up hills, running over tree roots, running across a creek (well i was gingerly hopping from rock to rock, afraid of getting my feet wet, but lindsey was far more agile), running, running, running, and boom: we're on connecticut avenue. it felt like we had been out there forever, considering how winded we were standing on that sidewalk, but my garmin said it was about a half a mile. so we dove back in.

we went down hills, over rocks, lept fallen trees, scaled small mountains (hey, you don't know, you weren't there), laughed, walked, and all of the sudden, boom: we're in a parking lot. we briefly discussed heading up to the road to see where we were, but why bother with that, when there's an option to go back in the trail and go another way?

we did this for an hour. we'd walk around a bit, see another trail and attack it. it was truly the most fun i've had in a long time and i'm so grateful that lindsey decided to join me, even though i apologized for probably 30% of the day about walking up hillz. in my defense, any time we came to a fork in the road, she said, let's go UP!

4.5 miles later, we made it back to our cars, dripping in sweat, filthy, with muddy shoes and smiles on our faces. i've got 2 trail running races on the calendar for the fall and i was considering a third. i think THAT decision has been made.