15.8 Mile Run By Accident

Last Saturday I had a 10 mile run scheduled. I was a little nervous because the week before I had barely completed a 9 mile run. I decided to go down to Lady Bird Lake (Town Lake) and run the trail there with the rest of the runners in Austin. I’d never been before, but I found a route on MapMyRun that looked good and was just about the right length. I took some route notes about where to turn and landmarks and what not and taped the list to my water bottle.

I got there about 8:30 in the morning and started to run. I set out with a goal of ten, 9:30 minute miles. I started to run and felt pretty good. I quickly realized that at the lake you run counterclockwise (which is how you run a track). Almost everyone was going the other direction and I hate to admit it, but I was tempted to turn around just so I’d fit in. But running against the grain has its advantages, mainly I didn’t get stuck behind groups of people I couldn’t pass.

The Town Lake trail in near the Congress Avenue bridge is apparently the place to see and be seen. There were more girls in impractically tiny running outfits strutting around than I have seen in a long, long time. They ran fast, they ran slow, but it didn’t appear that they ran very far. By the time I had gone five or six miles there weren’t any more girls. Just men and women (wearing much more appropriate clothing) running the stretches of trail where no one was watching.

My notes did me pretty well for most of the run. I was actually feeling really good at about eight miles and telling myself that at nine miles I could pick up the pace and finish hard. Then things went wrong. Not that I knew it at the time, but at about 8.5 miles I missed a critical turn.  I was supposed to cross a footbridge over a creek that feeds the lake.  But my notes didn’t mention it.  When I had looked at the route crossing the bridge looked inevitable to me.  I thought I would stay on the trail and it would lead over the bridge.  So I left it out of the notes.  My notes said that the next thing I was to do was turn onto the bridge at MoPac.  This definitely wasn’t MoPac so I kept on running down the trail.

It wasn’t too much longer that I started to worry that I had made a mistake.  But I rationalized that my gps watch was off (it happens sometimes in the woods) or that my notes were off.  I also kept thinking “I haven’t seen MoPac yet.  So I must be going the right way.  I’m not blind, I didn’t miss MoPac”.  So like Forrest Gump I ran.  I just ran and ran.  I knew I was off course, but I didn’t have a whole lot of options.  If I was off track and I went back would I be able to figure out how to get back on track?  I didn’t think so.  I figured there must be another way across the water so I would keep running until I found it.

A few miles more and I found myself in a nice mid-70s residential area.  Ramblers, good sized trees.  Nice.  Hilly, but nice.  I approached a gentleman who was blowing leaves from his driveway.  He had one arm and used his hook to turn off the leaf blower.  Not that this is at all relevant, but whenever a story involves a one-armed man in any way I believe it is your obligation to share it.  It wasn’t one of those Cap’n Hook hooks, but one of the ones that can open and close.  Anyway…I asked him how to get across the lake and he looked confused.  He asked if I wanted to get to the greenbelt and I looked confused.  He told me how to get to the park and trail system and I thanked him and ran off.

You see, it turns out that I had run some distance away from the lake.  He didn’t understand my question because it didn’t make any sense.  He was near the Barton Creek greenbelt and I had unknowingly turned ninety degrees from the lake and had been running south along the creek for some time.  I followed his instructions and ran down the ravine into the creek bed and across what was fortunately a dry creek.  Had it rained heavily I’m not sure what I would have done.

I followed the trail system back toward the car.  It was rough going.  Not a running trail, but a hiking trail.  The difference is rocks.  Hiking trails are allowed to have large ankle-twisting rocks in them.  Plus they can have loose rocks and uneven surfaces.  It was slow going and I wasn’t sure at all how far I had to go to get back to the car.  The map at the trailhead before I went down the ravine didn’t cover a large enough area to show me where I wanted to go.  It was a big map, but I was that far off.  I didn’t see many people on this portion of the trail.  Which was nice, but not a comforting feeling when you know you are lost.  I think I’ll go back on purpose some time.

More running and I congratulated myself on having run a half-marathon (13.1 miles).  I kept running.  More people now as I got back near the more popular trails.  After consulting a few more maps I realized I was close and found a route home.  It was nice to know that I was actually going the right way again.  I kept running, even passing a few people and made it back to the car.  15.8 miles!  At that point I was pretty tired, but felt like I could keep running at least for a while more.

So now that I’ve survived I’ve added my route to mapmyrun.com.  And I’ve added a note about the bridge to the turn notes so maybe other runners won’t get quite as lost as I did.  My confidence is definitely boosted now.  If I can run almost 16 miles with 14 weeks of training left I might actually make it to the end of this marathon thing.

 

Tags: Austin, Marathon, Running, town lake