The day started out with my friend bailing on our long run. Proceeded into me having to get inspiration and motivation from my Twitter friends (because lord knows I wasn’t going to get it on my own.) and continued to me tearing my room apart looking for, wait for it, my Pearl Izumi arm warmers. It was finally that weird temperature that didn’t require a long sleeve, or a jacket, and was too cold for just a t-shirt. These are the days we’re given for arm warmers, however few and far between, we cherish them.

As you can see, I tore my room apart and eventually gave up and took an old pair of wool socks and cut out the toes. PERFECT!

I set out to climb to Four Corners and return. Long, up hill, and mentally taxing for me. As I was running, (if you can call my slow trot up running) it was nice to be alone. I knew that the run was going to be harder mentally for me, just to keep pushing myself instead of go home and crawl on the couch with my new favorite book. (I did get my motivation to run from people across the country I have never met! Thank you Twitter!)

As I reached the part in the path where it splits I had already been contemplating turning around at the next “check point”. If I had turned around there I would be cutting probably 45 minutes off of my run and I know I would be mad at myself when I got home. But still, I wanted to turn around. So instead of going right, (right would take me to the trail that continues up to four corners) I went left. I had no idea where left took me. I was pulling a classic Sloan Long Run Technique.

Sloan Long Run Technique: to set out for a set amount of miles, time, destination and proceed to get lost. The outcome usually being more miles, time and more bliss.

The trail I ended up following was the Queen of Hearts trail. I took Alice and Wonderland and White Rabbit to get there, (how fitting.) This QH trail led me along a single-track ridge covered in snow, up another switch back and to an opening that forced me to udder (shield your eyes Grandma) fuck yes. This view was spectacular. I looked around me to see if anyone else was as amazed as I was, I was alone. Fuck yes. Alone, up high on the mountain, I could see how far I’d come from town and how far I had to go.

The way down was like a roller coaster for my feet. I just let loose and ran. I really had no idea where in the trail system I was but someone once told me just run down and you’ll eventually make it back to town. So that’s what I did. Down down down the rabbit hole I ran and was spit out on Park Street where I found my bearings and ran straight to the running store to tell someone about my amazing run.

My co-worker, Timothy, was stoked for me and my run. He knew exactly where I had gone and we talked about how incredible that feeling is when you reach the top of QH.

This was a run that made me love running again. Thank goodness for my innate (and inherited) ability to get lost.