You know it’s a good run when about midway through you think “I have to blog about this”. And when 3/4 of the way through you think “will I make it BACK to blog about this”, well then you’ve g
ot something special.
I decided to make the short drive down to Highland Village to do a run this evening. I had driven through the Highland Shores sub-division and loved the rolling hills and the winding roads; it reminded me of Austin. Plus, they have a lot of walking/biking/running trails that go throughout the area which is just so much better than dodging traffic. I get there, stretch out a bit and start on my run.
I was actually looking forward to doing some hill training — not very many hills in Lake Dallas. I wasn’t expecting quite so many hills though. It looked like this:
Actually, it looked EXACTLY like that — that’s the elevation read out from my run (mapped by mapmyrun.com). Notice the monster hills between mile two and mile 3. And then the mountain I climbed between mile 4 and mile 5. The elevation difference between the highest and lowest points was 93 feet. I definitely got a work out.
Now for the blog worthy part. When I set out on my run I kind of knew where I was going. I didn’t set a time goal for the run nor did I set a distance goal. I planned to run for about an hour or less, depending on how I felt at around 30 minutes. At 35 minutes I was a little tired of the hills and had considered turning back since I knew how to get back to my car that way. But, where’s the adventure in that? I followed the trail a bit further and it ended — there was just a clear cut path in this “wooded” area that was at the edge of a sub-division. I started walking at this point, because I was tired and because I wanted to figure out where I was going. I ended up sort of in someone’s huge unfenced backyard and I promptly made my way to the road. This was all somewhere between mile 3 and mile 4.
I get to the road and feel a little relieved, although I honestly didn’t have a clue as to WHAT road I was on. I started walking in what I presumed to be the right direction (it was) until I saw a sign that said “County Maintenance Ends” — which in Texas generally means your heading away from civilization. Still determined to not turn back, I pressed onwards. I sort of “planned” on something like this happening. I don’t usually run with any water on me but I figured “just in case” and since I was running away from the apartment, I brought along my CamelBak for water and to hold my keys and such. Things started to look familiar, but in a bad sort of way. I had driven down this road before, and it was in fact leading me towards civilization, but not exactly near where my car was. This is where the adventure began.
Some people get a thrill out of running, but that’s not challenging enough for me. I prefer to run until I get lost while the sun is going down. At about 4.5 miles I find a sub-division and I can see a water tower that says “Highland Village”. This was somewhat comforting since I had just seen a wooden sign pointing right that said “Chinn Chapel Town Hall”. I figured I should run towards the water tower. As I enter the sub-division I started to get the awful feeling that this was one of those sub-divisions with only one entrance and exit. I walked/ran in a big loop making it back to the main road of the sub-division and figured I’d follow it to see if it would lead me to an exit. It did. AND I recognized the road! This was almost at the 5.5 mile mark. I head up the road and see the path again. Now my race was against the sun. I had about 15-20 minutes of daylight left and, while I knew where I was, I didn’t know how far I was from my car. With my legs tired and the odds against me I slowly made my way through the winding path facing what seemed to be very unnecessary increases in elevation. I mean an hour in to this I’m starting to get the point, this town has hills.
1 hour and 15 minutes after I began, I made it back to my car - 6.33 miles of what I could have sworn was all uphill. Here’s a little map with mile markers of my little excursion. It was definitely an adventure!
Okay, while I actually agree with the Wesleyan thing (I did grow up Methodist after all and, while I’m not Methodist I do dig me some John Wesley) it’s the next two that had me scratching my head. Is that even possible?? Emergent Fundamentalism?? This is why I hate labels.
