Good Friday today so to earn the Humpty Dumpty egg KKB gave me I launched with gusto into the trail run that was set as a bit of a change to my regular Friday water run.
My coach is at home off road, but me not so much. Still, I had a map, on which I'd highlighted the route I was to take. I was running less than 10ks from the City at Mt Coot-tha so not much could go wrong.
To be fair, not much did go wrong, but I second guessed myself each time there was a possible turn, and referred to my map many times. It was a slow 8.8ks all up!
I've usually avoided trail running by myself for safety reasons, but I felt completely safe today. There were lots of people around, and I even ran into a fellow triathlon technical official who was out for a walk with a group. Embarrassingly for me, I was intently studying my map, trying to figure out my next move, when he came across me. I hadn't seen anyone else with a map and felt a bit foolish for needing one.
"Where are you trying to get to," Dave asked.
"I'm headed back to Slaughter Falls," I replied.
"This path will get you straight back to Samuel Griffith Drive, a bit further up than Slaughter Falls though. There's another path off to the right, but it's a bit more rough," he offered helpfully.
I thanked him and continued on my way. When I got to the path off to the right, it was much thinner and went straight down. It wasn't quite clear from my map whether this was the way Andy had intended for me to go, but by this stage it was fairly plain to me that the nice, broad, flatter fire trail wasn't either.
I stood there for a good minute or so. I looked longingly to my left, along my preferred route. I switched my gaze to stare down the steep, narrow trail to my right. I knew in my heart that this would be the route Andy wanted me to take. So, after a little more procrastination (and a few more wistful glances to my left), I bounded off.
Not for too much longer. The last few hundred metres before popping out to civilisation was an extremely steep downhill. Again, I felt kind of silly as the people I'd run past just moments before scampered down confidently, while I placed each footstep painstakingly, one by one, to avoid faceplanting. I cursed Andy for sending me down this death trap of a hill!
Andy was redeemed when I emerged from the forest and realised I was a good 500m up the road from where I'd parked. I'd stuffed up my directions somewhere along the line but who knows where? It didn't really matter, I'd had a bit of adventure along the way.
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