The Major Run That Wasn't

[image credit Gary]

Did you ever have a major run that wasn’t?  When you were all primed, prepped, and ready to go, and circumstances or fate conspired against you?

That was my yesterday.  I had planned a longish 20+ miler, using “my” trail and shelter (Reese Hollow) as a base of operations, and to be run largely on the Tuscarora Trail.

But first I had to do wound care of a family member (I volunteered so obviate the need for a home health care nurse to come in daily).  Next Mister Tristan (the 5-year-old human being, not the blog)  asked if I’d sit and snuggle him awhile. Then on the way to the trail, approaching from a different direction, I ran afoul of poor road signage (really, getting off course wasn’t my fault!) followed by a major road detour around a closed bridge that added 15 minutes to the trip.

The nail in the coffin was when I got to the trail and found the cable gate impassable.  It’s a long uphill (a mile) to where I was going to park and start my run.  As an overseer I have a key to the cable gate but so do renters who can use the Little Cove Cabin…and they locked the cable up wrong so that I could not open the gate.  Per attached image, the padlock on the right should have been through the hole on the opposite end of the short flat bar from the left padlock, not through the hole at the very end of the cable (this is actually a pretty ingenious arrangement for a gate that two separate entities access).

So I wound up spending an hour making multiple phone calls to report the situation and attempting to remedy it.

Bottom line?  I had a time window in which I needed to fit my run, and when the day unfolded as it did, the window had closed and I could not make Plan A happen.  Sure, I could have done a modified shorter run but when the planned one blew up, I was mentally done.  I threw in the towel and opted not to run at all.  Plan B was not an option--a modified run just no longer felt right, like a premonition that if I went ahead there would be some other obstacle or issue that I’d encounter, and if it occurred way up in the backcountry I could be seriously screwed.