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Havidonathon

December 28, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
After puttering around in the rain for 30 minutes to kill time between my first run and my second, I met up with Hannah Avidon for what proved to be a thoroughly ridiculous adventure. I figured that with her shins perpetually at risk from pounding the pavement, I'd change things up and put her ankles at risk for a change. And everything else. Once or twice, she almost got swept out to sea.

We started down the Melvin-Hazen trail off Reno Road in the pouring rain, the last portion of which we had to skirt because it was under 1-2 feet of water. We picked up the trail again after crossing Connecticut and, being extra careful on the wooden steps and wet leaves, proceeded to make our way down the valley into Rock Creek Park. I had glanced at this trail briefly during my warmup and figured it looked not completely insane for running. I therefore naively assumed the same could be said of the Soapstone Valley Trail which would take us back up to Connecticut again. I had forgotten, however, that this trail has approximately 7 creek crossings, plus an extra creek crossing formed by an aggressive tributary that may only pop into existence after 12 hours of heavy rain. When we got to the first creek crossing, I told Hannah we had three options - bushwhack along the steep muddy hillside until the trail crossed back over onto our side, ford the stream, or abort and run up Brandywine hill. She chose to ford the stream, a choice that left us about as soaked as it does to your oxen when you choose this option in Oregon Trail.

At the next creek crossing, it wasn't even safe to use the rocks intended for that purpose because they were all underwater and caused fierce eddies in the current, so we picked the spot where the water appeared most calm and hence most deep. This ice bath reached well above my knees, though to be fair the rain already had my clothes thoroughly soaked. The next crossing involved a log, but lacking Amelia Myre's balance-beam gymnastics talents, I opted to crawl across on all fours. Hannah chose and even more ungraceful (and hilarious) option of sitting on the log in a horseback-riding position and scootching herself across one butt-length at a time. One might note at this point that these frequent breaks in the run were in accordance with Anthony's training plan to minimize the impact on her shins...

At least we emerged at Audobon street, that hidden lane only accessible from a little spur off Albermarle, which presented us with the option of doing the second half of this never-ending 0.9-mile hill on a mud-free paved road with no moving bodies of water. But, being the kindly coach that I am and thinking only of Hannah and how her shins would be better off on the mud than on pavement, I gave the option of skipping the road and plunging back into the woods. After some heavy lobbying, she made the right choice... Five creek crossings later, at a point when neither of us could feel any of our toes, I decided to have us bushwhack 80m uphill, preferring to do battle with the thickets of thorns and shrubbery than another icy torrent. We emerged, somewhat maddening, on Audobon Street, about 400m above where we'd abandoned it. Luckily, the road soon turned into a trail which we followed up to Connecticut (this last section was on high ground, away from the creek). About 10 minutes later I found myself back at the Avidon residence with a somewhat amused former Harvard Model Congress chaperone/Auger Bit faculty advisor of mine gazing down from an open second-story window. I assured him that I hadn't made any of the foolish decisions I'd made when I was Hannah's age, such as trying to cross a questionably-frozen Charles River on a run during HMC, and explained that his daughter was merely wet from the downpour. I then stumbled back to the car, and when I got home managed to get the door to my parents' house open on the 5th try due to my hands being too numb to work it properly.

In other news, welcome to running-log Lauren Silberman! Arthur, did you ever of this amazing invention called audiobooks? Congratulations Julia Gunther on still being able to walk today! And to Ana, Ilana, David Bergreen, Levi, Kravitz, Zeke, and anyone else planning to run with me in the next few days, let it be known that nearly everyone I've run within the past week says it was their longest run of the season...in some cases, ever. Consider yourselves warned.