wanderunner

I’m currently in the middle of my 3rd 50-mile week in a row, and I am READY to taper. I’m dreaming about sleeping in on a Saturday and not having to do a massive 18-20 mile workout, followed by achey-ness and exhaustion the rest of the day. BUT, I know that once it’s over I’m going to miss it so much.

I also cannot believe how hungry I am. This weird lunch I had yesterday didn’t even keep me full for an hour 😀

One member of our household who is NOT eating so well is our little baby Mera. She has had tummy issues (throwing up, bloody stool, etc.) for about a week now, and it’s been a challenge to get her to eat/drink anything.

She has NOT, however, had any aversion to chewing on her new dental bone:

Even though I’m technically getting outside every day, I am terribly missing The Outdoors. Last summer in Montana with Jason was some of the best times of my life. We did so many hikes, explored a new part of the country, and camped every weekend. In order to combat my nostalgia, I thought I would reminisce about our experience. In particular, something that we didn’t tell many people about (especially our parents), which was that we ran out of WATER.

Jason and I were on a 16 mile hike (that had a Hard difficulty rating on AllTrails, no less- iykyk), that kicked us in the butt. It wasn’t a simple out-and-back, ascent-then-descent kind of hike, it was a loopdy loop, up and down, through the snow, then crawling on all fours until you got to the top of a mountain where you could see an epic view of some partially frozen lakes:

That final climb got us pretty good. I don’t remember the exact elevation gain but the last mile to the summit was quite an upward climb. Jason is the most resilient person I know- once he starts something, he will NEVER give up unless he is forced to. I was feeling it but I definitely had some more in me, though Jason was not on the same page. He told me “I don’t think I can do it,” and I took our backpack from him and tried to encourage him to keep going.

After some sitting breaks, water breaks, and bargaining with ourselves, we finally made it to the top. We took lots of pictures (probably to stall ourselves before having to head back down again), and ate some lunch. Finally the cold air of the summit propelled us to get back in the sun on the trails and to make our way back to the trailhead. About 3/4 of the way through the hike, however, we realized (a little too late) that we were running dangerously low on water. We were shocked that we drank through the almost two gallons of water we brought with us, and found it kind of comical that we made what seems like such an amateur mistake.

I don’t know if this is when the dehydrated delirium set in, but for some reason I asked Jason to take a picture of me like this:

LOL. We sat on the side of the mountain cracking up at this photo for like, two minutes. We were not doing well.

Luckily, I convinced Jason that we could drink pond water.

He was hesitant at first because of his fear of water-borne illnesses (I call him Mr. Food Safety because of all his precautionary hangups), but once we found a sizable stream he said it was okay. Apparently flowing water with a strong current is cleaner than if you were to just drink water from a still source. The more you know 😉 I may have been biased because of the dehydration, but it was the most delicious water I had ever tasted. I told Jason I would only be drinking pond water from now on.

Anyway, we made it back, we survived (barely), and six months after this perilous experience I find myself wanting to do it again.