Troubles on the Trail

6:28 AM: Wake up 2 minutes before my alarm clock goes off. Not like I was anticipating the day or anything like that. First time sleeping in a tent for quite a while, last time was on the Loyalsock Trail and I think that was last year (dental school basically brain-washed me this past year.) I slept pretty well and little tossing and turning, but overall felt pretty refreshed in the morning. I gave Nick an extra 15 minutes before I woke him up. I don’t think he has been up this early for about 3 months, so he was doing an awesome zombie impression for about 30 min. We got our running shoes on and headed out for a trail run. There was no way we weren’t doing a run since the people camping next to us had mountain bikes and a kayak. No way I’m going to be out ULTRA’d on the first day.

I checked out the trail map and found a decent ~6 mile loop for us to do. The trail map didn’t have any elevations, but I picked a trail that was called Middle Mountain. In my mind that meant it went along the middle of the mountain. I was wrong. We got lost in about the first 2 miles and added an extra 1.5 on right off the bat. No big deal. Then things started getting interesting. We hit a trail called Salt Stump Trail and it turned out to be an ascent of a mountain. Our trail run turned into a power hike at that point. I then felt a slight rumbling in my stomach. I usually get an upset stomach after doing a pretty hard run, but it usually happens AFTER the run. I’m not sure whether my body thought the run was over since we started hiking, but it was ready to get rid of dinner. At this point, the rumbling turned into a pain that was causing me to double over. I told Nick to go ahead and I would meet him at the trail junction. I could not believe I was going to take a crap in the woods in the middle of a trail run and we were about 4 miles away from any bathroom, so I didn’t have any other option. Since we were climbing a mountain there was no level ground and my legs were all ready tired from the run thus far. I must have tried out at least 5 different trees/rocks to get comfortable. No luck. At this point, it was a mind over matter battle. I got back onto the trail to meet Nick and we finally made it to the summit of the mountain AKA level ground. I told Nick, again, to go ahead and I would meet him. This time I found a nice log to perch up on and learned that I probably won’t be eating those Wraps for the rest of the trip. Now I was faced with another dilemma. Do I pull a “Joe Gallo in Zion” (use your underwear as toilet paper and then bury it) or use leaves? I couldn’t bring myself to pull a Gallo on day 1 of the trip; I just couldn’t do it. So leaves it was. Lesson learned, do not wipe your butt with leaves and then think you can continue a trail run. We got lost again, and by the time we finished our now 9.3 mile run, my ass was on fire. I felt like “Strugglin’” Steve Jumps having issues like this, but that was the reality of it.

I went to take a shower before we headed off. I was actually looking forward to using the Nivea Hair/Body wash that I bought for the trip because it had a small amount of menthol in it. Another lesson learned, menthol on a chaffed butt may be worse than putting IcyHot below the belt (a new post-Ragnar tradition). I was having a rough morning. Finally, we got out of Douthat and headed towards the Smokies for a 6 hour drive. We finished driving through the Shenandoah Valley, and made it to Tennessee. Driving past, Knoxville we saw some very impressive houses built at the top of 200 foot cliffs overlooking a lake. We then got onto some backroads and it reminded me of the rural areas of northern PA. We then came upon a huge lake that was almost more like a wide river with mountains on all sides of it. It was very cool. We then passed a couple signs for the Smokies so we knew we were close. Nick was driving this leg and this was the longest he has ever driven. I told him we didn’t have much longer to go, and then we hit perhaps the windiest road in the US. There must have been at least 60 hairpin turns where you couldn’t go any faster than 15 mph. I could tell in his face, he wanted to be done with it. After 45 minutes to cover ~15 miles we got to the campground. This one was even better than the last. We were right on the banks of the Little Tennessee River and at the base of the Fontana Dam with the Smoky Mountains in the background. And there was a “smoke on the water” giving everything an even more picturesque appearance. We set up camp, did NOT eat more Wraps, tossed the Frisbee, got rained on again, and then called it a night. ULTRA day 2/39: COMPLETE

JM