Trail 8
When Michael and Brandon decided they wanted to take Trail 8 up and over the tops of the three largest dunes in the state park, my first reaction was "hell no."
"But Haley," my newfound calves of steel said. "We've done all that running. Don't you feel you can handle things like this now?"
"I could do it, Calves of Steel, but would it be fun? It sounds like it would suck."
"But the views!"
"But the exertion headaches."
"The sense of accomplishment!"
"The sense that you just want to die where you stand."
"The fresh air!"
"The red hot oven face."
"Don't you want to feel you've stretched the limits of your body and achieved athletic greatness?"
"No."
Somehow I ended up doing it anyway. I think I didn't want to 1) miss out 2) look like a wimp. And the truth is, I did handle it much, much better than I would have two years ago. It was hard, but it was also totally doable. I guess that's a vote in favor of losing a bunch of weight and getting more active, as lame as it is compared to eating cookies.
But really, aside from the first two climbs, which were so high you couldn't see the top of the sand dune from the bottom, it was fun. Here's the secret to climbing a sand dune: keep your head down, don't look at how far you still have to go, and walk directly in the footsteps of the person in front of you. That greatly minimizes the sand movement and also the suicidal impulses.
Here's Michael at the top of the first dune, a mere 184 ft high.
"But Haley," my newfound calves of steel said. "We've done all that running. Don't you feel you can handle things like this now?"
"I could do it, Calves of Steel, but would it be fun? It sounds like it would suck."
"But the views!"
"But the exertion headaches."
"The sense of accomplishment!"
"The sense that you just want to die where you stand."
"The fresh air!"
"The red hot oven face."
"Don't you want to feel you've stretched the limits of your body and achieved athletic greatness?"
"No."
Somehow I ended up doing it anyway. I think I didn't want to 1) miss out 2) look like a wimp. And the truth is, I did handle it much, much better than I would have two years ago. It was hard, but it was also totally doable. I guess that's a vote in favor of losing a bunch of weight and getting more active, as lame as it is compared to eating cookies.
But really, aside from the first two climbs, which were so high you couldn't see the top of the sand dune from the bottom, it was fun. Here's the secret to climbing a sand dune: keep your head down, don't look at how far you still have to go, and walk directly in the footsteps of the person in front of you. That greatly minimizes the sand movement and also the suicidal impulses.
Here's Michael at the top of the first dune, a mere 184 ft high.
And here's the last dune, which was the easiest of them all. I never thought I'd be so happy to climb 105 stairs -- it's way better than trying to climb sand.
The good part of climbing each dune was that then you got to go down the other side, which was pretty fun. The last one involved a long slope down to the beach, where we then walked a couple miles to get back to the forest and marsh.
I again do not have a good way to end this post. I need to work on my closers.