Happy New Year to everybody.
We spent New Year’s eve in the ‘new’ house in the NC mountains, the Bargain House in Traphill, North Carolina. Well, there is a little traveled road up there. It starts in Traphill and climbs 2.5 miles to the entry of the Stone Mountain State Park. I made this stretch my mountain home special and ran up there and back for the last couple of months. The incline is steep but not dramatic. At my turning point is a quaint little white Baptist church, pretty as a picture.
And a road called Oklahoma that climbs another 2.5 miles to Roaring Gap, all the way to the Eastern Continental Divide. I had taken my car up there and the road is bloody murder, mostly switchbacks and two inclines where the next curve seems to be hanging way up there in the sky. So, the total is 5 miles from an altitude of 1,250 to 2,972 feet. I know I’m not training for these kind of challenges but the stupid road was taunting me, asking me to do the impossible. I stared at it, thought about it, measured it and knew I would do it rather sooner than later.
I prepared for my first run of 2011 by driving up to the church, hiding a large bottle of Gatorade, driving back to Traphill and putting on my stuff. It was cold and a bit foggy down there and it got colder in the higher elevations. I don’t want to bore you with the details but I ran all the way up to the Continental Divide, never stopped. Close to Roaring Gap I got out of the clouds and ran above the cloud line. Nice.
Went back and it got worse by the minute, ankles, quads, knees, all crying out to stop this pain. It never stopped, not until I was under the hot shower back in the Bargain House. Will I do it again? Yes, but only the part up the mountain, I’ll never run down that road again.