Planet Mud

Friday night I pinged Rob. “Did you see the weather forecast?”

He IM’d back: “I’m hardcore. I’m going anyway.”

Nina too agreed she was going. Never say I don’t respond to peer pressure: I was in too.

The weather forecast called for a 70% of thundershowers Saturday morning, which was of interest because we were scheduled to do a 16K run on Angel Island. 16K, for the metric-challenged amongst us, is 10 miles.

And, what the hey: 70% isn’t 100%, right?

(Evidently the organizers of the run got so many inquiries about any effects the weather might have, they put a big banner at the top of the page: RAIN OR SHINE!)

The bummer about the Angel Island run was that you had to be in Tiburon at 7:50 to catch the special ferry over. Which meant to be on the safe side we had to leave the South Bay at 6am, which meant getting up at… well, I decided Nina would just have to let me eat in her car and I could wake up that much later.

I was at Nina’s by 6 and we hit the road. We got to Tiburon in plenty of time. As the runners stood around, waiting for the ferry, a giant flash lighted up the sky. Heh. Guess that prediction went straight to 100%, huh? I wondered exactly how bad the rain was going to be for this run.

None of us chickened out, despite the fact that Tiburon has approximately 4 cafes for every resident in case we decided to wait. The three of us agreed that this run was the sort of experience that you don’t especially look forward to and you complain during, but afterwards you have a really great time yukking it up while discussing it.

And we were all appropriately layered: I had on my long Lycra pants (mostly to preserve against elements, because they’re not any warmer than my normal Lycra shorts), a long-sleeved running T, my running hoodie, a fleece sweater, and as a topper my General Magic rain jacket. I was prepared.

What amazed me was the number of people on the ferry who were basically in a Lt. Dangle special: a tank top with shorts and that’s about it. Were they insane? Hadn’t they read the forecast? They were going to freeze! Of course, later on I figured out why this outfit was not as crazy as it appeared, but at the beginning I couldn’t imagine how these people with zero body fat weren’t going to have hypothermia.

When we got to the island it was colder and a little rainy but nothing terrible. We put our belongings in the plastic bags the organizers had on hand and then waited for our group to start. First off were the 50Kers and 25Kers, of which there were a fair number. (These runs are getting very popular.) Then off went the 8Kers. The last bunch, the 16Kers, assembled under the square white awning that served as the starting line.

And suddenly the rain came drenching down.

You have never seen 50 strangers huddle together in such a small area before.

I may or may not have said, “Oh dear.” Running in this would be no fun at all.

After a few minutes of the downpour (during which the people at the front row of the awning kept moving to the back, in order to escape the rain being blown on them), the rain finally tapered off and the 16Kers got started.

We definitely did catch a break: the rain never showed up again, at least not with any real force. In fact, I understood why so many runners had showed up in their short clothes, despite the cold. I got hot in a hurry. Early into our first lap, I shed the sweater and the rain jacket. If I’d been going like the hammers of hell, like the high-performance runners, I’d definitely have been overheated in my get-up.

Betcha they were cold when they finished, though.

There were three 8K circles around the island: the 8Kers did one, the 16Kers did one each of two, the 25Kers did all three, the 50Kers did each one twice. You ran up a very long flight of steps — a quarter of a mile? maybe more? A distance long enough to make me think, “Aha, this is why one might wish to do bleacher runs” — followed by another quarter of a mile or so up to where the circles broke off from one another, and you followed the colored flags to the right path. Sometimes the paths were very narrow, and at some points the ground had simply broken open, as though an earthquake had shifted everything around and not put it together again. There was lots of mud and lots of very large puddles. When you finished your lap, you went back down the very long upward path to the steps, and back to the starting line. Then you turned around and did it again.

At first we did our best to avoid the mud and water, gingerly tip-toeing on the side as best we could. After a while though, we were definitely all, “Fuck this,” and we’d go straight through the center of it. We were sparkling clean, though, compared to a lot of the harder-core runners, who had mud up to their asses. These people were coated in mud. I was actually kind of envious.

When we finished we made a beeline for the food area — soup and chili! Pop-Tarts! — and Rob took out the thermos I’d given him for Christmas, especially for events like this. He had made 32 oz of Americano in the morning. Nina and I whipped out our coffee cups to share in the bounty. The warm soup and coffee helped immensely. Also: Pop-Tarts.

We took the ferry back to Tiburon and walked to Nina’s car, where Operation Keep Nina’s Nice New Prius Relatively Clean kicked in. I put the beach towel I’d brought over my seat. Then, at her trunk, I took off both my shoes and my socks (which is why the socks are stuffed into the shoes, above) and wrapped them in the plastic bag from the run. My feet were a little dirty (mud knows no boundaries) but the towel stretched to the floor.

The rain in the South Bay when we drove back was much worse than anything we’d had during the morning. “Boy, we dodged a bullet,” I said.

And we were right: despite being a very long and tiring run, it definitely was the sort of experience that it’s fun to share. The idea that a little thing like a prediction of thundershowers wasn’t enough to get us to cancel is definitely progress on the Committed (and possibly Committable) Runner front.

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Despite growing up in San Francisco, I’d never been to Angel Island before. My God, it’s beautiful. What an excellent place for a picnic and a reasonably easy hike. (None of the circles around the island were especially difficult; it was the getting to and from that were the killers for me.) Pacific Coast Trail Runs does an excellent job of finding gorgeous spots and putting on great runs. I am so totally addicted to these now.

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As one 50Ker lapped us — meaning he’d already done his first 8K and had now on his second lap caught up to us during our first 8K — Nina said, “I want to do a 50K sometime, don’t you? But there’s no way.”

To which I replied, “If six months ago you’d said I was the kind of person who’d willingly go run 10 miles in the rain and mud, I’d have thought you were nuts, so anything’s possible.”

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The absolutely positively best thing about these Pacific Coast Trail Runs — besides the obvious beauty of the locations — is the other runners. Whenever we passed by other runners, whether in a tight up-and-down squeeze on those stairs, or having a 50Ker blow past us on one path, is that there are always shouts of “Great job!” or “Looking good!” or “Go! Go!” I don’t know if runners do this during marathons, but I don’t recall any of this during a road race.

Probably during a road race everyone’s focused on doing their personal best, whereas at a trail run you’re more or less focused on finishing.

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To Rob and Nina: I couldn’t get the photos off of my phone! Evidently the phone’s Bluetooth connection doesn’t allow for file transfers or something.