Friday, August 04, 2006

A Bit of History

With my 1st participation in the Grand Tree Series, this is going to be my year maturing as a trail runner! Over the past years I’ve been casually trail running here and there, with an occasional hike every now and then! When I was younger my family and I would spend a few days camping in Baxter State Park. This was my dad’s dream vacation; my mom on the other hand wasn’t so impressed, when the words vacation and camping where used in the same sentence, there was sure to be an argument! For my brother and me those trips to Baxter Maine were magical, camping, fishing, canoeing, climbing, fires, swimming, wildlife (bears) and most prominent trekking to Mount Katahdin! Those moments are engrained into my soul and have become part of who I am today, for example my three favorite past times are trail running, fly fishing and canoeing, I even convinced my wife to buy a canoe a few years back =) Anyway what got me writing on this subject was during one of our treks to Mt. Katahdin I witnessed a guy running and this was back when trail running wasn’t popular plus he was running up Mt. Katahdin??? I wrote him off as some crazy man, but that image of him running along the misty, barren and rocky Knife Edge (the knife edge is a boulder scramble to the peak of Mt. Katahdin) was truly amazing. Maybe one day I could attempt this challenge and inspire a future trail runner! It wasn’t until I visited Grand Teton National Park, WY, when I found the true joys of trail running, but I’ll save that story for next post. With that in mind, I am looking forward to the challenges I will face over the next couple months especially the Wapack trail race on Labor Day weekend. It’s going to be a fun adventure, exploring 18 miles of pristine wilderness located both in Massachusetts and New Hampshire; I’ve never visited this part of MA/NH so I’m looking forward to expanding my MIND and this race will serve as a great test run for Pisgah!!

2 other things:

I received my registration for the Dam trail race and Pisgah 50k back in the mail; unfortunately I'm not the race director! I forgot to put stamps on the envelopes =) I this a sign from the big guy above; giving me one last chance to reconsider??? I just sent them out again…stamps and all. Thank god my head’s attached to my body!

I love New Balance! The last pair of trail runners (NB 808 AT) the heel started to peel back…not good, FYI this hasn’t happen to any other pair of NB I own! Anyway I brought them on down to a local NB store for a refund; I thought this was a long shot since I’ve been wearing them for so long and no receipt. Absolutely no questions asked they gave me full credit, for which I used to upgrade to the NB 809 trail runners! Looking forward to testing these out in Blue Hills this weekend!

Have a great weekend…keep on running!