On the last day in February we embarked on a trail hike/run that made us think we were invincible. On the first day of March, I woke up and realized I am not. Oh Lord I am sore. You must be wondering, well what did you do? A Massive.
I came across this thing called Move Across 2 Ranges which offered 4 variances of hikes. Mighty--which was a cute 5 miles in a single day on both ranges--they wore orange bands (look at me, I am a hiker with an orange band). Major--10 miles in a single day on both ranges--they wore blue bands (good day for a strong hike). Mega--15 miles in a single day--they wore green bands (go for it, what is stopping you). Massive--21.5 miles in a single day--they wore red bands (danger, you should go for orange instead). For each group you wear a sticker identifying what group you were in. We put ours on our hats. Initially, I said we should do the Massive. Kevin was supposed to work the night before and had concerns on lack of sleep and said, no we should do the Mega and signed us up for that. He ended up not working and I knew we would do the Massive. We discussed it and said, we would just see how we felt after the 15 then go from there. That was the plan. You all know about plans. Here is a pic of the sticker on our hats. The only two goof balls who wore them this way.
Where we were hiking/running was first in the Tortolita Mountain Range with an out and back on the Wild Burro trails, to the Upper Javelina trail and then the Wild Mustang . I have been on these trails before and I know them well enough that they are rocky and hilly. It would total out to be 9.5 miles. Here is a picture of the map for reference.
The second was a short drive away to the Catalina Mountain Range with the first loop going from the trail head to Romero Pools out and back for 5.5 miles, which I have hiked with my friend Priscilla and I remember as being rocky and hilly, if we chose to go the second loop for the Massive it would be on the Sutherland trail for an out and back total of 6.5 miles, which I had not been on previously. Here is the map for reference. Pink is the Romero trails and Orange is the Sutherland.
Here is the thing about being on these before, you forget how rocky and hilly and primarily remember the beauty of the hikes, which is a cruel trick your brain does.
When we woke up in the morning we both realized that in the night we had come down with a cold. Our throats were sore, noses funny, a dang cold. Additionally, I had my womanly visitor, so it was going to be a long day. But, we committed to doing this and it was going to happen. In fact that evening prior we had some Chinese food and I got this fortune cookie note that seemed appropriate to our mission.
We got our packs all set up with our refueling and snacks which included, munchies--which is a dorito/cheetoe/pretzels/sun chip snack mix, gummy bears, nutter butters, un-crustables peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, including peanut butter and honey ones, Huma gels, belvita breakfast cookie bites, Hammer electrolyte tablets, Motrin and Excedrin. We had Gatorade, chocolate milk and water in a cooler in the truck for between the ranges and afterwards. For these adventures there is a lot of logistics involved, we are getting better at it all the time. I had big band aids for my neck when the pack rubs my neck and I had extras on board just in case. We had sunscreen, chapstick, toilet tissue, wet wipes, Biofreeze and lube on board too. I think we were pretty prepared. Btw, these are awesome and worth having if you are into these endurance things.
So off we set, I thinking 22 miles and Kevin thinking 15 miles. I wanted to round it out to 22 for a remembrance for 22kill which is an awareness for soldiers with PTSD taking their own lives in suicide. This week someone else took their life. It is becoming the #1 cause of death in the military.
It started out in sand. Uphill going in sand before it turned to uphill in rocks. No big deal. We said we would run when we could and climb as hard as we could when we had to. It became evident pretty quickly there would be a lot of climbing. It also became evident I was sucking at it. I got a cramp in my hip and lower back area that didn't seem to want to let up. My plantar jerk foot was killing me too. I started thinking maybe 15 is a good idea. Then we got to a point where we could run a little and that is what my body needed and the cramp went away and my foot hurt less. Oh...and Kevin had made me eat. I started thinking 22 is a good idea. Kevin got some photos along the way. It was so nice with all the greenery around with all the rain we have had lately. I forgot to work on my poses until after the first photo....
In the background of this photo is the resort where we escape to for our Adult stay cation, more importantly it is where Kevin asked for my hand in marriage. We love the trails here and it is a special treat to look down and have the memories of us there. In this photo I had just finished eating and we were finally able to cover a little ground with running. Sorry for the same old pose....
I really am running. My knees were not happy with the running downhill and my feet kept sliding off the sides of my shoes. Time for new shoes.
It is so green right now, it is awesome.
This is the trail we were on. Been on this mustang a few times. She bucks me off all the time. Oh and it is Rodeo Weekend here in Tucson, hence the rodeo reference.
Then what is that we see up ahead, the turn around point. No more going up and we get to run down coming back. We really thought it was cool that there was this big white flag flying, Kevin called it the surrender flag. It felt very Amazing Race like when we got to it. The fella there was pretty nice. We were going to just take a picture of it and he offered to take a picture of us with it.
It was pretty breezy up there, maybe not all arctic circle like how Santa is dressed for.
We got this sticker for the booklet, it will go on our tri-bucket
Then we were off to run downhill. I had to deal with a restroom situation though. Problem was that I really didn't have a lot of cover and I was all in red, like a target. But, business is business and it needs to be dealt with. So there Kevin is just chilling by a rock while his wife is "hiding" in bushes, very short bushes. Back out on the trail, glorious downhill. We were cruising along and the craziest thing happened. We saw the 7 mile sign and we both thought how crazy it was that it felt like only 3 miles and how did that happen that 7 miles just flew by in a flash?
Since Kevin was hanging out waiting for me he had an opportunity to take some pics of other people reaching the flag too.
Kevin and I developed names for people on the trail and this fella became pony tail guy. We had another guy who was in blue and we named him Blue Gazelle and we were lions and lionesses going in for the kill to pass them. It was really silly but it worked to keep us motivated. We later ran into Blue Gazelle and told him of our naming. He didn't think it was as funny as we did, his wife thought it was hilarious even though she didn't do the hike. We also told pony tail guy our name too, he smiled at it.
These were the nicely made signs we followed for our route in Marana.
New Pose alert. I was giggling the whole time.
Quick while I push this rock out of our way.
We reached the end of our first part, we took down two elderly gazelles prior to the sign....
So with a quick toilet break and into the truck we left to go to the other range refueling with choc milk, munchies and peanut butter and honey sandwich, those uncrustable things. Wait one minute. The PB and Jelly ones are yummy, the ones with honey is barf in a package. It was awful. I flung it out of the window asap. Kevin said they were awful but he is really picky so I thought it would be okay. I was wrong. Very wrong. You were right Kevin....sigh. So I ate the munchies and drank the milk and we got to the entrance of the park. We sat in line forever. It was really feeling like the Amazing Race there. The thing we were worried about most was sitting in the truck and cramping up. It took us 15 min driving and we had to wait for 10 min in line to get into the park. That is a lot of sitting time.
So we arrived and went to the check in point and Kevin said, we are upgrading to the Massive to the girls sitting there. Yep. He made the call and it was done. No waiting for how we feel after 15 miles. Off we went. No refueling would happen after this, it is all in the packs hands. The hike to the Romero pools is a tough one too. Lots of climbing running of about 10 feet and then climb, not a lot of running. But as we were going along I said that the climbing is really good for us, works those quads and hamstrings and the strengthening for the calves and ankles is so important. Our legs were stiff and heavy from the sitting as expected...
First we had to deal with stream crossings, which isn't too bad. We have to take pictures of water, in the desert we don't see this too often. By the way, I almost fell in trying to pose.
Oro Valley Parks and Rec just used plastic ribbons, no pretty signs. Marana Parks and Rec had nice signs.
You can't beat the views. I absolutely love trail running. Love it with all my soul.
Folks, off to your left you will see Romero Pool, your destination awaits....along the way Kevin was listening to his music and the song Uptown Funk was playing and we changed the lyrics from Uptown going to funk you up to, Uphills going to f*** you up!!
Romero Pools is a nice little retreat, but we were on a mission, no time to relax
Destination reached. Kevin wanted me to add that we were there too long because I was talking to the Summit Hut guy about my shoes. He gave me a look that I felt through his glasses, so I stopped chatting and we got a stamp in the book for making it here. Just a stamp. It says a road on this, there was no road that I was aware of, just rocks and climbing. A lot of rocks...I bruised my leg on a rock that I stepped over but not high enough and hit my shin on the rock. Damn rock!!
So off we went uphill to get to go downhill ever so carefully.
Hold on, my glasses are dirty and my ipod was stuck on playing only country, took me a long time to figure that out of course.
This girl was talking away and nearly ran into me.
Oh look more rocks and hills. I got mad at one point and smacked at these ribbons on the trail.
I was thinking about how in training you reach highs and lows and challenges abound. We may not have been able to run a lot going back down this portion, but how blessed are we to be in this beauty.
There is a pretty waterfall down there. I was trying to move Kevin along and he stopped me to see it, smell the waterfall as he said. There was a couple trying to pass by and they got mad at us. They missed a pretty waterfall.
I know it appears a blind woman is walking behind me with a stick and looking graceful....I was just trying to be careful. I wish I was more agile and trusting of my footing and that my knee would hold me. We really should sell this to the walking stick people, those things run for 130 bucks, for sticks. Maybe I would look more graceful. This could also be an advertisement for Cable guy Rob Lowe and Direct TV Rob Lowe if you have seen those commercials. Google it if not.
Go stand under that tree for a photo. I almost hung from it but was worried I would break it.
I gladly took a break for this one. See how hard that is to run down off to the right?
We got to a point where we needed to go to the right to start the third loop of our day. Affectionately known as the Massive Mistake. Kevin was listening to Journey and Don't stop believing was playing and he changed it to, Don't stop believing this is a Massive Mistake. However, this is my favorite picture of the day I think. It captures how diverse and challenging our day was. We had rocks, nice paths, retaining wall stairs, a ton of them and amazing scenery with all parts of the desert presented to us. This path started the last loop and the longest out and back known to mankind.
Up. We asked a guy along the way how far out is the turn around. My watch died, no idea how far. Everyone we asked we got various answers. We heard at the start only a mile and half out. Then after we walked plenty, a guy said, oh it is only about a mile or so to go. Another said, half mile. Another said 500 feet past the water pools. That one was the most accurate. It just seemed we wouldn't ever get there. It was just a continuous uphill climb on good trail, but just uphill on some really tired legs.
Then finally UP ahead at the top of another hill we saw the glorious white flag flying. The turn around point!!! All this way for this sticker. Silly really.
We went past this to get to the turn around area and we thought this would have been a better turn around point, but what can you do. We did a refuel and check on the water and made our way along to the downhill that waited for us.
We were passing people who were coming up the path to the turn around point and we just tried to encourage them with 500 ft from the pools. We did run past three regular hikers and then it happened. In nice soft ground I tripped over a stupid rock and flew on the ground like sliding into home plate for the win. I was so embarrassed. I had a bag of gummy bears in my hand and it flew out of my hands and I asked Kevin if they were okay? Really. I then rolled off of the path so the 3 hikers we just passed could get by. They asked if I was okay and I was, just embarrassed. Oh and Kevin asked if I could lay back down on the ground with my hands up in the air for a photo. Umm no.
This is kind of gross, but that white stuff on my pant leg is skin.
One of my friends commented that it looked like a heart.
Shortly after the fall on the sand, Kevin told me that he signed us up for a 100K bike ride the next day. I told him if I wasn't as graceful as an oiled fish I would turn and glare at him. He of course was fibbing.
Naturally we saw this sign when we were done!!! Kevin jokingly said he got an email in the morning that Oro Valley said there were mountain lion spotting in the area so we couldn't do it.
This is us, done with another major event.
But, what about how it almost became 26? When we made the turn around from the last check point I was a little delirious and high on running downhill. No good decisions come from running downhill. We had discussed earlier that maybe we should have a stimulus that electrifies us when we make a decision to do a crazy Massive event. However later into the day I was feeling all giddy and happy with food and electrolytes and downhill and I said, "you know, 4 miles more and it is a marathon". He said, no then awhile later he said maybe. We will have to see about the time. As we carried our tired legs on. 4 more miles really seemed like 16 hours longer. We let it go. It did nearly happen. Had it not been on such intense climbs and descents I think we could have done it for sure. Something we thought about was that there is a quote we came across during training for our first marathon and it was, I may not wake up every day being able to do a marathon but I can wake up knowing I have done one. So we didn't do one on this day, but we achieved something we never tried before!!
In the end, we did very well. We finished the longest distance without intending to. We finished ahead of more people then we have ever done before, at an after party thing someone said, wow you are fast. Don't know that we have heard that before. When we did our check in at the end, we found out there were 40 people still out there who hadn't finished yet. It took us 7 hours, our elevation gain was 3,585 ft, burned 4,000 calories. Looking at those numbers for the 50 miler on much easier terrain, we will be just fine!! Each effort we gain momentum for the future. We plan on doing a lot of training on Mt Lemmon as the weather heats up. Experiencing the beauty of the place we live in on foot and taking silly pictures along the way with each other is the best way to spend my weekends. The laundry piles up, dog fur collects in corners, grocery shopping is not as regimented, our house isn't as organized and presentable, but we are living life to the fullest. I came across this line in a book that sums up our journey.
"To achieve all that is possible, you must attempt the impossible. To be all you can be, you must dream big. Don't let anyone scoff at your dreams. Your dream is the promise of all you can become."
This is our dream and journey...until the next run....
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