I have gotten off to a somewhat slow start on my Marathon Monk challenge as I had a cold for over a week and didn't dare run until it was officially gone (colds don't play well with asthma). I'm finally picking up the mileage again and have done a few incredible trail runs between 6-10 miles in the forest behind the lake I live at. So far my nearly 10 year old rottweiler mix, Mildred, has toughed out the complete mileage on these trail runs. That is one spry golden girl! My 2 1/2 year old border collie mix rounds out our little pack.
My approach to my trail runs with "the girls" has simply been to randomly take whatever trails and branches look enticing, burying ourselves deeper and deeper in the maze of heavily forested trails that blanket our ridge. It can easily take a couple of extra miles to come back out at a familiar location, but the sense of adventure is great. We have happened on some really interesting little spots; perfectly clear little ponds in the middle of a trail chest deep on the dogs, an old logging cabin completely blanketed with several inch thick moss, chunks of forest where every branch is completely draped with long strings of fluorescent green moss to the point that it looks like a movie set from an Ang Lee movie, rolling ravine floors covered with giant ferns under the forest canopy, and every once in a while we pop out to an edge of the ridge where the view opens up to the cascade mountains across the valley far below. This marathon monk challenge is certainly giving me much needed time out from the world. It is becoming very meditative, this running without paying attention to the mileage or the route...
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