Jenny and Erin

We made it! We walked 21.5 miles/ 34.6 km of the Sakatah Singing Hills state trail in one day.

The adventure started out a bit rough – at 4:30 am we met, groggy, but ready for the drive to the trail. It was sprinkling and Jenny and I were both simultaneously agreeing it wouldn’t slow us down. It was halfway into our drive that Jenny realized she had forgotten her walking shoes… After reading Jenny’s post on Friday I know what you’re thinking, I may be hardcore, but I’m not that hardcore. So she turned around, drove home, and picked up two pair of shoes. I’m not sure why she got two pairs, maybe she was operating under the law of averages, from zero to two averages out to one. Regardless, by sunrise we were officially on our way.

The first 8 miles / 12.9 km of the trail were great. We saw birds – egrets, pheasants and turkeys – and flowers – columbines, salomans seal and nodding trillium – to name a few. We chatted and laughed like we were sitting over a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning. We had passed our tests - we didn’t stop because of the rain and had been calm about Jenny forgetting her shoes. Well, shit happens. It felt like nothing could stand in the way of completing this trail.

The Sakatah Singing Hills trail is a beautiful trail that meanders through farmland, state parks, nature conservancy land and small town USA. We passed a church advertising a potluck with “homemade hotdishes”, a postman delivering the mail decked from head to toe in American flag clothing (no official postal service uniform for this guy), and a few small bait and feed shops. We were having just a lovely time.

Then the next 8 miles / 12.9 km came. Our feet were starting to react to the walking, our muscles making their presence known, but in all nothing was too bad. When we started the walking challenge Jenny set the rule that we couldn’t complain, but instead could state the facts. So, this section of the trail had plenty of fact stating; “just to let you know, my calves are cramping” and “I am stating the fact that my right foot has a blister,” and as the trail continued, “I don’t think we can stop, if I sit down, I don’t know if I can get up.” There were moments when the pain would disappear and we could still enjoy the trail.

We were getting tired and a bit hungry. After some faulty estimates we agreed the trail should be pretty close to done and began planning to stop at the end for a nice dinner. We estimated that we only had about 3.0 miles / 4.8 km left. You see, we had decided not to carry a map, as the reality of how many miles we were walking was daunting. We thought that as long as we were going to walk the entire distance it would be easier to keep our spirits up by not repeatedly examining a map to measure how long we had left. We were wrong. It would have been nice to know that we had 7.0 miles / 11.3 km left, instead of the 3.0 miles / 4.8 km we both estimated. Good to remember, knowledge isn’t the enemy, ignorance is (hah, hah).

Needless to say the last 7 miles / 11.3 km were never-ending. To be honest, I don’t remember much about this portion of the trail, just the sheer determination we both had. We were tired and hurting. Jenny learned to silently “walk through the pain” as her blisters popped and reformed. I struggled with my calf muscles cramping mysteriously at random intervals. The need to share facts was no longer a distraction we could afford. The one heralding moment was when we stopped at a fast food restaurant (yep, on the trail) to get a cheeseburger. I can now say that it was one of the worst burgers I have eaten. I ate it anyways, happy for the protein and any complaining, err fact stating, would have only make it worse. And anyways, what would be the point? It still would have eaten it and then the mirage of it being tasty would have been gone.

When we finally reached the car we smiled and kicked off our shoes. Gasp – even with the liberal use of moleskin, Jenny had a blister the size of a small country. It was so big in fact that we took a picture as a reminder of why we made the next decision: the remaining 17.5 miles / 28.2 km will have to wait for another day. To push through and finish the trail on Sunday would have seriously threatened our ability to complete all of the trails. So, I guess there was a lesson learned, sometimes it’s important to push through the pain to reach your goal, but others times the real wisdom lies in knowing when when to stop, rest and regroup. And funny enough neither Jenny nor I feel we failed.

This entry was posted in Boots are Made for Walkin on Monday, May 14th, 2007 by Erin Dietrich. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.