I wear many hats; waitress, student, mom, girlfriend, runner trail runner. Between delivering omelets, studying on the psychological effects of steroids in baseball, laundry, soccer practice, softball games and my new found love of yoga, I don’t have much time to do the latter on my list of hats, one of my most favorite things, trail run.
Don’t get me wrong. I can squeeze in a 3 mile run around the neighborhood, or most recently I took advantage of the track at my son’s baseball practice. These runs are all fine, they will work. They are not what I love though. In fact I don’t desire them. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. And on this particular day, I did what I wanted to do.
I set aside most of my morning for myself, my dog Rosco, and the trails. Rosco knows when and where we’re going by watching to see what I’m changing into for the day, and what shoes I’m putting on, and he was beyond ecstatic.
Rosco and I made our way to the hills. We ran on the same trail that we have run numerous times before. We could run the same trail every day but it would never feel like the same run. The trails offer so much diversity and so much life that no two walks, hikes, or runs would ever be the same. This is one of the reasons I love to go. There is so much to see and hear and learn from the land, it really is a place to appreciate life.
I decided just a bit into the run that I wasn’t going to let time restrictions change my desire to run far. My life is driven by places I have to be at and things that I have to do, and I wasn’t going to let time take away my run today. I knew Rosco would appreciate our time together as well.
So off we went to explore.
The weather was very cool and there were not many people on the trail.
Whenever Rosco and I get out to a place like this, I believe he loves the run for different reasons. 1. He is a dog, and dogs like to be outside, 2. He knows he is doing his job of protecting me, 3. He loves to run, 4. He thinks he is hunting. Today we saw no animals on the trail which brings me back to the fact that every day out on the trail is different.
A couple days ago we had a pretty hard “rain storm” in So. Cal and apparantly this trail has seen better days. The signs placed out do not deter me as an adventurer, instead they only strike my curiosity.
The trail was muddy still from the rain, and trees were broken and knocked down, but that was about all. Rosco enjoyed running through the mud.
Then we started our climb.
It still amazes me that my own two feet take me to see things that most people will never see in their entire life. The places I go are not accessable by car. They require hard work and perserverance. This is why I do it. The rewards are amazing.
Rosco loves it too
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