Brief recap: I ran the rough windy wilds south of Prosser today. After crossing several rusty barbed wire fences, (good thing my tetanus shot is up to date!) I discovered an enormous collection of tumbleweeds, all blown into the road and blocking my way. In order to circumnavigate the prickly patch, I performed a dusty scramble up a steep bank and went rogue off-roading across an adjacent field. My anxiety about snakes served to temper my runner's high just enough to keep me grounded. Up, over, down, and around! This was such a fun, new, rocky-bumpy-hilly loop. [if this explanation seems sufficient, skip the next 1500 words and scroll down to the pictures!]
Extended edition: After attending the annual Grandview Library book sale this morning (and finding 14 books for 25 cents apiece), I dropped the kids off with Jeff at the Prosser track meet at 11am and began my long run. Long runs always require preparation, and I had mapped out several route options for my run today before settling on one. I have found that I enjoy my long runs most when I have a prepared route to follow rather than just winging it. Running around at random is really only doable for short distances. The longer runs require more planning to keep them interesting!
I'm not sure which I prefer most: a long run or the cozy relaxation that comes afterwards. Mmmm, it feels good to snuggle up on the couch with my laptop after a long run!
Fun parts of a long run:
- choosing a location (a scenic or exciting new place does WONDERS for my ability to enjoy long runs)
- mapping out a satisfying loop (a whole lot of ground can be covered during a long run, so it is exceptionally helpful to have a good loop with as little steps-retracing as possible)
- enjoying the scenery during the run (cell phone photography for the win!)
- exploring new places on foot (nothing solidifies my understanding and admiration of a place like a good long run)
- runner's high: remembering the scenery and adventure afterwards (cell phone photography for the win!)
- snuggling up, refueling, and resting after the run
Not-so-fun parts of a long run:
- starting (I feel all energetic and it's hard to hold it in and not destroy myself during the first 3 miles)
- hills (they trash my muscles and make the long miles feel longer)
- the last 4-5 miles of the run (I've come so far! But I still have over half an hour to go and I'm tired.)
- elapsed time--long runs take a LONG TIME (duh, I know, but right now my weekly long run takes 2 hours. That is a hefty chunk of time to clear)
- resuming real-life responsibilities after the exhausting long run (I usually have to switch back to mom-mode the minute I stop my watch, so my recovery time is not all about me and it is tiring!)
- sore/pounded/tired legs
My carefully planned route today began at the Art Fiker Memorial Stadium in Prosser (the location of the track meet). I zigzagged through adorable old residential Prosser until I came out on Kinney Way. I turned south and it was UP at a 6-10% grade for the next 3 miles. The grade was so steep I had to stop three times to stretch my screaming tight calf muscles briefly. Prosser and the valley unfolded behind me broader with every tiny, huffing-puffing, sweaty, hard-earned step up the steep gravel grade.
At last I reached the famed viewpoint and paused for a 3 minute photo session amidst the gaudy clunky cell phone towers. They looked like giant tympani drums strapped to tall spindly poles. Lincoln Grade is a case in point of how the journey is much better than the destination. I snuck a few good photos of the valley around the chain link and metal equipment, then turned east and continued on my way down a path less-traveled. I have run up Lincoln Grade to those fancy cell phone towers lots of times in the 8 years we've lived in this valley. On past excursions I have even gone further south down the back gravel road, but I have never gone east along the ridge line on this rough rocky reddish side road. To enter the road I stepped over a cable. This was going to be good.
The road swooped down then up, curved one way and then the other, bordered on both sides by tall frosty green sagebrush. I had to negotiate my way across at least three rusty barbed wire fences strung across the road. Good thing my tetanus shot is up to date! (the main reason my tetanus shot is up to date happens to be last summer's traumatic dog bite, but still.) Since I spent my childhood ducking through barbed wire fences to avoid opening heavy gates, I sustained not even a scratch from today's rickety rusty fences. I kept my eyes peeled for snakes because this is the time of year that the rattlers start emerging, and if I am scared of snakes, I am terrified of poisonous snakes. I thought to myself how foolhardy I was to be out in the middle of the prickly wilderness, miles from the nearest human being, without even a snake bite kit. I had my pepper spray and my cell phone, but no snake bite kit. The knowledge made me jumpy. Every hundred yards or so, a pair of birds would startle at my approach and take off in a panicked sagebrush-rattling flurry, causing me to jump nearly up to the clouds in a jolt of surprise.
Running is soothing and nature is soothing, but I am not always the most calm-and-collected human out in the wilds. Maybe I am so soothed by my rhythmic running that any sudden movement or noise startles me more due to the peace it is interrupting. Maybe I am just a wreck when I think too much about snakes. Likely it is all of the above. Luckily, I encountered zero reptiles on this run.
Around mile 6, the road forked and I had to think about the satellite image I had studied the night before to remember where to go. I took the right fork and coasted down a rocky rough dirt road, with banks rising on either side of me in dusty bluffs with farmland up on the smooth hills beyond. Rounding a bend, the road suddenly disappeared beneath a heap of tumbleweed that had clearly been blown down into this holler by our epic springtime winds. I carefully picked my way through a 20-foot stretch of crispy crunchy prickly tumbleweeds. A few feet further down the road, I was confronted with a massive swath of accumulated tumbleweeds. I could not see the end of it. I could not see the road curving away underneath it. I could see some light posts in the distance, marking the road I was aiming for. So with another dozen prayer-pleas not to have any snake problems, I went around the tumbleweeds. First I skidded down a thigh-deep ditch that was on the side of the rough tumbleweed road. Then I scrambled up the large steep dusty prickly dry grassy bank up to the smooth-looking farm field that I had admired from down below as it arched gracefully across the sky. I paused to remove sticker prickles from my socks.
Farmland is not smooth and velvety like it appears from afar. I knew this, but the knowledge vs. application gap is real. I could not even run in the stubbly crunchy bumpy rutted field furrows! So I walked, straddling a furrow with one foot on each side. My gait in the furrows bore a strong resemblance to the way I walked at 9 months pregnant. It was a straight-up waddle. I don't think the field had been planted--there was a mixture of dead-looking stubble and green grass growing in the furrows. A few long waddling minutes later, I emerged onto the smooth gravel of a well-maintained road that people actually drive cars on, and my battered twisty-trailworn ankles rejoiced. Another mile or so brought me out to a Paved Road: Highway 221, and it was smooth sailing for the last five miles.
Highway 221 swoops. It is a very swoopy road, set in the middle of rolling swooping hills. I am always surprised at how different the south side of the brown Prosser hills are. The side I ran up (the Lincoln Grade road) is brown. Prosser always has a big brown border with those hills towering behind it. But journeying to the other side of those big brown hills is like stepping through a portal into a different realm: emerald green grasses as far as the eye can see, waving in the wind and reaching up to meet the blue sky on the distant horizon. Some fields are fallow and full of grey-brown stubble (like the one I hiked through), creating a smooth patchwork pattern along the arching hillsides: grey, green, grey, green.
Ok, my feet were feeling pounded on the steep paved downhill, my ankles were tight from all of the trail tripping, and my armpits were chafing since this was my first really sweaty run in the warmth of the season. Every time a big semi truck passed me, I thought I might blow away on the air stream blowing in its wake. Highway 221 is a 2-lane road, not an interstate. It's basically a normal road with a big shoulder and a 60 mph speed limit. I used the generous shoulder as my own personal running lane and swooped my way up the row of hills, then swept my way down the other side back into Prosser. I was as cautious as possible during the 2.5 mile 6% downhill grade, because I'm in my 30's now and injuries come in unexpected ways, like from the brutal beating of a long steep downhill sprint. So I kept my feet at a moderately speedy turnover and cruised into Prosser on Paterson Road, finishing at the track parking lot that I had left 2 hours, 6 minutes/12 miles earlier.
I paused at the van to peel off my torturous t-shirt--the seams all met right under my arm and the chafing was driving me crazy after however many arm swings 12 miles creates. If arms swings roughly equate to steps (my watch counts steps), then I swung my arms 21,000 times and rubbed my poor armpits on those pesky bunchy seams 21,000 times. A quick glance around the crowded parking lot revealed one bored-looking bus driver sitting in his bus reading, but no other people. I figured he would either not notice my quick shirt swap or not care, since he was in charge of driving 60 scantily clad runners to track meets. Plus I was wearing a sports bra and that's basically like a shirt anyways these days. Lifelong modesty and past childbearing still makes midriff-exposure uncomfortable to me, so I turned my back to the bus driver and quickly ripped off my shirt and its armpit-seam problems and pulled on a spare as fast as possible. Instant relief! My armpits thanked me by ceasing their 2 hour-long complaining.
After changing, I grabbed a water bottle and walked over to the track to find my family. Parenthood calls! I took the kids to get ice cream sundaes at Burger King on the way home for our traditional track treat. I refrained from a sundae because I knew we keep much better-quality ice cream in our freezer at home, but the kids were happy to eat their Hershey's syrup-drowned soft serve while we drove the 20 minutes back home.
Prosser and the Yakima River from about halfway up Lincoln Grade.
Switchback!
Switchback in the foreground, Prosser in the background.
Running along the ridge up high, approaching the "summit," with those magical green fields sloping away on the right.
Sagebrush, sunshine, and greenery.
The anticlimactic summit of Lincoln Grade, with its tympani towers gazing imperiously down at the valley.
Valley view
Those chain link fences make good phone-holders for pictures. Also, I feel silly posing for pictures all by myself.
Heading down the rutted road.
Around the bend.
Up another hill.
Through a rusty, precarious fence.
If you know where to look, you can see the track from here--it's on the middle-right center of the picture right above those brown grassy hills. I waved at my family. When I asked the kids later if they saw me wave from the top of the hill, all I got was a trio of confused looks.
Another viewpoint about a mile from the ugly cell phone towers was adorned with a wooden cross.
Looking back at the cell phone towers.
Loving life up high in the sky.
Right in the middle of this scene is the tiny thread of Highway 221 waaay off in the distance: my goal.
Running down a rough road--photography was precarious.
UP again, towards that belle blue sky.
This fence was so pathetic, a few of the wood posts were flapping in the wind.
Another fence crossing...
...and another.
The road became a little less defined.
And then, the Great Tumbleweed Barricade, part 1.
So much tumbleweed!
The brown swath is the tumbleweed collected in between the two hills, right on top of the road I was following. It was massive!! I climbed up the steep hillside and walked in that rutted green stubbly grass on the right.
Long, straight, and smooth at last!
Entering 221, by the Horse Heaven Hills sign which is silhouetted on the sky.
One last view, from the guard rail along Highway 221.
We made it!
The End.
