Happy Easter everyone! I spent the weekend with my family in Grove City. Before John and I left on Friday, we both did our weekly long run. My expectation was to finish off the week with two days of easy running. I could not be more wrong.
First of all I realized from the previous Saturday, the half marathon, through Friday I had run close to 75 miles. No wonder my legs were killing me! On Saturday I ran easy with my father and I was starting to feel recovered. My younger brother asked if John and I wanted to run in McConnells Mills State Park on Sunday after church before Easter dinner. Ben, my brother, wanted to do an "easy" ten miles. Dinner was scheduled for one o'clock, so we had plenty of time to drive to the park, run, drive home and shower.
My husband and my brother are both great runners. They are also competitive runners. What started out as an easy pace quickly turned into me trying my best not to get dropped. The run was very difficult with steep hills and rocky terrain. Ben and John were so engrossed in conversation and I was too busy trying not to pass out, no one was paying much attention. About five miles in Ben realized we had run too far and missed a turn. That is when the fun began.
I pride myself on having a good sense of direction. However, I had never run this particular course before. Did that stop me from thinking I knew where to go? Of course not! I told Ben and John what I thought was the correct direction to turn at a four way stop. We ran about two miles down the road when Ben decided he did not recognize the road. John did not want to turn around, so we all decided to make our own brand new loop! We kept running and made a few turns towards what we thought was the park.
We had decided not to bring our watches or phones because it was an easy day on a loop Ben knew well. If we had our phones we quickly would have been able to map a route back to the car. If we had our watches we would have realized we had been running longer than we intended. Instead we ran on attempting to find the car. Eventually we came to the river which runs through the park. We asked some fishermen which direction we should run to get to the old mill located near the parking lot. They pointed in the exact direct we had just run from. Ben said we should try to run a trail to cut off some of the road. After about a mile we realized we were not on a real trail, nor were we headed along the river. We turned around.
At this point we were getting tired and thirsty. When we returned to the river we must have looked terrible, because a fisherman asked if we needed help. We explained we were on a run and could not figure out how to get back to our car. He then went on to say the park was nearly ten miles away! I must have looked like I was going to cry because he offered to give us a ride. A bridge was out, so the man offered to take us as close to our car as possible.
Unfortunately for Ben, his truck only had two seats. I sat on John's lap and Ben held on for dear life hanging from the back of the truck. The man promised he would go "slow". Slow turned out to be pushing fifty miles per hour up and down steep hills. Luckily we made it to the bridge we Ben intack. We thanked the man profusely and he drove away. I still did not know where we were, but Ben did. We were still close to three miles from the car.
About twenty minutes later we made it! Our run had lasted close to three hours and we ran about twenty miles. So much for the easy ten miles Ben planned. My poor mother was ready to call the police to send a search party. Over an hour after dinner was supposed to start, we finally had our Easter dinner. It was certainly an Easter run I will never forget!
McConnells Mill State Park
