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Last Updated: Oct 2 2010, 05:26 PM

Half the game is 90 percent mental

(Note: This is from August 1, 2005.)

Trail running's mind games have always intrigued me. Not the mind games we play with ourselves as we try to run through the pain, but the mind games we play with other people as we lure them into our strange, dark world.

I had mentioned to Phil some time ago that I'd like to see the top of Maiden Peak someday. So late last week, Phil sends me a note that says something like "You mentioned Maiden Peak…" First mind game: Phil makes me think the evil plan he's concocting is really my idea.

Phil continues with something like this: "We'll probably run 12 miles or so. Couple of hours. We can throw in Fuji if we need more." Second mind game: Phil blatantly lies about the difficulty, distance, and time.

Knowing his victim so well, Phil enhances his web of deception wiht a strategic and highly effective enticement. "We'll probably be back by noon." I should have seen through this when he suggested we leave town at six.

Playing the con to the T, Phil hops in my truck with only a couple water bottles, a few gels, and a banana. I have a medium-size cooler and an athletic bag full of clothes and various hydration systems. These would not prove to be enough. Cleverly concealed on Phil's belt is an ultraviolet water purifier. This sophisticated mind game, using technology that other people don't know exists, allows the perp to appear much less prepared than he really is.

Riding along highway 58, Phil casually mentions that Thornley has run up and down Maiden Peak two or three times in a day for training. This mind game, using other people's outlandish behavior to justify your own, is too ridiculous to be truly effective, but Phil was using every trick in the book.

And then comes the technique that Phil has elevated to an art form. We get out of the truck and get our gear on, and Phil shuffles a super-slow warm-up to the trailhead. Once in the woods, he puts me in the lead and feigns difficulty keeping up. I keep him in sight until the final ascent and then wait ten minutes a the top while he bides his time, creating the illusion that he's struggling. As if.

But in the end, even a seasoned flimflam man like Phil can be overcome by clear blue skies, crystal-clear streams and lakes, breathtaking vistas, and too-good-to-be-true trails to run. He mysteriously found the energy to run a solid pace all the way down Leap of Faith, past Maiden Lake, along the Rosaries, and back to Gold Lake. Regaining his composure, he did walk the last few hundred yards of trail in a vain attempt to keep up the ruse that he hadn't known exactly what we were getting ourselves into. After 18(?) miles and four hours, I was toast. After all these years, I continue to stand in awe of Phil--not only as a trail runner but as a master of the con. To his credit, in a conciliatory gesture, he bought blizzards and fries at the Oakridge Dairy Queen.

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OGG - What great story! I especially enjoy the wry sense of humor ("screw that", "thank you very much"). Besides being an epic day of solo adventure, you captured some of those charming voices that we quietly mutter to oursleves on a Saturday run. Way to have a Great Friday.

Ginger (Apr 13 2009, 03:37 AM)

Today was the perfect storm. A cosmic collection of circumstances, carefully calculated to coerce me to cautiously cruise a challenging course:

â¢ My office is closed today, so I donât have to work.
â¢ Pamâs office is open, so I could do whatever I wanted without feeling as if I were ignoring her.
â¢ Pam took the car, and our truck is in the shop, so my run had to start from home.
â¢ I have a significant amount of frustration to burn off because Iâve put hundreds of dollars into said truck, and itâs still not running right.
â¢ Itâs Good Friday. If Jesus went to the cross, surely I can go to the tower. (This was the first of many examples of ridiculously faulty reasoning I would entertain throughout the morning.)
â¢ Iâve wanted to run to the tower from my house and went on record saying I would someday.
â¢ The Coyotes are scattered Saturday, so I could run long today instead of tomorrow without missing a group event.
â¢ Because itâs there.
â¢ If Chaser can run steep, slow, long, and alone on Nebo, I can do it in Booth Kelly.

So in honor of Dave, I put on the green GorTex cap he gave me years ago, and I left the house at 7:45 with two water bottles (one spiked with Zipfizz) and two mini granola bars. I was so into this last-minute idea that I was down my driveway and onto Cedar Flat Road before I realized I had put on my reflector vest (the sexy little mesh number) as if I were doing my normal Friday 5:30 a.m. run in the dark. I hung it on a fence post and shuffled down the road with plenty of motivation but a significant lack of energy.

This would not be a run. It would be an all-morning adventure.

Through Kintighâs, onto road 43 and then 40â¦the clouds closed in. Maybe Iâll pop out above them? (Dream on.) I actually walked only a couple of times before topping out on Pee Hill, which made me very happy. Perhaps my slight euphoria caused my next really stupid idea.

Originally, Greehouse Road dead-ended. By staying on the main road, you actually merged onto 470 without knowing it. A few years ago, when Weyerhaeuser put in new signs, they decided to call the dead-end road 90, and Greenhouse now continues all the way to the 470/480 intersection. Once upon a time, Phil and Todd and I took the dead-end to see if it popped out on 400. It didnât, but we bushwhacked our way through.

Knowing I was in for a long day, and seeing that the newly named road 90 looked better than before, I decided to try it as a shortcut. Before long I was soaked to the skin from the firs and salal and not at all confident I was cutting off any distance, let alone time. Soon I imagined searchers finding my cold, wet, lifeless body. âI donât know what got him, but it sure wasnât dehydration.â

I eventually did pop out on 400, maybe only 20 minutes after I started the âshortcut,â and life began feeling much better. I had never run from my house past the 470/480 intersection.

I decided to keep something like a jogging motion all the way up 670 in honor of Phil, who recently commented that itâs a tough haul. (I think he was confusing it with 405.) Left on 600, right on 7200 (where I met a dump truck going the other way), left on 730. The fog/clouds were too thick to see the tower from 730, which for some reason was fine with me. I called Pam from the top (did I mention I now own a cell phone?) but had to leave a message, ate a granola bar, and started back down. It was 10:00âthe ascent had taken 2:15.

Calling this outing an all-morning adventure worked very nicely. I walked whenever I felt like it, which was kind of nice, thank you very much. By the time I reached 40, I realized I could make the round trip in four hours if I pushed a little. Screw that. Fortunately, the downhill flattens out within about three-quarters of a mile of my house, so I was able to jog in (Iâm sort of a one-gear guy), nab the reflector vest (which was still on the fence post), and finish at 11:49âfour hours and four minutes (time of day, not stopwatch). Who knows what the distance isâcould be close to 20 miles. That would put me at 40 for the week (in five days), which happened once in â08 and once in â07. My weekly average for the year is 30 on the nose.

Hope everybody has a good Easter weekend.

One Gear Guy (Apr 10 2009, 06:41 PM)

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