Are you ready for it?
Get lost.
Not in a rude way.
I mean go to a place you are not familiar with, get directions from someone too familiar with said place, get hand-drawn map, and be on your merry, ignorant way.
For my seventh long run, meant to be a "short" 10 miler, I chose the pristine, relaxing, bucolic Tripp Lake in Poland, ME.
R and I were headed to Poland for an annual friend reunion that we had to miss last year due to busy scholastic schedules. I figured the lake, which rumor had it was anywhere from 8-to-10 miles around, would be the perfect early morning long run to squeeze in before a weekend of doing a whole lotta nothing.
I checked in with the lady of the house to get the deets on the route and she kindly drew me a map, pointing out the dodgy third turn on the other side of the lake.
"If you miss this turn, you could just run forever," she said. She supported this warning with a spine-shivering story about a friend who set off on this very path and found herself lost for hours without crucial knowledge, such as street names, lake name or, for that matter, town name.
She gave the map and left me with these words: "Remember the plant lady."
The ache of the 7 a.m. alarm after one-too-many white wine spritzers was blissfully dulled by a lakeside stretch. With a new This American Life episode queued up in my ipod I felt ready and able to make it all the way around the lake.
I kept a hard eye out for street signs, attempting to commit their pastoral names to memory. My first turn had White Oak Hill on the left and Magguire Hill Road on the right. Turning onto Magguire I was greeted by a mother of a hill. The road and I were parallel lines. I was molasses-slow. It wasn't pretty.
But, y'know what was? The view.
At the cusp of the hill the tree line opened up and there was a spectacular picture window of the lake. It was fantastically enviable until a closer look revealed that the residents nestled along the ridge had all view and no access. They're like Rapunzel up there, baking on their grassy knoll, looking down on all the fun being had in and around that clear-blue patch of water.
I passed a cemetery, a lady running, a yard sale and, blissfully, the PLANT lady! Well, technically, no lady was to be found but there were for sale signs yards in advance. I took my next right after the plant lady, as told, and settled into what I thought was the last half of the run; confidence of a keen sense of direction brewing over.
But I still had one more turn and this, as it turned out, was the tricky one. When I came to the multi-pronged fork in the road with the infamous Egg-ceptional restaurant to my right and the mobile gas station across the road, it seemed clear that a right was the obvious choice. This right would have taken me back down the very same road we drove in on the night before so I would recognize the route and be home free. Little did I know there were TWO rights, a hard and, I guess, a soft. I opted for the soft that took me past a high school (I don't remember passing a high school on my way in), construction (I guess there was construction, right?), a Dunkin' Donuts (there definitely wasn't a DD on this road last night) and a small grouping of buildings that quietly said 'town center.' None of this rang a bell.
At some point during my first definitely-maybe-not-lost pep talk a car drove off the gravel road and into my grassy patch of running turf. It was big and clunky and there were tufts of grass jutting out of the drooping bumper in the front.
I stopped, assuming this was my time to be kidnapped.
I checked in with my muscles - Am I too tired to run away?
Probably.
I bent down and offered myself to the toothless man who wanted only directions to the Town Hall. Lost, myself, I thought it best to thank my would-be-kidnapper for not kidnapping me by sending him back the way he came to the kind people at the Dunkin' Dounts for surely they would know where they were.
Of course, half a mile down the road I passed the Poland Town Hall and found myself quickening my pace just in case toothless got, not only directions at the Dunkin' Donuts, but the motivation to, in fact, kidnap the lying, no-good runner who wasted his time.
After the hustle and bustle of the Poland town center faded in the distance and my once-bubbling directional confidence petered to a slow "glub", I noticed a sign.
White Oak Hill, it said.
A light went off in the dusty attic of my head that ignited a red bull-like energy back into my legs.
I happily turned onto White Oak Hill, imagining I had taken a wrong turn, yes, but I was mere meters away from where I started.
A mile into the roller-coaster-like dips and peaks of White Oak Hill I started to wonder.
Could there be more than one White Oak Hill in this tiny town?
On the downward slope of one of the rolling hills I found with my quickened step a level of delusional pride that allowed me to not only be convinced that I was moments away from home, but also not ask one of the kind people driving past me, at record speeds to locations filled with phones, maps and ice water, was this not the way back to Tripp Lake?
Too afraid to hear the answer, I kept my musings to myself and let one foot keep on going in front of the other.
And just when I thought that White Oak Hill would be my own personal limbo, I could see from the top of a hill the flashing yellow light, that familiar turn of the road and, could it be? Yes! Yes! The beautiful, blue-glass LAKE just beyond it.
I jogged down the hill and took a right back on Route 11 with arms raised like Rocky all the way back home.
I dove into the lake for a refreshing reward and regaled the group with stories of kidnap, adventure, and mountainous hills for hours after their kind interest waned.
Of course in the end it wasn't even 13 miles. Damn it! and it took me close to two hours. Damn it again! But I'm letting that slide since I had the fear of forever-lost in me and sometimes that makes a girl slow down and walk for a hill here and there.
Thus:
Distance: 12.45
Time: ~2:00
Overall: 8.5 (pros: FABulous views, new route that kept me on my toes, TAL (episode #385 Pro Se), route ignorance, the reward of two days off ahead / cons: getting lost, near kidnap)
I mean, how can you resist?
xoL
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