About 10 years ago (and 15 lbs ago), I would run loops at Pate Hollow to train for ultramarathons. Today, I pulled into the parking lot with hopes of completing the 6+ mile loop for my longest run in over 3 years. What was once my “short” run, was now my long run goal.
A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend posted a message encouraging her “dog peeps” to join her in the virtual Iron Paws Stage Race, an 8-week stage race where participants run, ski, sled, and/or bike with their dogs attached to joring equipment. It was exactly what I needed, both physically and mentally.
I’d been hiking fairly regularly with the pups but was only getting out to one local trail about once or twice a week for a couple miles. The Iron Paws event helped me set goals to get out with the boys at least four times a week and now, in the Canicross division, to run a minimum of 12 miles per week.
The boys and I headed out on the long loop at Pate Hollow counterclockwise. This direction always felt harder to me, but I thought if I found myself a couple miles out and decided the full loop wasn’t in me today, that we might at least reach the lake view section of the run before turning back. I had attached my new GoPro to my chest harness in hopes of capturing some good footage, but one thing I forgot to do was silence the default beeping on the camera.
You see, in the House of Misfit Toys that I call home, my boys, Norbert and Bugg, have some quirks about them. Though they are litter mates, the two couldn’t be any more different. Norbert carries more of his father’s Cattle Dog characteristics. He is focused, driven, and takes his role as protector of the family very seriously. Bugg is much more hound-like (their mother was a Treeing Coonhound/Basset mix). He is aloof, often scared of his own shadow, but mostly happy-go-lucky. They are yin and yang.
One thing I learned soon after Bugg joined the family was that he was terrified of the notification beeps on my iPad. He would run into another room and curl up in a ball if a number of text messages came through all at once. We eventually worked through it and at most, he now looks up at me worried that the world will implode, before calming back down and relaxing.
Today, 1.5 miles into the run, I started recording on the GoPro…. However, the cold temperatures prompted it to turn off a minute later. *BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP*
Bugg immediately went into full panic and hit the brakes as Norbert dragged him along on their neckline. I slowed and stopped and reassured Bugg that the end of times was not approaching, but he refused to leave my side. After untangling the joring line several times, trying to prompt Bugg to start running again, and cursing silently in my head (*For God’s sake Bugg, WTF???!!! It is a BEEP!!!), I realized, I needed to stop pressuring him and instead listen to him and work through this trauma…. I detached their neckline and let Norbert pull the line out ahead while Bugg clung beside me as we hiked the next half mile or so. I kept talking to Bugg and encouraging him with positive words. His ears started to relax and the panic in his eyes began to wane. We started to trot, and after about a mile, I was able to hook their neckline back together and Bugg joined beside his brother for the rest of the run, both smiling.
Pate Hollow trailI’ve always found these trails and the miles I’ve spent on them to be healing. As we continued down the path, I thought about the many miles I had run here and how, in those hours, I worked through so many of life’s problems and challenges and fears. Today, as I found myself a bit older, slower, and less in shape, I started thinking about my professional life and how of late, I had been feeling the weight of the glass ceiling (that felt more like 3ft wide Plexiglas) coming down on me and hoping that maybe I’ve put some cracks in it for the next generation to break through.
And then as I looked at my boys trotting ahead of me, with their tails in sync, I realized there is still so much potential ahead, be it running miles with my dogs or something else. You just have to work through some of those fears sometimes and not get paralyzed by the negative voices in your head, or in Bugg’s case, the beeps coming from the new GoPro.
