The choices were tiger mountain #1, tiger mountain #2, tiger mountain #3 or poo poo point. We went with poo poo point. I’m informed that it’s not just the place you go when you need to go but actually the sound that the steam whistles used to make back in the logging days of west tiger mountain.
We were driving to poo poo point (ppp as it will be referred to from now on) for a Saturday morning trail run. By we, I include myself and Dan. Dan is a former collegiate track athlete now structural engineer with a lovely wife that has the entire collection of “The Wheel of Time” series and a gold brown Australian shepherd (a breed that in fact did NOT originate in Australia) named Ryder who is proof in my mind that perpetual motion energy machines exist and that it likes to lick my knees.
I met Dan at an college alumni event in Seattle. We found out that we were both runners and immediately listed the races we’ve done and the places where we run. I mentioned that I recently got into trail running due to an Achilles injury and we made plans to go running together.
Fast forward to today, our destination was ppp, a 7.2 miles out and back with 1858ft of elevation gain concentrated solely in the first half of the trail.
We set forth from the parking lot, brightly colored asics running shoes crunching the bed of gravel underneath. The gravel path goes on for maybe six hundred meters before turning into the trail.
I love trail running. I don’t do a lot of it — mostly as a function of living in the city and not having a car. To run longer distances and not upset my Achilles, I’ve been making the pilgrimage to the trails on weekends and have a near cathartic moment every time my feet hit the dirt.
As we make the ascent up ppp, we are surrounded by dense undergrowth and trees in various stages of erectness. We encounter several blowouts along the trail — trees that have fallen due to either wind or rot.
As we run, we talk. Our conversations tend to center around running. This time we talked about pyramids — this is a common workout in track where runners run progressively longer and/or shorter intervals. One example of a frequent pyramid workout my coach loved to dole out consisted of a 200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, 800m, 400m, 200m with 1min rest in between. We agree that pyramids going up are the worst due to knowing that the worst is yet to come.
To this point, Dan brings up the Finish pyramid. A mutual acquaintance of ours had just published a book about the different ways different cultures run around the world. In Finland, there exist a track race that resembles our pyramid workouts. The twist is that athletes are not told about the distance they’ll be running until they are 200m from finishing the current distance.
This makes this competition highly psychological since strategies of racing these differences vary greatly. Do you risk going all out at only to find out yourself out of gas in a 1600m race or do you pace yourself at the risk of running the world’s slowest 400m? Apparently a popular strategy is to mentally prepare for a 1200m. By all accounts, the race seems terribly painful and borderline sadistic. My immediate reaction was one of glee, like a child on Christmas morning seeing a big box with his name on it under the tree.
Its strange, the way a runner’s mind works. The only thing we love more than complaining about workouts and the pure agony one experiences in the heat of a race is doing said workouts and races. The running culture is build around pushing thue human body to the edges of endurance and deriving an almost masochistic pleasure from that experience.
I’m starting to feel a little bit of pain now that we’re a good half hour into our run on a near continuous uphill trail with no end in sight. Though my feet strikes down on the trail with a force that is equivalent to twice my body weight, the trail acts as a shock absorber that grounds that force into the dirt. There is a sense of lightness within my mind as I inhale the mountain air. We are now going criss cross on a series of switchbacks which should signal that we’re near the top, or so Dan thinks. I don’t mind — I feel as if I could keep going forever.
Forever ends after two more switchbacks and we reach a flat section of trail that slowly slopes downwards. The ppp trail head is actually at a lower elevation than the peak of its ascent. We run down the other side and pass a well kept cabin lavatory. The trees clear out now on both sides and the path expands to the point where a whole cross country team could run abreast comfortably. And then in the next moment, the trees give away and we reach a bare ridge overlooking Lake Sammamish which cuts an deep blue X in the country side below.
The ridge we stand on is covered in astro turf. A large patch covers the peak where we stand with a skinny rectangular cut of turf running perpendicular out to the edge of the ridge. ppp is a popular destination for hang gliders and this is the jump off point.
I eye the runaway and follow it to the drop. I picture running down it and jumping off the edge. Flying.
We stay at the ridge for a few minutes until the wind blows and we shiver from the breeze blowing down our sweat covered backs. Its the signal to turn back. I take my eyes from the valley as we head back to the trail. As my heels dig into the trail, I savor the moment and the connection I have with the earth. And then we run.
