The Story of Estes Road

Going on real runs, more than just a couple laps around the block or a dinky five mile loop out your front door, is cool because of the stories. I mean, it’s cool because it gets you into really good shape and you feel like a badass and win races, but the real reason it’s cool is the stories. The random crazy stuff that happens when you decide to face whatever crap mother nature throws at you and log the 12, 14, 20 or however many miles you need to get in for that particular day. There was the time I passed out and had to go to the emergency room due to severe dehydration after a 12 mile run in 120 degree weather. Or the time a few of us got crop dusted when we were out running during the summer (I thought about putting quotes around “crop dusted”, but figured it wouldn’t make any sense because we literally got crop dusted by a crop dusting plane. If Alex, Williams and I all develop the same weird rare cancer, we know what’s to blame). Those crazy unexpected adventures are among the things I miss most about being a real runner. Racing was fun, making it to nationals was amazing, but there’s something special about you and your teammates suffering through the endless miles together and experiencing the same ridiculous stuff that happens during your normal daily routine. Sometimes you can sort of see it coming. When it’s minus seven outside with the windchill and snow’s continuing to dump down, you can expect some shenanigans. Other times, it’s just an average Monday morning and you get ambushed by a couple of bloodthirsty owls completely out of the blue.

In retrospect, we should have seen this first story coming. It was a cold, snowy Sunday morning in Pullman and the wind was starting to pick up. But when we piled in the vans and drove out to where we’d be running it really didn’t look that bad outside. I was only a freshman and still had that self-conscious high school mindset where I wouldn’t wear running tights (well maybe with shorts over them... always the sign of a running noob) and I hated wearing running pants, especially on long runs where once you warmed up, they just became a nuisance. So both Chris Williams and I made the fatal mistake of stripping down to our running shorts, totally oblivious to the excruciating, mind-numbing, earth-shattering, pelvic-region-freezing pain we’d be experiencing just a few miles later.

This is the story of Estes Road.

An easy mistake to make when you’re doing an out-and-back run is not noticing the tailwind on your way out. You don’t feel the tailwind, you just notice that the pace feels a little bit easier than it should. On a cold day it also feels warmer, more comfortable. You’ll sweat more than you would normally and this all makes things even worse when you finally turn around and face the wind that carried you through the first half of the run. Add in some falling snow and an icy road and you have the situation we were facing on Estes that day.

It’s funny, I really don’t remember the first half of the run. When I think back to that day, the first memory I have is of turning around at the halfway point and feeling like a runaway semi from Ice Road Truckers slammed right into my face. Running into a 35 mile per hour headwind is miserable when the weather’s nice. But when it’s nine degrees outside and your feet have no traction, that kind of headwind is soul-crushing. It makes you wonder why the hell you’re out in the middle of nowhere on the border between Washington and Idaho wearing a pair of short shorts while snow and wind eat away at your will to live, instead of being at home sleeping off a hangover and waiting for football to start like any normal college kid. Years later, it still sounds like a dumb idea, but at least I have the story.

Williams and I reached the turnaround at roughly the same time and I think the same Ice Road Trucker that hit me just about leveled him too. We briefly considered face-planting into the ditch on the side of the road and calling it a life, but decided we still had too much to live for. We hadn’t done the Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s Challenge yet and still had several seasons of 24 to catch up on. So instead, our survival instincts kicked in and we started trading leads and hammering into the unrelenting headwind. And I mean seriously hammering. We weren’t checking our mile splits, but it’s possible we PR’d in the two mile during one stretch coming back. We blew past a couple of the guys who had been ahead of us and just kept pushing.

When you’re in shape, running hard doesn’t hurt any less, but your body sort of relishes the suffering. It’s like in the first Rocky movie, how it didn’t matter that Rocky lost. Going toe-to-toe with Apollo Creed for 15 rounds, getting the crap beaten out of him and refusing to throw in the towel, that’s what mattered. Williams and I weren’t hammering in order to beat anyone or break any records. We were hammering just because there’s something cool about surviving a beating like that.

For a while it was fun in a way. It hurt, but it hurt in a lung-burning, leg-aching way. It wasn’t until we had about two miles to go that we realized the true consequences of running into a 35mph headwind in freezing snow and wind wearing just a light pair of running shorts with nothing on underneath. Your. Penis. Freezes. Wow, was it painful. There’s no way to prove it, but I’d bet a million dollars it was worse than childbirth. I tried taking off my hat and stuffing it down there for some protection, but it was too late, the damage was done. The final ten minutes of the run was a battle between trying to keep up the pace so that we finished faster while also figuring out the most efficient way to run with one hand stuffed down your shorts. And the worst part was that there wasn’t any relief when we finally finished. You can’t just shake off something like this.

After the run, I remember sitting in the back of JD’s car next to Williams, both of us with our hands down our shorts trying to protect our junk. It hurt to have anything touch anything down there. The actual freezing of the crotchal region was one thing, but the thawing was almost just as bad. I don’t know the physics or biology behind what was happening, but think of what it’s like to be in a hot tub while it’s snowing, then running and jumping in a icy lake or pool and then back into the hot tub. How your body sort of goes through shock from the sudden change in temperature. Now imagine instead of jumping in cold water and back into warm water, you were dipping your manhood into liquid nitrogen then sticking it into a fire. That’s exactly what we were dealing with. Well that’s what it felt like anyway.

And that wasn’t even as bad as when we got home and tried taking a shower (we didn’t do that part together). I still shudder just thinking about it, it’s a miracle there was no permanent damage. After things had thawed and warmed up the pain went away relatively quickly. My guess is that childbirth might have a little more lasting discomfort than what we experienced, I’ll concede that much.

I like to keep a record of my success against various running routes. You know, how many times I’ve conquered them versus how many times they’ve gotten the better of me. For almost any given road or trail, I have an overwhelming winning record. Against Estes, I’m still 0-1. Maybe if this resolution goes well, I’ll make a pilgrimage out there this December and log my 1,380th mile on that fateful road. Probably I’ll just stay at home, sleep off a hangover and watch football though.

Mileage summary for the week:
Sunday: 5.29
Monday: 0
Tuesday: 4.28
Wednesday: 4.24
Thursday: 4.22
Friday: 4.05
Saturday: 8.2
Total: 30.27

That means I’m 53.97 miles in the red right now. Not bad for taking two weeks off. I’ve stopped the bleed and if I keep my ~30 mile per week up, I should be back on schedule in less than two months.

Go Cougs.