Lost in Space

I’ve had my first two group training runs with Fleet Feet Sacramento, working towards the Shamrock’n Half-Marathon on March 15. Things are going pretty well, but I’ve never been at the front of the pack in my life and I’m having an embarrassing problem:

I keep getting lost.

Oh, the trail itself is easy to follow but on both occasions I’ve completely missed the turnaround point. The first time it evidently was placed incorrectly. The second time was a stranger experience.

We were running at night along the American River trail, which is marked in spray paint each half-mile, but it’s really dark out there. We all run with flashlights or head-lamps, which barely protect you from the potholes. Anyway, the coach says she has marked the turnaround point with cones. Good enough.

So I’m tearing along, I can hardly see my feet, and I cannot see my watch at all. There are a couple of people with me, but it’s mostly like running in an isolation tank, with only a thin halo of light in front and the sound of feet slapping on the asphalt. If you’d like to experience the feeling, get on a treadmill at 7.5 mph and have someone turn off all the lights.

After a while, I stop paying attention to my running and start sweeping my flashlight from side to side, looking for cones, or half-mile markers, or anything to let me know I haven’t run all the way to Folsom. As I begin to give up hope, I hear a voice from up on the levee shout, “Hey, up here!” Sure enough, the turnaround point isn’t even on the trail, it’s above it.

I get some unscheduled hill training climbing up the levee, and spot the cones – not the giant freeway traffic cones I was expecting, but little tiny orange ice cream cone-sized cones, unlit, of course.

I’m not sure how to avoid this problem in the future, but I have one idea.