Wildwood Trail
Yesterday, Janet and I embarked on the Wildwood Trail in Forest Park. The trail is 30.25 miles and frankly I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
We planned to leave the apartment at 7:00am, in true fashion, we left around 7:20, dropped Janet's car off at the end point, and got to to the starting point in Washington park (right behind the Zoo) and officially started the trail at 8:26am. I packed two gator aids, two water bottles, a bag of green beans (blanched), strawberries, blueberries, grapes, a ham sandwich with some extra cheese, trail mix, a bag of teriyaki jerky, a bunch of dove chocolates both milk and dark, and a banana. I do regret not weighing the thing before we started, it was not light.
We managed to get a little lost finding the official trail head and also went up one unnecessary uphill trail when I was letting Janet read the maps (that stopped immediately after). The moment I realized she had no idea how to read a map was when we were at a fork and she opened the map on her phone, and said "yep that way" (indicating the opposite of the way I thought we should go) and then said "wait where are we on the map" and proceeded to scroll on the map until she found the blue dot indicating us, which was previously not on the screen. Anyway, needless to say I read the map from that point forward.
At the beginning, Janet told me the hike was 26 miles, I think a day or two before the trip she said it was 29.1. Neither of these ended up to be true. Here are some pretty photos of Janet and the forest before the reality of 30 miles comes crashing down.
Here is a brief summary of what ensued:
Miles 1-5: just a regular old hike except we had heavy backpacks on and wow do backpacks actually make a big difference in the hiking experience. Que my traps reminding me not so pleasantly that they exist. I also spent most of this part of the trail snacking on fruit as I didn't eat breakfast
Miles 6-9: we're like actually never going to make it are we? I have no clue what time it was but I feel like the time between 8:30 and 12:00 took forever
Miles 10-16: mostly fine, honestly not that exciting, but we made it half way!
Mile 17: weirdly fast mile, went really fast
Miles 17-24: my knees hurt SO bad during these miles I had a weird hobble and I have no idea what was happening, I could barely bend them and then around 23-24 they just were fine again
Mile 20: I think this is where our feet started hurting REALLY bad like wow, from here on our was just pain and torture, from here on out it was just will power
Mile 22: really weirdly slow mile, like when we got to mile maker 23 we were both shocked at how long it had taken
Miles 23: this is about where Janet started wanting to cry
Mile 24: I was just angry during this mile, I was just fighting imaginary and past fights in my head this entire mile and more or less seething
Mile 25: this is where we learned the trail was actually 30+ miles. I think that from about 25 forward it was sheer will power and mind over matter, it was an emotionally draining activity just to put one foot in front of the other and push myself forward. I mean like this was just pain. My feet hurt, my knees were eh, my legs were stiff and tired, my hips were not super agile...
Mile 26: weirdly calm mile for me. I think it was on mile 26 that I laughed at the idea of both Janet and I make it to the car crying and some passer-byer being really confused by the two girls walking out of the woods in tears
Mile 27: I seriously considered just straight up giving up around here
Mile 28: Janet started ditching me in earnest around here, I barely saw her, she walks so fast
Mile 29: I actually cried when I saw the sign for mile 29
Mile 29.5 to the end, I think I started chanting in my head at some point, Janet was no where to be found, I stopped looking for mile markers. This was just getting there.
The end: the happiest I've ever been to see Janet's car. We both sat in the car just eating for about 10 minutes when we got there
At some point we stopped for lunch and we ate sandwiches. Lunch was 15 minutes and when we got up my GOD my feet hurt so bad I was considering quitting. We both had really funny limps after lunch but that pain went away rather quickly once our feet adjusted again to walking.
Every quarter mile on the hike had a sign shown with blue diamonds on the trees. Every mile was a success and some how every first 1/4 of each mile took longer than any other quarter.
Janet and I started making a habit of resting on the signs we crossed like the one below. There was enough room for me to put both hands on the sign and lean over and for her to more or less completely cross her arms on the thing and put her head down. We also started stretching about every mile towards the end.
Also towards the end, since this trail has so many trail head access points, we'd pass people just strolling, just on a few mile hike with their friends or family, looking normal, happy, unhaggarded, and clearly without 20+ miles under their belt. The closer to the end we got the more we looked like zombies or like we'd "seen some things". Head down, hands on bag straps, looking dead ahead. We were a somber crowd to pass. I think we probably looked dead in our eyes, every step carefully placed, we also were going way slower.... Mud. Everywhere.
We did make it though, and in the end I don't think I've ever in my entire life been so happy to see a car before. When Janet dropped me off at my car and I walked over from her car to my car, I almost fell, that's how bad it was to try to stand up after sitting down for 20 minutes on the drive over. I was kind enough to drop Janet off at the front door when we drove home (her parking spot is far away) and I kid you not the walk from my carport to the front door was a full blown uphill battle, hobbling and limping with a fierce determination to the front door.
I fell asleep at 9:15pm and woke up at 7:15am without issue.
Janet had three large weirdly located blisters. I had a really large one on the back left of my left heal, a large one on my right pinky toe, and a tiny one on the front right of my left big toe. I popped the one on my heal and pinky toe with a needle. I'm serious though the one on my heal was like a teaspoon size, it was so big it was translucent like a freaky fish egg or something and you could like partially see through it. Today Janet and I are still both limping... Also my core stabilizers are surprisingly sore as well.
All in all, there are very little bragging rights to this tale but I'm still glad that we did it. I think the first 20 miles we hit about a 20 minute mile average, I'd say 21-26 we were about 25 minutes per mile, and I really can't speak for 26-30 that's really hard to say but probably still less than 30. We were on the trail in total from 8:26am and I made it to the car at 8:08pm, Janet a little bit faster than that.
All in all, this might have been the most physically and mentally difficult thing I've ever done in my entire life. The last several miles were sheer will power and anguish. The worst part was that the sun was partly hidden in clouds all day and Forest Park's trees and foliage all look the same and the entire trail weaves in and out of horizontal switch backs through the mountains so you always have a hill to your left and a beautiful but continuous valley to your right, we were in some sort of green, lush, timeless, twilight zone. For 12 hours I swear to god we just were walking the same mile over and over and over... I don't really know the point of this blog post anymore other than for me to relieve myself of the emotional trauma that was yesterday.
Thanks for making it this far.
In other news, I'm going to try to catch up on the last 2 years and be more active about the fun things I hope to do this summer. Welcome back