Farmington Marathon Trail Fail

By Steve

Farmington Trail Marathon Map and Stats

I'll admit it.  It's been a pretty crappy month.  I've had a real hard time getting my legs back under me since the Zion 100k, and more than physically, mentally it's been a challenge to go out and get excited about a run.  Most of that can be attributed to the fact that my car broke down, and all my race money for the rest of the year was diverted to the "I need a way to get to work." fund, leaving me frustrated at my now defunct running plan for the rest of the year. 

A couple weeks ago I had heard that some of the  Davis County Trail Runners  were going to go run a marathon-ish distance, but hadn't really put much thought into going.  I knew that if I was going to break this bad streak, I would have to go out and do a big run.  Friday night, I was trying to figure out what I could that that would shake the cobwebs, and realized that the marathon was the next morning.  So fighting against myself, I forced myself to show up. 

The group at the East Mountain Wilderness Park trailhead.  Starting out.

About 20 runners were there at the starting line, and I knew almost none of them.  I probably should have, but other than this blog, I tend to be somewhat of a social media hermit, and don't bother to get to know people unless I run side by side with them for a while.  So I brought my headphones, thinking I'd spend the day lost in my music and well... just generally getting lost.

The course started at the East Mountain Wilderness Park and headed south along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. For the most part, the group stayed together, and was awesome enough to wait at some of the junctions so that everyone would be able to know where to go.  I fell back towards the back of the pack, and when I came up into Farmington Canyon, I couldn't see anyone, so I headed up to the firebreak road instead of heading down to the parking lot for the first aid station.  At this point, I didn't see anyone for a while and just put on my headphones and figured I was now just running on my own. 

I've run all the Firebreak road/BST from Farmington Canyon to the Bountiful B many times, so I was familiar with where I was, but now that I felt I was running on my own,  I decided on a whim to take a random trail that headed up the mountain that I hadn't done before.  I knew Flag rock was around here somewhere, and maybe this was it.  Slowly trudging up the mountain, I had the following text message conversation with Sam:

Me:  "Ugh.. I suck"
Me:  "So now I'm just going to go up... Let's see where this trail goes."
Me:  "You know the idea of praying till you feel like praying?  Today I'm going to run till I feel like running."
Me:  "Dude... I found a cave!"

Patsy's Mine

Me:  "This is indeed a strange day."

Chubby Steve on Flag Rock

All of a sudden, as I'm examining what turns out to be Patsy's Mine around mile 8, the front runners of the marathon come churning up the trail past me.  So I start running with them again.   I wasn't sure how I got that far ahead, but as best I can figure it, the rest of the group must have stopped for a few minutes at the Farmington canyon trailhead and then took a wider route up to flag rock.  The group continued up to flag rock, where we took some group photos.

Group on Flag Rock

On the way back, I ran and chatted with Aaron Williams, which really helped me pull my head out of my backside.  The final section of the route back to the East Mountain Wilderness Park took a game trail approach up towards the Ed's Peak trail, and then ran down through some fresh mud.  At this point, I called it quits and jumped in my car at about 16 miles.  The rest of the group continued to finish the marathon distance by running 10 miles out and back on the Wasatch 100 course down to the Great Western Trail post.

Honestly, I'm very glad I forced myself to run.  It hurt the whole day, and the generally wet, muddy environment fit my mood quite well.  Here's to shaking off the running blues!