The effects of Eagle Rock Loop stayed with me through the first few days of this week. When I expend a large amount of physical energy my body feels it but so does my emotional/ mental self. I felt down, melancholic, most of the week so I tried to honor that with extra rest and quite time. My mileage for the week ticked off well until we headed over to Chicot State Park. Chicot during the summer is no joke, as I’ve explained before. A trail around a swamp during a Louisiana summer should be explanation enough though.

Justin, Edie and I start out on our loop (20 miles). Justin scampers away from the very beginning so Edie and I slowly work through the trail. From the beginning we both recognized that we were still feeling some fatigue from Eagle Rock Loop but we weren’t overly concerned at this point. We know this trail intimately and we find ourselves struggling on parts that are usually easy for us. And, this is just a few miles into our run. Uh oh.

Around this time I receive a text from the Gravish’s letting me know they are on the way to Chicot. Edie is hosting a new trail race at Chicot in December so I arranged for the Gravish’s to meet us to capture video footage with a drone and Go Pros. The plan is to make a promotional video that Edie can share with the masses to show just how beautiful the trail is and why they should register for the race. At that moment, my creative self was quivering in a dark corner somewhere not interested in exposing itself to the fatigue I was feeling.

Christina Gravish ran out from a trail head to meet up with Edie and me. I always love Christina but at this moment seeing her was just the delightful surprise I needed. She catches us up on her life happenings and her husband, Eric’s, plans for videoing for the day. A while later we find Eric on the trail with his drone ready to capture footage of us running. Excitedly, I realize, I can cut my run short at 14 miles and call it a day. I don’t usually like to reduce my mileage on a run since often times those “hard” miles have a great training effect mentally and physically but on this run I knew that wouldn’t be the case. Edie is just as elated at the proposition. We finally (after two lifetimes or maybe more) make it to the trailhead and begged Eric to take us to the ranger’s station to buy a Dr. Pepper. Amused by our desperation he obliges. This Dr. Pepper, just like my Sunkist I wrote about recently, was life changing. I felt so much better after drinking it and I’m not really a soda drinker. Lesson learned: I needed to fuel more and better (more better?).

Now that I was a brand new person Eric and I started working on videos. He had many creative ideas which made the project fun! My favorite part was the two of us trying to chase a tiny frog on the trail to get some footage of it but Mr. Frog was not responsive to our directives. Rude! We make our way to our vehicles and find that Justin completed his loop but was feeling worse than Edie and I were when he abandoned our run. He recounted his misery of hundreds of horse flies and expansive humidity. Right when Eric and I wrap up filming the sky opens up on the group and we all scatter to our cars. That day, Chicot definitely reminded us who’s boss!