Outdoor Adventure

By Jimmy Buff

The alarm buzzes at 4 am and is quickly shut off. I put my feet on the ground immediately—a practice developed during years of risings for an early morning job on the radio. Once the feet are down, flat on the cool floor, the likelihood of me falling back asleep—snooze button notwithstanding—is slim. My wife stirs next me, still asleep, I think, her slumber preserved, I hope, by my fast action on the alarm clock. Yet as I make my way across the darkened room I hear a sleepy “have a good time.” It is a Saturday morning and I don’t do morning radio anymore. It is a race morning instead, and I head towards the espresso machine in the kitchen—another vestige of my early waking years—to fire up a shot or two of the heart starter and to get the to-go cup ready for the road. I have my gear bag packed and along with the running shoes and socks and other hardware I have months of Catskills training tucked in there with the other stuff. My goal is to be out of the door by 4:30, on my way to a race two hours away. Race time is 7:30 and I figure at this time of day, with little or no traffic, I should have an hour to spare before the starter’s gun, whistle, bullhorn or shout sets me off on another trail run adventure. I make it out of the driveway at 4:42 as the eastern sky begins to lighten and I am soon moving easily down the Thruway, with a lot of space between me and the other vehicles, mostly long haul truckers. I turn the radio on and smile when the coincidence of some Grateful Dead lyrics match the sky: “Must be getting early/clocks are running late/paint by number morning sky/looks so phony.” The songwriter’s cynicism was fueled by being up all night and they next sing: “Dawn is breaking everywhere/light a candle/curse the glare,” but the sky doesn’t look phony at all, just unreal as impossible blues, reds and oranges mingle together over and through some low clouds and a pink light spills forth moving east moment-by-moment.

The pink in the morning may mean trouble later for sailors, but the forecast calls for an okay day in the interim. A cooler than normal April has slid into a cooler than usual May and the heater in the car on low takes the chill out of the early morning air. All is smooth and easy until I see the overnight road work signs as I approach the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Soon enough we are being squeezed from four lanes into two and then one. Still, with the early hour and light traffic, the flow is largely uninterrupted, albeit a bit slower around the construction (as prescribed by law and good sense). The rest of the drive is uneventful and by 7:00 am I am unpacking my gear from my bag. My wife’s sleepy words have stayed with me for the last hours and I play with them in mind as I lace up my shoes and pin on my race number. There is a duality in her words: Have a good time—enjoy myself—and Have a good time—run fast and finish high in the results. I wonder if both are possible for me on this day, on this course. The results and where I place are somewhat out of my control: I will run as best I can and will finish accordingly. The experience, on the other hand, is less statistical and involves a few different things.

For instance, have I done the work necessary to run well at this event? In years past, I have taken on adventures based on desire alone and have paid the cost physically and emotionally. It doesn’t feel good to have your butt whipped by a course on any day, and less so when you know you have nonchalanted your way into it. As a result, I have committed to training to the best of my ability for this season. I’ve pledged to eat well, put in the miles and lose the extra weight I’ve been hauling up and down Catskill Mountain trails. The results of my pledge may make me faster when it comes to a good time, but will also help me know that I have reaped what I sown, also a good time.

The race is off and I’ve been running well for almost an hour. Expectation has me hoping for a four-and-a-half hour finish and so far that seems possible. We will cover 31 miles on this particular trail and I am currently running in fourth place. I have negotiated some tricky parts of the course with aplomb, having pre-run the trail a few times this spring, and I feel good that I have done that work as well. It is not always easy to scout out a race but in this case circumstance has allowed me several opportunities to know this trail. My choice of footwear has been good today too; the trail is not too technical and the shoes I am wearing are well suited to it. A cool early start has given way to a more mild mid-morning and I am not overdressed. My head too, is in the right space and that is good because it isn’t always so. In early April I traveled a long way—to Virginia—to run a long way: 50 miles. Sadly, that day didn’t go well for a lot of the reasons this one is. I was overextended at work and home that week and raced down to the race anyway and never got caught up with myself. 18 miles into that day I was emotionally spent and while I sometimes have to wait for my legs to come around in a run, in this case it was my head I found myself waiting for. By mile 28 I had thrown in the towel, telling a friend that no, nothing was wrong with my body, I just didn’t feel like running that day. I sat for about 20 minutes until my Catskills training partner rolled up looking as bad as I felt. Together we pooled our resources and managed to finish the next 22 miles, but they weren’t fun miles.

A month later, the experience is completely different. The run is still going well though I have hit a bump in the road nutrition-wise. My plan to be mostly self-sufficient using a combination of electrolyte-replacement drink for hydration and energy gel for energy is starting to not work. My stomach is acting up and the idea of taking in more of the drink or of the gel is being rejected by my mind in no uncertain terms. For a distance like this, on terrain like this, food and hydration are key components of a good time—in both senses. Yet no matter how much I try, I can’t get the stuff down my gullet anymore and switch to Coca-Cola, in ample supply at the aid stations. Just about halfway through the day I am passed by another runner and I brace myself for more to follow. Remarkably, though, my legs still feel good and my head does too. There have been miles of running through the Catskills in preparation for this day (which is itself preparation for a more daunting run in June) and I feel the results of that good work as I continue to make my way along the trail. When I finish the run, no one else has passed me. My time goal—a good time— is off by more than a half hour but the runners in front of me have had longer than planned days too, an underestimation of the trail which is tougher than it looks on paper or on scouting expeditions. My experience, however—a good time—is still one of satisfaction and I head back home to the mountains.

June
The third weekend in June has been on my adventure calendar for over half a year. At first it was to be the Western States 100 Endurance run, but the lottery selection for that one didn’t go my way. As a fallback, I had in mind the West Highland Way, a 95-miler in Scotland that same weekend. So with that in mind, I have run and trained and planned and imagined. A number of factors have conspired to make traveling to Scotland to run a race a wee bit much for this year, so I have had to beg off the trip, with much apology to the race director who was hoping for an American to flavor his entrants list with. It is hard to let go of an idea once it seizes me and having trained with the idea of running long in June I have found a substitute, albeit a shorter one by 25 miles, in nearby Pennsylvania. I have the legs, I think, to run this one and then recover to run the Escarpment Trail Run here at home in July. Truth be told, part of the decision to not run in Scotland was inspired by a short story by Mark Helprin called “The Schreuderspitze,” which appears in his book called Ellis Island and Other Stories. In the story, a man is seized by an idea to climb a mountain called the Schreuderspitze. The drama is that he has never done any climbing and is, in fact, frightened of heights. He is not athletic, nor daring. Over long months he reads books about climbing, transforms his body with rigorous physical training, buys the right gear and completely devotes himself to idea of climbing the mountain. Just as the date for his climb approaches he dreams that he has in fact climbed the mountain and he wakes, realizing that the transformation he has so hoped for—his initial motivation was to assuage his grief over the death of his wife and young child—has already occurred and he does not have to climb the mountain at all.

As my quest to run 100 miles has reached the point where I think I could reasonably attempt the feat (though reason may not apply at all to running 100 miles), it occurs to me that, like the protagonist in “The Schreuderspitze,” perhaps I don’t need to. Having trained and trained mostly well for the better part of this year, perhaps that is enough. That thought first came to me to as I struggled to unburden myself from the mental baggage I had at the Bull Run 50-miler in Virginia, baggage that had accumulated from a tight work and home life schedule. Those schedules would be sorely put to the test by a trip across the Atlantic Ocean to run for day, not matter how romantic I thought the idea was. As a man who has on occasion fed himself and sustained on simply the idea of something, letting go of the West Highland Way didn’t come easily. What helped loosen my grip on the idea of the race was simply knowing I could, should circumstance permit me to, run the thing. Since that wasn’t the case, I continued to run, setting my sights on some closer-to-home races, satisfied with knowing that I had done the work.

Barry Hopkins
In 1977, 22 people set off for the first official running of the Escarpment Trail and Barry Hopkins was one of them. Hopkins, an artist and educator would later go on to organize races throughout the region and was an early pioneer of the strong local running community that exists locally now. Hopkins is also an artist and educator and is responsible for the Hudson River School Art Trail. The trail takes people to seven places painted by Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole. Sadly, Hopkins is gravely ill and it was with him in mind that several of his close friends organized a run along the art trail, thereby combining two of Hopkins’ passions. The run—not race—began on a chilly morning at Olana, home to Hudson River School artist Frederic Church and the first stop came after crossing the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. On the porch at Cedar Grove, home to Thomas Cole, the group of us gathered for a spectacular view of the mountains that so inspired Cole and other Hudson Valley painters and artists, including Hopkins. The next stop was Cole’s final resting place across the street in the Catskill cemetery and then it was down to the Catskill Creek for the famed vantage point of Cole’s View From the Catskill Creek.

We ran along the creek for a while after that and people who know him traded stories about Hopkins. Dick Vincent, the Escarpment Trail Run race director and local running legend, himself recalled a time when he lived in an apartment in Catskill with Hopkins as a roommate. Vincent remembered coming home one day to find all of Hopkins possessions piled high in the living room. When he asked Hopkins what was going on, the reply was a request to move in. To which Vincent answered “I think you just did.” For a while, Vincent recalled, Hopkins’ canoe was the duo’s coffee table. Joining up for the run was Drew Hopkins, Barry’s son. Drew wore a bright orange tank top with Onteora Runners Club across the chest, a vestige from his father’s early running years.

I had run 31 miles the day before and so peeled off at about the 15 mile mark of the run. The group had a lunch break in Palenville and then continued on up into Kaaterskill Clove and the great falls that lay within. Eventually the group, now whittled down to a group of eight, made their way to North and South Lake and to the site of Cole’s Lake with Dead Trees painting. It was, I am told, a running adventure worthy of Barry Hopkins.

For more information about the art trail go to www. thomascole.org/trail

The Otis Adventure
I am stronger than I have ever been. Hundreds of running miles since January has made me so and while my middle age creeps in sometimes—occasionally I feel like napping in the middle of a long run—the strength feels good and allows me to enjoy my running through the mountains more. Recently I went off on a 15 mile—or so—jaunt up towards Boulder Rock on the eastern Escarpment of the Catskill Mountains. My path this day is uphill for perhaps four miles and then it is back down again for a few and then a half dozen across the mid-section of the Escarpment. I pass hikers coming down and run past, strong. A mountain biker is laboring uphill, struggling with the incline and the loose shale on the trail and I run past, strong. I follow a trail I’ve never taken though I know it will eventually lead me home and it is then that I cross the Otis cut, almost near to the former location of the Catskill Mountain House. The Otis Elevating Railroad was a narrow gauge rail line that took travelers from the base of the mountain to its top and the landing for the Mountain House. Opened in 1892, the cable-powered Otis allowed hotel guests to skip an arduous two-hour stagecoach ride along the very trail I was headed for. Connected to Catskill and the Hudson River dayliners by the 12-mile long Catskill Mountain Railroad, the Otis made the trip much more appealing to the high-end clientele of the Mountain House. The pitch of the Otis, however, was daunting to some and standing on the old railbed looking down I could understand why: The incline rises 1600 feet in a little over a mile.

A few remains of the Otis support structure are still evident, including some stoneworks. On this day I loiter near one of these mute reminders of that bygone time, pausing in my mountain run to take in some history. Nearby, in a tangled mess of thorny vines, I spy a long rectangular piece of wood and looking closer see the dark brown flat head of a railroad track spike. I grab the iron and give a pull but to no avail; the railroad tie was older than anyone I knew, probably over 100 years old, and it holds fast, true to its purpose to the end. Nearby is a piece of old pipe, 3 or 4 feet in length with a T connection on the end. There is just enough space under the head of the spike to fit the opening from the pipe and with leverage now on my side I dislodge the spike. It fits neatly in my hand and I finish the miles of my run, grasping it as runner does a baton in a relay. By the time I reach home my hand is rust stained.