Yesterday at Shenandoah was fun. This day would be so so. More crappy weather was here today, in fact
it was even worse than yesterday. The
plan was to climb Old Rag, the most popular hike in the park.
I wore shorts and short sleeves for most of the run. I was slightly chilly. Toward the end, it rained a bit more and I
wore my shell. It wasn’t great
conditions, but I survived.
I started around 9 AM.
I knew this would be a light traffic day with the weather. However, I was surprised to see only two
other cars in the lot. One was a guy
with a huge pack. He hiked out shortly
before me.
I sort of knew where I was going, but I didn’t have a full
map of the area. I’d be following Old
Rag Fire Road. At least it was a fire
road and would be kind of fast. It was
wide and pretty smooth. I ran past the
guy early on. He was the last person I’d
see for miles.
Most hikers start at the bottom, not off of Skyline
Drive. Still, I was surprised to
encounter no one on the way down. It was
easy running and mostly downhill, but that was the only positive. It was boring as hell. I saw a sign a couple miles in that said 4.9
miles to the summit. I toughened it out.
These miles weren’t too bad.
Not as bad as later on would be.
There were woods around, but not much to look at. It was foggy and at times rainy. I finally saw a nice dirt path around a turn
and it was the way up to Old Rag. I
noted my elevation was around 1900 feet, so I had dropped well over 1,000 feet.
I mostly just hiked up.
There were several groups coming down.
I’m sure today was much better than most days in terms of people. It was smooth for a bit and then started to
get rocky after a shelter.
My back was feeling a bit sore. I tried to enjoy the climb, but it was
tough. I had 400 calories of Tailwind,
but probably not enough.
This climb never got hard, so as I suspected, I was taking
the easier path up. I went by several
groups of college aged or 20 somethings.
They had a few cute girls.
Finally, after about 1200 feet of gain, I arrived at the
summit. All you could see was the part
of the mountain next to you. I had hoped
maybe the fog would clear by now or we’d be above the clouds, but that was not
the case.
The summit is massive boulders and people were sitting
everywhere. One guy asked me if I ran
up. I said, “mostly just the downhills.” I stayed a bit, but with nothing to see and
6.5 miles and 1 hour and 30 minutes down, I had to get moving.
The “rock scramble” was the other way. I really wanted to try it, but the loop
seemed longer. I couldn’t risk it, as I
was going far no matter what. If it
added 1 mile that would’ve been no big deal, but 4 miles would’ve sucked. Also, I wasn’t sure how much singletrack
there would be and it could be very slow.
I turned and headed the way I came. At least I knew what was up ahead. What that was was a horrible gradual
climb. I estimated it at about 1300
feet.
At least I got to run back down Old Rag. I ran down most of it. It was rocky, but not too rocky. It was fun!
I passed several groups and one group of girls cheered me on.
Then I came to the fire road. Ugh, I thought to myself. This part was so frustrating. It was just steep enough to make running take
a lot of effort. It was so slow and I
hiked a lot of the 4.5 miles back.
I mostly just looked at the rocks ahead and pressed on. I thought of one guy talking about AT
hikes. He said, “most days are just like
any other day, some days suck, but we do it for those days that are
amazing. Yesterday was king of
amazing. Today was a wash. Old Rag was cool, but getting there and back
was terrible.
I looked at my watch over and over. I was thrilled in the final mile when I
finally could run most of it. It had a
lot of downhill and flat. I cruised on
those parts. I was so beat though. I couldn’t run any little hill.
Finally, I was back to my car. It was over 13 miles and just about 3 hours
and 30 minutes. I was wet and a bit
chilly, but glad to be done. I battled
through and got a great workout. I gained over 3000 feet.
Tomorrow, I’ll run for a third straight day. If the weather is nice, I’ll hike here on a
short route in the morning. One the way
home, I’ll try to run at Harper’s Ferry.
That is a cool historical place with some views. Maybe the weather will cooperate this time.
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