Quadrennial Quagmire, with a twist...

This morning I got up early to run four Rock Repeats, for the Quadrennial Quagmire event.

The Quadrennial Quagmire was born in 1992, when I lived in downtown Fort Collins in my graduate student days. I got my friends Wally, Dennis (not my husband,this was another Dennis), and Rembo, to join me. At the the time, it was a training run for my first 50 mile ultra. The original Q.Q. was named because it was a leap year, at the end of February, and that is the time of year when it is starting to be mud season in Colorado.

This year, after sitting on my ass for the past 18 months, I decided it would be prudent to pry myself out of the butt vortex in time to do a little birthday run. I wasn't expecting to run my age in miles, or even in kilometers, but I did need a challenge. I was looking at the calendar and realized it was leap year. Perfect time to revive the old Quagmire. Except this year more than anything I need to be doing hills to rebuild my strength so I can enjoy the mountains and trails this summer.

I announced to my running friends that I would be holding the esteemed event on February 27th, seemed like a good day. Just four Rock Repeats, 17.2 miles, 4400 feet of climb, and the same of descent. Parking lot aid station every 4 miles. Easy. Yes, it would be a quad bashing, but that was the point. Half a day of running, then time to relax afterward. No takers. I can't even imagine why!?

Then my friend Elise, with whom I used to work in the ICU, wrote to tell me she wanted to run 35 miles the weekend of her 35th birthday, since she's training for ultras now. Her birthday was February 27th. She wanted to do trails and dirt as much as possible. Perfect timing. I invited her to join me on as many Rock Repeats as she wanted to do. The plan was hatched.

We lucked out with the weather. It was supposed to be 70 degrees and sunny, with a front moving in later in the day with some wind. Elise ran 20 miles the day before so she only had to get another 15 in. She ran 3 miles with her dog in the morning, so she was down to 12 miles needed for her goal by the time we met at the trailhead. We waited for another friend to show up, she was running late, so we decided to get going and text her to meet up later. Throughout the day we ran into different people on the trail or at the trailhead who came out to wish Elise a happy birthday.

First summit was uneventful, but it was warming up quickly. Second summit was also uneventful, but I changed into shorts back at the car. Quads were doing okay. The trail was dry in some places, snowpacked in others, and a total quagmire in a few spots. It did not disappoint.

Third summit was Elise's last, she got her 12 miles plus some. My quads were feeling it, but I knew I could manage one more. The clouds were moving in, keeping it cool. At the car, I grabbed my fleece shirt and tied it around my waist, just in case. I congratulated Elise and we planned to meet at a Mexican restaurant in town later with a bunch of the ICU nurses we used to work with.

I headed up for my last Rock Repeat, feeling good going up. I got to the top and sucked down a packet each of peanut butter and a salted caramel Gu. Then I started running down. Painful. Not terrible, but it took me a good 5 minutes longer to run to the bottom. On the last 1/2 mile I passed a group of obvious fraternity dudes, carrying a gallon jug of who knows what, hats turned backward, and blasting hip hop music on some kind of device. Rich little white boys, so gangsta! Really, do you have to pollute the park with your noise? I don't think most people go out on the trails to blast music, they go to escape it... or they keep it confined to their earbuds.

Fortunately I was down and off the trail. Sore quads, sticky, sweaty body. I drove home.

There I showered, and got dressed, and dragged Dennis out of the house with me with promises of food.

We drove downtown and met Elise and about 8 other nurses at Illegal Pete's, ordered margaritas, and got some tacos. It was great to see everyone and catch up. I could feel my quads going up and down the stairs.

When we were done, we went back home. I felt like walking off my soreness a little so I told Dennis I was going for a short walk. I left the house and started walking down the sidewalk. I was in front of my next door neighbor's house, headed for the corner, when I noticed our neighbor across the street, one house down, directly across the street from where I was walking, had driven up in her driveway and was letting her dogs out of the car. At that precise moment, the dogs came running across the street at me, and attacked me. I turned around to hide my face and one of them bit me HARD. On the butt.

I started yelling at her to call her dogs. It all happened so fast I didn't even have time to think. I yelled "Hey your dog just bit me on the butt!" They were big dogs. One was as tall as me on its hind legs.

She acted like it was no big deal. I don't know these people. They haven't lived there very long and they are renters. This is the same house where the last renters had pit bulls and people coming and going all the time. But these people are not around much, but I do notice that this particular woman has kind of a nasty attitude and uses a lot of expletives, and smokes. Just saying...

So when she called her dogs and I had a chance to figure out that I was bleeding, I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't know if I should call the humane society, or the cops, or what. My neighbor across the street came out to see what was going on and check on me. She told me to call 911. Being the nurse, I didn't want to call an emergency for a non-life threatening event, but I didn't know the numbers to call. So I called 911.

I was bleeding through my jeans, and my butt hurt! The dispatcher on 911 told me to move away from the neighbor whose dog bit me. By then she was yelling at me, like I was making a big deal out of it. I yelled back at her, "Wanna see the blood?" Then she said in a very insincere tone, "I'm sorry my dog bit you!" She looked like she was going to load the dogs back in the car and drive away. I yelled, "You're not going anywhere, I'm taking a picture of your license plate!" And she stood in front of her license plates. The dispatcher said, get her license plates and the type of car it is, then asked me if I wanted an ambulance. I said, no, I want the police. She said they're sending them, and to call her back if I decided I wanted an ambulance.

So by then Dennis came outside and we were waiting for the cops to arrive. Two cars showed up. One officer talked to me, I showed him my bloody hand and jeans, and the other cop went across the street. The Humane Society was supposedly on their way. My butt was bleeding and I could feel the blood running down. The cops told us to take pictures of my butt. Dennis and I went in the house and he took them. When the cops had the information they needed from me, minus butt pics, Dennis drove me to the emergency department at the hospital. Fortunately it was pretty quiet and we got in quickly. I saw one of the nurses I used to work with and got to tell her about my excitement for the day...

They took me back, irrigated my butt wounds, slapped a dressing on it, gave me a prescription for antibiotics and a tetanus shot, and I have to wait until the Humane Society does their investigation to see if I need rabies shots too. So I might even get to go back to my old workplace and get poked by my old coworkers. Which I hope does not happen.

It didn't even hit me until then that this could have been much worse. So much worse. I knew a nurse in New Mexico who got attacked by her neighbor's dog a few years ago and it literally ripped her nose off, and did more damage to her face. The house I was walking in front of, when it happened, is our next door neighbors' and their grandchildren play outside all the time there. Little kids.

I really didn't need this inconvenience, but I'm lucky. Still, I am going to be more of a pain in little miss trash mouth's ass than her dog was in my ass. I hope they will move out. I will be on their landlord's ass like a pit bull myself...along with my neighbors. That woman is lucky I'm not the gun-toting type...

So...I just had my hopes dashed of ever becoming a butt model. I will have a set of teeth marks permanently etched in my butt. I bet Kim Kardashian is breathing a HUGE sigh of relief now that the competition is eliminated. But I did get a special bracelet out of the deal...

Sigh...

Anyway, the Quadrennial Quagmire's finish line got moved at the last minute, from margaritas to the E.D.

And I will spend the next week taking doxycycline and having Nurse Dennis put gauze and tape dressings on my butt. I won't be able to sink back into the butt vortex, either, because it hurts to sit down on my left cheek. Won't be able to get enough suction on the chair seat.

Every day is an adventure...