"A wise man has enough sense to get in out of the rain"

     I usually have one day off in the middle of the week that I use as my "long run" day for the week.  I woke up and the first thing my wife tells me is "It's starting to rain."  Of course, it is.  I looked outside and it was merely a mist of rain.  Something that could go way once the sun gets up.
     So I optimistically get in my car and start driving towards Brown County State Park.  It'll stop raining, I keep thinking.  By the time I get to the park the rain is steadily coming down.  Not heavy, but steady.  I park at Hesitation Point and figure I'll check out the trail conditions.  If they're not to bad I'll run....if they're muddy and there's a chance I will damage them....then I go home.  They look fine so I put on my camel back and head south towards Ogle Lake then up to the lollipop shaped trail 9.  So far the forest canopy has kept most of the light rain fall off of me.  This is where I spotted the first turtle of the run.  I took his picture and continued on my way.
     Then somewhere around mile 6 the rain really starts to come down.  I thought of the movie "Big Trouble In Little China" and the exchange between Jack Burton and Egg Chen where Jack refuses to use Egg's umbrella.  "A real man likes to feel the rain on his back," Jack says.  "A wise man has enough sense to get in out of the rain,"  Egg replied.  And here I was in the rain.  Running.
      I kept running on back to the lake and then south with a route my wife had gotten from a friend.  It went up a hill and down a trail to one of the campground entrances where I crossed to go to the Limekiln trail (one of the mountain bike trails on the park).   It was along this trail I spotted the second turtle of the day.  About a mile or two later I spotted some little things scuttering across the trail.  "What the fuck are those?" I said aloud as they disappeared into the brush.  Then a mother hen came out of nowhere and then I realized that they strange little creatures were baby turkeys !!!  I had never seen the little guys in the wild before.  This trail eventually came out by a fire tower and I crossed over to run trail 10.  A mile or so in is where I took that and took an odd turn that took me off the trail and ended up by a roadside parking area.
     At this point I merely told myself "I'm not lost, I have just never been here before."  (I think I would attribute this reaction to my rereading "The Tao of Pooh" earlier in the week)  My intuition told me that if I took a left on the road and went uphill I would find the fire tower.  I was right and then headed down the walnut mountain bike trail.  It was then I realized that my run would probably be around the 18 mile range....I was feeling good so thought about going 20.  Somewhere around here I was passed by some mountain bikers where one exclaimed "The sun finally came out !!!"  Is it strange that I didn't notice that it had stopped raining?  I was starting to dry out and shed my soaked long sleeve shirt and stashed it in my pack.
     Eventually I came upon one of the Schooner trail trailheads and thought "If I take this it will get me to about 20 miles for the run" so I decided to take that.  The Schooner trail is a mountain bike trail that is marked extremely difficult and is very technical.  I figured it would be a good way to test my trail mindfulness while being tired.  I knew that I was shoving common sense aside but I had nothing else to do this day. About twenty feet down the trail I came across the third turtle of the day.  Definitely a good omen and I convinced myself that I made the right choice. I didn't feel quite tired.  I felt like I ran 20 miles but I also felt like I had a decent amount of fuel left in the tank.  The heart rate training I have been doing since early March seemed to be paying off !!!  Physically I felt fine.  Then as I finished the 4 mile Schooner Trail loop I realized that I when I got on the trail I actually backtracked away from my car.  Oop.  Now I had about a two mile or so run back to my car which would put my mileage at about 24 for the run.  But I still felt good.  I wasn't feeling great but I was feeling good.
     So then I spotted my car I was at 24.75 miles.  Soooooo, I decided to go for a marathon distance.  I headed down Hesitation Point and decided to do the trail that went around Ogle Lake and then back to my car.  Somewhere in this part my camel back was running low on water. The two liter bladder is shaped like a stingray.  This strange shape lets the water lay comfortably on your back for a run but now that the water was low it proved to be an annoyance. I had to lift the pack so water shifted toward the drinking hose.  I wasn't happy with this discovery and figured this pack would be better for a run less than 16 miles or so.  I've only had it for a couple of weeks so this was a pretty good test for it.  I ended up finding a drinking fountain in the parking lot by the lake and headed back to my car.  A grand total of 26.70 miles for the day.  Just about double what I had intended to do.