Weekend Warrior

So today was another session of weekend warrior. It was a fun time of team building, mountain climbing, hiking and a good cardio workout. We laughed a lot, there was a lot of "what the hells?" and quite a few battle wounds. I have posted a link to the hike that we did from my friends garmin, it shows the elevation gains and so forth. However, it was supposed to take about 1.5 hours and it took us 3. We climbed 1000 ft in the 1.4 mile up but majority of it was in the last .4 miles. It was straight up, almost like stairs but with nothing to put your foot on. It was about 3 miles total by the time we got the trail head from Shannon's house and did the trail round trip.

We met up at Shannon's house. It was a beautiful, cabin style, home with gorgeous views of the Smokies. They are on there way to being so pretty for fall. A few more weeks and they will be spectacular with all of the changing leaves. We arrived around 9 and hit the trail (if you can call it that) by 9:30.

The beginning was the hardest part for me. This is probably different than everyone else. The first 3/4 of a mile was a lot of rise and fall, mostly rise and because there was a trail the girls were trucking it. They were going fast, no stopping and I thought I was going to die. There were a few times I wanted to quit but my girls "T" and "JRo" wouldn't leave me behind. At one point, Teresa told me that if she had to "push my butt up that hill" I was making it to the top. We finally got to a little flat resting point and Shannon says "well, that was the easy part; it gets much harder from here". I thought she was kidding but she wasn't!

The next part of the hike was mountain climbing. It was straight up, no trail head and going through lots of brush and trees to make it to the top. It took a long time and the whole time we were going up all I could think about was how are we going to get down? We can't possibly be going down the same way that we went up. While the mountain climbing was hard, I was okay...we had slowed down, my heart was no longer trying to escape from my chest and this was mind over matter. One leg in front of the other. It was beautiful along the way. At one point we looked out and you could see Shannon's house....way, way down. It was gratifying to know that we had accomplished the mountain. Going up required you to be on all fours. The ground had lots of leaves on it so it was pretty slick. Also there had been a fire in the woods about a year ago, so several of the trees were burned or rotten and were not good foot or arm holds.

(if you look very closely you can see a white house under the bottom branch of that tree,

it is a little bit down and to the right from the other houses...

that is Shannon's where we started)

We finally reached the top! I can't lie that the summit was not as impressive as some of the other vista views we got along the way because of the trees. However, I decided to take that into my own hands. There was one good view but there was a measly tree in the way. I knew that all the trees were weak so I decided to push it down to make my picture better. It pushed right over with a little effort. We stopped long enough to get some pictures and then headed back down.

(After taking down the tree)

(the top)

Now the decent down the mountain is where the fun really began. This is when everyone began cursing. I was so glad that I had worn my hiking shoes. They had said we were going for a hike so wore my trusty hikers. Every other girl had on their beautiful white ASICS tennis shoes. Well, let me just tell you...they aren't white anymore. The ground literally had no good foot holds and you couldn't really hold on to the trees or stumps as 90% of them were not secure. Going down the mountain had lots of scooting on your butt and just hoping that you didn't get killed. Had I known what we were going to be doing, I would have brought my trekking poles. This would of made the entire hike about 10 times easier.

At one point, I must slid down the mountain and hurt my leg. I have been bruising more easily lately and it looks pretty bad. Yet, I was not the only one with battle wounds. Lots of us got scrapes and scratches but our "Sherpa", Teresa gets the award for wound of the day. At one point I looked over and she literally did a cartwheel down the hill and starting sliding head first with her hand in front of her down the mountain. Thankfully she didn't get too hurt. She got a pretty good puncture wound in her hand and some pretty good scrapes but she was a good sport. From that point forward, I tried to take on the role of Sherpa. I think I did fairly well. I was able to kind of slide the earth down under my feet and create little ledges to hold. We all found good sturdy sticks and used them as a walking staff. I can say that if I had not had my stick, I might have died.

(This is the bruise on my leg...ouchy)

After we got down from the mountain we still had to hike back to the house. At this point we were all tired and ready to eat. We got lost at this point for about 10 minutes but then found our way back. Everyone had brought some "healthy" food to share. Tammye, our trainer, brought a really yummy dip. It was good, tasted fresh and healthy. Here is the recipe.

• Can of corn drained
• Can of black beans drained
• Can of black eyed peas drained
• Can of tomatoes drained
• One onion chopped
• One green bell pepper chopped
• A little fresh cilantro and lime
• Garlic powder
• 1/2 C of light Italian dressing

It was so yummy. I stuck around and ate a few snacks and then had to head home to my sweet family. It was definitely an adventure. I did have fun. I would of been much better off in a healthy forest with something to hold onto though, or if I would have had my trusty trekking poles. One of the girls had a nice SLR camera and took several pictures. Tonight while looking at them on Facebook I almost cried because I was laughing so hard at us coming down the mountain. There were some pictures where she had taken so many that scrolling through was almost like watching them animated...and I got to relive the whole experience.

My ankles are pretty sore and the rest of my body just feels like it has been beat up. Hopefully a good night's sleep will take care of some of that.