Sunday, June 12, 2011

Wissahickon

I have less than a week to go before the marathon, and we all know what that means: taper.  This means I'm easing back on the mileage in order to give my body a chance to rest and recover from the stress I've put on it in the last few months.  This means, in turn, that I can finally do normal things on a Sunday again instead of running 20 miles by myself.  Normal things like going to Wissahickon Creek over in PA with Stevie, a friend from the theater.

We spent the first hour there scaring ourselves by climbing the rocks.  Now I get to scare my grandmother with this picture:

Can this count as crosstraining?

When we tired of the rocks, we decided to give cliffjumping a go.  Now, I've been cliffjumping before.  I've scaled trees and climbing walls.  I've ridden insane rollercoasters and jumped out of planes.  But I still found myself standing at the edge of the 20 foot drop genuinely scared to make the jump.

Me: Are you going to jump?
Stevie: Absolutely!  I'm not letting you show me up!

I can honestly say that I love cliffjumping.  It's not standing at the edge trembling for 10 minutes that I enjoy.  It's not my stomach bumping into my throat as I scream on the way down that I enjoy either.  And it's certainly not the indelible image these things leave in the minds of spectators.  No, it's the feeling of conquering a fear, however small and unreasonable it may be.

We both managed two jumps apiece, and afterwards, all that was left was to reenact our terror for the camera:

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