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First Person Mike McQuaide

Hitting The Trail

Running with friends keeps us strong — and together

Up here in Bellingham, in the far northwest corner of the Northwest, my trail-running friends and I tend to be a bit fickle. We flit from one thing to the next like jittery chickadees on a rose bush, ever certain there's something better just a branch or two away.

When the sun is out we turn into cyclists or mountain climbers or day-hikers, some of us triathletes, even. Yanking this and tugging that, we pull on wetsuits and jump in Lake Padden where we splash around for a bit until we're told we can stop. Then we hop on our bikes and start pedaling. It's like running (kinda), so we usually pass a lot of the swimming types — y'know, those broad-shouldered weenies who wear swim caps even when they're not required to — and by the time we're on the run, shuffling along in that death-march gait we usually reserve for the finishing miles of the Chuckanut 50K, we feel like normal human beings again.

When it's only cloudy out, we do other things. We mountain bike, which is fun in that reckless, out-of-control, "Wuhoo, we have a substitute teacher today!" way. Some of us road bike, which is kinda like mountain biking, only on blacktop and with a dress code.

We backpack. We kayak. We rock climb. We sail. We ski. We snowboard. We snowshoe. We do it all because where we live, these things are minutes away, an hour at most.

But the only way we can be such fickle flitters (say that three times fast) is because we trail run. It is the rock on which the foundation of our Northwest outdoor lives is built. Trail running makes us strong, keeps our weight down, is cushier on our joints and bones than running on roads, and builds our fitness like nobody's bid-ness. (Say that three times fast.) Perhaps most important, trail running is the only way my friends and I would still see each other on a regular basis.

You see, Karen hates to swim. Rob has already done the whole backpacking thing. Greg's afraid of heights. Lynne says her bicycle seat belongs in a museum exhibit of medieval torture instruments. And so on.

But what we all share — and what we carve out every Sunday morning of our lives for — is a devotion to following that ribbon of dirt that lures us deep into the forested hills above this fair city on the bay. Whatever we are the rest of the week — teachers, maintenance workers, computer-guy types; parents, husbands, wives, significant others; climbers, kayakers, telemark skiers — for a few hours every Sunday morning, we're trail runners. Dirty. Sweaty. Covered-in-muck trail runners.

Hopping over rocks and roots. Splashing through streams and puddles. Dodging low-hanging limbs. Hanging on to our hats down long, long logging-road descents. Trail running these Sunday mornings improves our outdoor lives, that's sure, and it's no stretch to say that it enhances the rest of our lives, too. It's our church.

I return to my wife and son all aglow, more at ease, and the world seems full of possibilities; I revel in them all.

My friends and I may be fickle in other respects, but when it comes to Sunday mornings, nobody is more devoted.

Mike McQuaide is a Bellingham freelance writer and author of "Day Hike! Central Cascades" and "Day Hike! North Cascades." He can be reached at mikemcquaide@comcast.net.

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