Day 11: Shakey Ankles, Montana
I think Montana is my favorite of the states I’ve visited, but spending a few days up here really reinforces just how big everything is and how inconvenient that can make things. I think the vast spaces and rolling terrain is sublime and haunting and everything else, but it also means getting between any two points on the map can take hours.
My first project today was to go for what I was hoping would be a slow, long run to get some mileage in and balance out the type of stress I put on my body running up the mountain in the Tetons on Tuesday and doing the big hike on Thursday. I didn’t want to run in the area around my campsite because the roads have no shoulder, the speed limit is 70 miles an hour, and I don’t want to die. So, I went to a nearby state park. Given the open, rolling nature of the terrain around here I thought this park would give me some relatively flat trails to run on. I was mistaken.
The park is named Buffalo Jump State Park, and it consists of a few steep, massive buttes that were used as buffalo jumps in prehistoric times. The trail system goes up and over these hills. As soon as I started running, I realized we were once again doing a steep hill day, but it was a cool place to be and an experience to have, so I went with it. They are doing some restoration work in different areas, though, and there is some very confusing signage about which trails are open and which are closed. I’m use to doing trail running in a forest, where it is pretty clear what is a path and what is a tree or the side of a ravine, so it’s a new experience for me running across wide open country where there is a trail, but at times it becomes indistinguishable from the acres of grass that surround it. And at one point in the run, I ended up on a trail that quickly petered away to nothing. In order to get back onto the main trail system, I cut back across the hill, and managed to roll my right ankle pretty good.
Some history--- I sprained my ankle really badly back at the end of March. I wasn’t able to run at all for about two weeks, and was very limited by it for at least another month after that. Rolling that ankle is the kind of thing that has me worried about the trip— if I were to do it that badly again, I would need to pull the plug on the remaining races and probably just head home. In the instant I rolled it this morning, I thought I might have broken it. The pain was agonizing, to the point that I briefly felt sick to my stomach. But the pain quickly passed and within a few minutes I was jogging again, and by the time we meandered our way back to the parking lot I was running. I bought an ankle wrap on the way back and strapped it up tight, and I’ve been icing it in my cooler off and on all afternoon. We’ll see how it behaves over night—I’m still pretty worried its going to swell and stiffen while I sleep and I’ll be in all kinds of trouble tomorrow—but for now at least, I don’t think it’s a game changer. However, I can’t take any additional chances on that ankle. I’m going to wear my new ankle brace all the time, especially if I’m doing anything athletic like running or hiking, and I’m going to keep icing it whenever I can.
The rest of the afternoon was then basically all taken up by driving back and forth to get my packet for the race I’m running on Sunday. This is where the Montana distances come in. Looking at a map, my Indiana-eyes see that my campground and the town where I needed to go are about three towns apart. But out here, that means almost an hour and a half of driving, each way. So I spent most of the afternoon driving to and from this other town to check in for Sunday’s race and pick up my packet. And, insult to injury, the tshirts for the race are ridiculously small. I don’t know if they accidentally ordered kids sizes or an Amazon vendor offloaded some Chinese sized shirts or something, but there was no way I could even put on the size large that I ordered. I tried on an XL, but it fit like a wrestling singlet. So, I ended up with a 2XL and even that is a little tight. Fortunately, I was one of the first people at pick up and had the opportunity to riffle through the shirts to find one that fits, and fortunately I was starting at a large and had somewhere to move up to. God help someone who thought they wanted a 2X to begin with.
Then I got back to camp and spent a couple of hours finishing my book. This is the third night at this campsite without any internet access, and I think it might be the last such place I will stay at for the duration of the trip. Being here with just my own thoughts for three days has been really refreshing, but I’m looking forward to streaming some Netflix in the AirBNB tomorrow. This was also be my fifth consecutive night camping out, and for the rest of the trip I don’t think I ever do more than three nights outdoors in a row again. I really enjoy camping, but it will do me some good to have slightly more consistent access to the comforts of home (I took a shower this morning by dumping a pitcher of cold water over myself, lathering up with some, and then rinsing with a second pitcher of cold water. Refreshing, but not something I need to do ever again).
