Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Night Fun Run

Enlightenment is a state of perfect knowledge or wisdom, combined with infinite compassion. On this night, instead of achieving Buddhist enlightenment, we instead achieved idiot enlightenment, a state of perfect obtuseness, combined with infinite idiot compassion. What is idiot compassion?

“Idiot compassion is the highly conceptualized idea that you want to do good to somebody. At this point, good is purely related with pleasure. Idiot compassion also stems from not having enough courage to say no.”

Not having enough courage to say no is fortunately a common trait among ultra-idiots. That I managed to rope a nonzero number of participants in this idea should not surprise anyone trapped in the circle of morons. 

Later this month marks the fourth installment of the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day 50k held in NorCal. For an appetizer, my recent relocation to SoCal demanded that I find a similarly vapid trail. In fact, I did one better. The problem was, I’d only see the upper quarter mile in person and the rest on a map. Budding future Nobel Prize winning scientist that I am, I thought to myself, what would be a better introduction to this full trail than to do hill repeat style, and at night! No need to read that again, or even 4 times, you all know that this DM-ASS can’t resist a B-HAG.

Each repeat of the Chumash trail to Mugu Peak runs 1.0 miles each way, climbing 1,225 ft each time. Average gradient is 23%, though as mapmyrun marks the gradients, anything between 22% and 38%, well, you’ll lose all color perception anyway, a symptom of the COVIDIOT disease. At that point, it’s all sufferfest, so who cares what the actual gradient is.

A Manley hill climb

Speaking of co-vidiots, whilst my recent running/MTB partner Uli wised up chickened out, I still managed to rope one person with idiot compassion to spare, a guy with a more manly name than ”Duke” even, Manley. With his full sized beard, he should spell his name Manely. And while his buddy Ryan did show up, he left early. So some of us learn quickly, and some, well, we're a little slow.

As I’m recovering from a knee sprain, we set out for a short 5-peat fun-run/recovery run. We met at the trailhead just before sunset. Even late on a weekday, this trail is crowded. Why, I don’t know. Guys bring their girlfriends, probably for the last time, and tough parents bring their even tougher little kids. It’s actually one of the reasons we run this trail at night - to avoid the crowds. I didn’t know what to expect for the first ¾ mile of this trail except that it should be steep. That it certainly was, but it was far more rocky and technical than anticipated. And just when you were done cursing the rocks, there would be a steep dirt patch, and you’d curse the slippery sand beneath your feet. In between this first section and the last ¼ mile pitch is the 100 yards of semi-flat, smooth, runnable trail that doesn’t hurt. 

What I spent most of the night looking at

The upper ¼ mile section, unlike the lower part, is molded clay, with ridges carved out for footing. The first half is steeper than a trail should be, but fortunately not too long. The final pitch is reasonable and ends with a flag pole at the summit. Touch, salute, pray, kneel, at least you know when you’re done.

The upper pitch in the pitch dark

The steepness of the upper part and the nearly as steep but way shittier rocky rest of the parts made for an interesting downhill. That I somehow managed the first downhill in just 11 minutes is a miracle. That my later descents (in the dark) took 13 to 27 minutes is less of a miracle and even less of a surprise.

By the top of the third ascent, I could tell my bad knee was irritated (with me), and my feet and toes weren’t too happy either. Manley dropped my slow Korean ass at this point. He was on his fifth loop as I was barely finishing my fourth and final loop. As we crossed though, he found some idiot compassion for himself and turned around for 4 and a half loops. For myself, 8 miles, 5,000 ft of vert, 3 hours. Can’t wait until we hold the full 10-peat later this year. Nope, no idiots here.