Author: I'm Ash Walsh.

My in-laws gave me a gift card. The gift card bought me some awesome fleece gear. The fleece gear told me the trails were calling & then my phone actually rang– and no it wasn’t the trails….( I was shocked too).. it was Beth Presten! One of my favorite people on earth! For real!

Beth Presten was calling to see if I’d like to have a little outdoor adventure tonight. “yup. harbins? Holla.” (we tend to act/talk like 15 year old hood chicks when we get together).

this adventure was going to be a bit different for us.
A. Beth is pretty frickn pregnant.
B. I am healing from a fractured hip.
C. Normally when we train together we are hitting 7 minute miles, and pushing each other past our cardiac barriers. Or running from Sasquatch..

Presten and I have trained together for about 2 years. We have had countless adventures, as both of us are pretty ridiculous in our training styles-Aka we thoroughly enjoy running for hours, in dangerous places, like the woods, at 4 in the morning. We both are extremely competitive, and we really just have always had this cool training partner thing going on for quite some time. So with our competitiveness & heavy mileage pushed to the side, I was excited to see how our evening of “aggressive hiking” would go.

We headed out to one of our favorite training routes. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of months, and we had a ton to talk about, laugh about, vent about.. You know, typical runner bond mixed with bff for life type chick stuff. Time slipped away and before we knew it, we were on a dark trail with no exit in sight.

This always happens to us.

Last time this happened to us, we were freaking out. Beth had watched a documentary on Sasquatch prior to our evening run, and determined that Sasquatch does indeed exist. She pleaded her case to me during that run, and I too, became a believer. Towards the end of that run, we heard a branch snap, and started to get skittish. We got all quiet, and eventually started running like there was no tomorrow back toward the trail head shouting things about Sasquatches and what have you. I think we finished that run with a good 5 minute mile. Yeah, I guess looking back it could have been a squirrel…. Maybe..

Another time we found ourselves trapped in the dark, we were hiding in a ditch en route home during a very long run. Beth and I had been discussing, quite in depth actually, women going missing, kidnappers, molesters, etc. Typical stuff unarmed women talk about when they run together at night. Anyway, there was a dude in the park that night that seemed a little out of place. And we were convinced he was following us home. Every truck we saw for the next few miles resulted in a ditch dive, duck & cover until we felt it safe to run….. I still think that man was out to get us. He just couldn’t find us bc we were too freakin awesome at camouflaging ourselves amongst the roadside shrubs- even in highly reflective running gear.

So back to tonight. We found ourselves on the dark trail, and whadya know, some moron with a headlamp was out on the trails too! Beats me as to why, because I really don’t understand why anyone would tackle Harbins in the dark, but nonetheless, dude was there. Dude was coming towards us. Beth and I immediately assumed it was the Unabomber- a sketchy looking guy we had passed and nicknamed earlier during the hike. Really Unabomber was probably just a man in a sweatshirt trying to get some exercise, but you never know. So we started to get all freaked out- as usual. We thought it would be best if we just stood still and thought of our plan of attack. Then we decided that I should whip out my trusty knife (though I’ve never had to use it :-/) and we would confidently walk towards Unabomber’s light. We needed to show him “we ain’t skurrd”. But then- his light went out! Totally caught us off guard. We started flipping out & ran away fast [yes the pregnant girl and the broken hip girl ran]. I pulled out my phone and called Dan to explain we were “probably being attacked” *again because we are always being attacked* but he was nice enough to play his usual I’ll talk to you guys until the bad guy leaves game.. We put him on speaker and asked him to shout intimidating things about being a trained sniper, and what not, until we made it back to the parking lot. We never saw the Unabomber! So basically, our plan of attack worked- the run, wield weapon, and have Dan talk loudly on speaker phone thing really scared him off, I think. There’s always the possibility that he flipped his lamp off to pee, or something, but I seriously doubt it.

Ahhh… What a night.:)
Good weather. Great friend.
(Nice fleece gear too!)
So regardless of the lack of awesomely insane & legit running skill, it was a typical Beth Presten night. I was happy to find that we can still have a blast together even when we aren’t training [like fierce warrior running beast]. I’m so happy she called me, & that I got to try out my new fleece gear! (Worked pretty good! Thanks in-laws!)

I love my running friends.:) They are so special to me. I love that we can act like little kids, play in the woods, run from bad guys, and just forget about the craziness of real life for a bit. It’s such a sweet thing. I’ll never take it for granted.

Preggers Beth is cute!