Blue Jay to San Juan loop

My sister, my wife and a few other friends have decided to run a trail half marathon. For those who are not familiar with marathons, they are 26.2 miles long which makes the half marathon 13.1 miles. We have been trying to do some longer runs on the weekends in order to prepare for this adventure. Two Sundays ago, my sister and I decided to head up the Ortega highway and get in a training run. We decided to run from Blue jay to the San Juan Loop trail head. We thought this would be about 6 miles. We started off from Blue jay at 3:50 pm. This was our first mistake. The trail was nice, a little rocky but runnable. Most of the first few miles were slightly downhill so we were able to get into a nice rhythm. Well I can only speak for myself because my sister was quickly out in front of me and out of sight. That is until I came around a corner and there she was sitting in the middle of the trail. I could see the skid marks and churned up dirt so I knew that she had taken a nice digger. She had rolled her ankle and hit the deck but in the few minutes she had waiting for me to catch up, she was able to get it loosened up and was ready to keep going. So off we headed, this part of the trail was very nice and scenic with lots of trees and a nearby stream. We continued on for about another half hour until we hit the valley bottom and the trail took a turn upward. As I crossed a small ravine, it was my turn to taste the dirt. Apparently I did not pick my feet up enough because I kicked a rock and went down hard. Full on splat, water bottle went flying but there was only a little blood. Not enough to keep me from trying to catch my sister and tell her I had eaten it too! We continued up the other side of the canyon and from the trail we had a gorgeous view of the sun setting over the ocean and a great view of Catalina island. Not something you can get on a treadmill. As I rounded a corner about 15 minutes later, I found my sister waiting for me. By now it had gotten pretty dark and we thought we should stay together. Next thing we know we can see the highway and the candy store, but boy were they far away and way below us. Wow! is about all we could say, we had at least 2 more miles to go and it was very dark now. We decided we needed to stop running and walk due to the lack of vision and the fact that neither of us had been on this trail before. Well, it took us about another hour and 15 minutes to find our way back to the trail head and by then it was 7:30 pm. When I finally got back to the car, I called my wife who was extremely worried(mostly due to an experience in the same area last summer, but that is a story for another post). I told her we were safe and on our way home. We both enjoyed the run, but learned the trail was closer to 10 miles and that next time we need to start a Little earlier. All and all it was a fun adventure.