Running and rainning...

09/28/08
Sunday

I missed the Pathfinders race yesterday but thought I would at least put in a decent run today. When I got up it was raining and though this would stop many, I looked forward to it.

I enjoy running in the rain, it changes everything and it is much cooler. To start with I could not find the Garmen (I assume I left it at work) So ran without it. Funny how one can get used to something then feel naked without it.

I planned on a fairly long run and to mix the terrain between tar, dirt and trails. Kind of a well rounded workout. I wore my Northface trail runners because they are waterproof and I knew I would hit some ground water today.

The start was wierd as the road was covered with acorns and there was a pretty steady crunch for the first mile. I started fairly slow and figured on speeding up as I progressed. I don't know what was up, but I saw at least a dozon squished frogs in the road. Perhaps there was so much water from the night before that they thought they were crossing a pond instead of the road.

I got wet fairly quickly, and I had the road all to myself as it was only 7:30 am. I like it when there are no cars. The unfortunate thing about a heavy rain is it knocks a lot of the leaves down prematurely. I noticed how many leaves were changing. It seems full foliage will be here soon it wouldn't be much of a sight if all the leaves were on the ground.

I was glad to round the corner after mile 1 and hit the trails. I came up to the brook and even with my earphones on, I could hear the brook roaring. It is funny, this particular brook is usually a very gentle flowing stream acting like it doesn't have a care in the world.

Today it was flowing with vengence, a steady roar as it grabbed at branches rocks and debri. It expanded beyond it's normal banks just to latch onto things and deposit them somewhere down stream. Kind of a relocation program.

The trees were hanging real low with all the water on them. It seemed they had a destinct pleasure of tranfering most of that moisture on me as I ran by. I am sure they were snickering amongst themselves. I laughed right back as I ran by because they were not affecting me at all.

I came out of the trail and ran down a dirt road to Oakhill. It didn't seem so steep today for some reason. I ran 3/4 of the way up and then hit the town forest trail. It started down hill and the water coming off the road followed the trail. It was more like running with a steam as the water and the trail became one.

This was a bit difficult and it was pointless to try and stay out of the water so I just ran with it. This did slow me down a lot and I recorded the slowest pace on this trail.

This trail looped back up the hill and yup...you guessed it, I was now running up stream. I was glad to finally get back to Oakhill and I finished the trip up the hill, followed the caldasac. 1/4 way back down I hit the mushroom trail and was quite surprised that this too was quite flooded. I followed it to the end, ran around and back up the crevace wall, back to oakhill and headed home.

I ran up the two of the three baston hills and then hit the pit loop trail in reverse. Once i came back out onto the road I picked up the pace quite a bit and finished the last half mile with a little kick. This run felt great. I didn't experience much fatigue and the pace was pretty good.

I like the diversity of this loop, I think I will run it quite a bit for training. As I get closer to the spring, I will probably double up on it.

9 miles @ 1:25:22
tar / dirt/ trails / hills