Hem and Haw, Squish and Slop

I hemmed and hawed. I was feeling uninspired. I was tired. The wind whipped around outside, and our driveway and the edges of the side roads around town were covered in a thin layer of ice from last night's rain. What to do? What to do? Run the roads like I had originally intended? Or gamble on the trails? In the end, I couldn't stomach the thought of 14 windy and icy road miles, so I got my Nathan pack together, put on my screwshoes and headed across the street for the powerlines. I figured I would run for 12 miles or 2 hours, whichever came first. The effort of either would no doubt be as much as, or more than, the 14 road miles.

The trail was solid in spots. Squishy and water-logged in others. But at least one sled had been through since yesterday morning's snow, and so it wasn't all that bad for running. And headed out, as is almost always the case, I had the wind at my back. I was moving along at a decent pace for a while, at least until I hit the field at Lover's Lane. At that point, it appeared that no one had been out since yesterday, but I figured, what the heck, I might as well just go for it, and so I slipped and slogged and mushed and sank as I ran the lollypop loop down by the dump, and then hit the trail to connect back to Homeplace. I ran into an older woman out on her xc skis. We stopped to chat for a few minutes. I told her she had definitely made the better choice of transportation for the day!

Once I crested the top of the hill right before Rt. 24, I was almost bowled over by the wind. I'll admit, I was tempted to just head home. I would get in 8 miles. No, no, no. That wasn't the plan. So when I got to Highland Green, I hit the road, my screwshoes tap tap tapping as I ran along the pavement. I took the dirt road to the ecology center and headed down to the river. There had been a fair amount of foot traffic, some of which was definitely snowshoes, so the running along the singletrack wasn't any worse than the running along the powerlines near the dump. I ran along, enjoying the river, and once I reached Barne's Leap, decided to take the long way back up through the woods, instead of heading back up the dirt road to the ecology center. There were lots of animal tracks crisscrossing the trail. Deer, rabbit, fox and what I realized after the fact was a porcupine! Neat!

Once back at the pavement, I crossed the road to see how the trail around the Heath was. There was less traffic along this stretch, but I was rewarded with a nice view across the Heath.

The Heath in winter

From there, I took the shortcut to the road and headed back along Highland Green to the powerlines for the final stretch. I ended up with 12.5 miles in 2:18:xx. Definitely a bit of a slog, with about 10 trail miles and 2.5 road miles, but good time on my feet training, and much more exciting than 14 windy road miles :-)