A Loop on the Snowplug 50k Course

Ryan is planning an early morning 18 mile run tomorrow before we head down to MA. His plan is for 3 laps of the Snowplug 50k course. This afternoon I went for a run, and since I've been running a lot on the powerlines and it seemed too sloppy and windy to be out on the roads, I decided to do a lap on the course myself, just to give him an idea of what he was in for :-) I found things incredibly variable. No one had been out up the trail to the top of Mt. A., or on most of the Mt. A. trails for that matter, but there was a pretty good crust beneath the few inches of snow. I was able to stay on the top for the most part, but it made me cautious. I was just afraid I was going to break through at some inopportune moment and hurt myself. Mountain Road was in good shape but the trail along the Quarry was iffy. Someone had been out along the Heath snowshoeing so that section was in great shape. When I crossed the road, I was surprised to find no one had been out near the Ecology Center or down near the river. There was a fairly wide shallow trough from people snowshoeing before the last snow that was pretty easy to follow, but again, I took my time. It was hard to tell what was under the fresh snow. The river was flowing and was very pretty. There were tons of animal tracks - lots of big snowshoe hare tracks, squirrel, little mice, maybe voles from the tunneling?, and definitely some fox. Always nice to be out on the Cathance trails. The pace quickened slightly once I reached the back dirt road, but it was muddy and slushy from all the trucks, so not exactly fast either. Still, a nice 6.25 miles on a sunny Friday afternoon. I'll take it.

And just to make things a bit more interesting, here are a few of Sam's "selfies" from my phone tonight. Ha!