Androscoggin Riverlands Run

Since Ryan had the chance to run his long run last weekend with friends, the plan was for me to get my chance this weekend. I figured there would likely be a group at Pineland, but I am not so in love with Pineland that I really wanted to run 26 miles there. Instead, I emailed Mindy and Val to see what there plans were and to ask if I could tag along. They very nicely said yes, and told me they were planning to run long at Androscoggin Riverlands State Park. I remembered seeing some photos of the trails there from some time ago, and thought it would be fun to have a new place to explore. I eagerly said yes. Now all I had to do was get myself there ;-)

Luckily, although the drive took me wandering out through the countryside to Turner, I didn't have any trouble finding the parking lot. What I did find was a lot of rain :-) Yup, my idea of fun - go and run in the rain for 26 miles. Sometimes I do question my choices ;) But what can be better than a run in a new place with friends, even if things are a bit soggy? With Mindy and Val came Tim, Xar and Disa, and her pup Axel. We all suited up and headed out. The run was a 10-mile out-and-back on a wide gravel snowmobile trail along the Androscoggin River. The first four miles were very runnable, and quite hilly. The trail meandered through the winds, with a big stretch along the river. As it was raining, there wasn't much to see; we were dodging puddles and stomping through mud, and chatting the whole way. At the 5 mile mark, Disa, Axel and Xar headed back, and the four of us continued on. It was here that the trail got a bit less firm, more muddy and more rocky. There were a few hills, both up and down, that needed to be walked due to mud slide conditions. There were a few deep stream and puddle crossing, and a lot of stream in the trail too :-) Around mile 7, we reached the park boundary, but continued on the same main snowmobile corridor as it traversed working woodlands, hugged gleaming green pastures, passed a lion statue, and old car and a rusting fire truck randomly out in the woods, and took us through a maze of blue tubing for maple sugaring. Right before the turn-around at a big road, on the final downhill, I managed to do a rather snazzy long slide in the mud, and somehow managed to perhaps even gracefully catch myself with my hand and pop right back up. There was a lot of twisting and sliding going on, but I managed to stay upright for the rest of the miles.

On the way back, Tim and I got ahead of Mindy and Val, and just kept on going. The pace crept up ever so slowly, especially in the final four miles back to the car as we reached the much more packed and runnable stretch. We reached the parking lot at 19.5 miles, stopped quickly to grab something to eat, and realized we weren't going to be able to stand around in the wind and mist for much longer. Brrr! So off we went, back up the hill. It was really nice to have Tim to keep pace with! At 22.8 miles, we turned around, and right before 24 miles, we ran into Mindy and Val. Tim hooked back up with them and I said my goodbyes and continued back to the parking lot. Those last two miles seemed long. I was hungry and getting a bit tired, but I was glad to look at the data and see that I didn't slow much. I got back to the car at 26.2 miles and 5:19. Strava had my moving time at 4:56, which seems like a lot of time spent not moving, but certainly is possible. We did make a fair amount of stops to reconnect as a group, take potty breaks, etc. Either way, it was a great soggy, hilly, muddy, sloppy marathon out in the rain with friends on some new trails. I'll call that a win, for sure!

Flora and fauna notes: On a gray day like today, the greens just seemed all the more brilliant. There was one stretch of deep, wet woods, where the greening leaves of the beech trees seemed almost neon. They were practically shimmering. Very cool. Lots of ground cover, including a lot of false lily of the valley, several large red trillium and a few painted trillium, what I think was likely dwarf ginseng, bluets, violets, wood anemone, Indian wild cucumber, some bluebead lily starting to flower, and a large number of jack in the pulpits, which was pretty cool, as I don't normally see those. On the fauna front, heard some good frog croaking and a few geese honking along the river, saw two red-spotted newts, and four turkeys running through one of the fields we passed. Also saw a few warblers, one of which looked like a Black & White, but I didn't get quite a good enough view. Pretty good day in the woods :-)