Early Morning Head of Tides Wander

Wanted to get my run in early so I could hang out with the sick crew today, but also didn't want to start in the dark, so was out the door at 7:05 am, under overcast skies. On another day heading out at this hour would have yielded a good sunrise but today, nada. Still, it was relatively warm (low 20s) and no wind, so not much to complain about. I ran up and over Mt. A. then did a loop on groomed trails along holes 1 and 2 before continuing across to hole 3. Then it was across the street and along the Heath. Additional people had been out on the trails after yesterday afternoon's run, so the Cathance trails were in pretty good shape, although it was still fairly slow out there as the snow still isn't super compacted.

I decided I would follow the old snowshoe tracks out along the old road to the Ravine Trail and continue on toward the Head of Tides if there had been traffic on the trails. The old road wasn't good for running at all, but people had evidently been out on the Ravine Trail coming from the Cathance Road communities as there was a good snowshoe trail winding along the singletrack. Good tracks across the new bridge and through the woods until the Blueberry Trail intersection. From that point on it was just a narrow path from a few others walking that way so not exactly fast running, but you know what, although I recognized that I wasn't too frustrated. I do love that stretch of trail and was glad to be able to get out there. I turned around a little before Cathance Road when the tracks sort of petered out and I didn't feel like deep snow tromping.

Took the dirt road down to Tedford Road and then returned on the powerlines. This still had me coming up a bit short so I did a neighborhood loop to even out the mileage to 12.0 on the dot :) Then it was in to eat pancakes and bacon. A good first "long" run for the Run the Rock training cycle!