Up and Down

Today was the first day running near Baltimore.   We are camping at Patapsco State Park.  The park is huge in that it runs along the river for mile after mile.  The issue is that the park roads themselves don’t go very far.  The other problem is that Maryland State Parks blow.  They charge for maps of the different sections.  We were only able to even find one map of the trails on a kiosk.  

There is one trail that goes quite far along the river, but I think it is closed because of construction on the road overhead.  I might explore it tomorrow anyway.  All the other trails in this area are very short with the Ole Ranger Loop being the longest at 1.5 miles.

Since I was only doing 4 miles today, I just opted to mostly run on the roads around the park.  I began by running our campground loop.  There are a lot of hills here and that made the loop difficult.  The worst hill was a steep up and down just after the end of the campground.  It was tough to even drive, so you can imagine how difficult running it was.

The campground loop was about .4 miles and the up and down added a few tenths more.  I then headed to the other side of the park, under the highway.  There were more hills over there.  My first mile was quite slow.  I went up to the park office and ran around it.

After that, I headed onto the Ole Ranger Trail.  It started with some uphill.  I said to myself that if I saw some more ascending, I’d turn around.  The trail wasn’t too rocky, but there were some rocks.  It did snake around, causing for a slow pace.  I got to a fork in the trail and chose the shorter path.  It came out into a field, so I turned around.  I didn’t want to run through the high brush without bug spray on.  I already had to duck a few bushes earlier in the trail.  I was without trail shoes.

I didn’t go that far out, so I came back pretty quickly.  I looped around the park office again.  I still couldn’t believe how slow my pace was.  It was over 10 minutes.  It didn’t feel that slow.  My legs were beat up from walking all day, but they didn’t seem too bad.

I then went on the short out and back to the Small Pond Trail.  The pond was certainly that.  The path out there was short and the pond itself was underwhelming.  I did go off on another trail and that was a neat short segment.  It had a lot of curvy low laying trees, almost like vines.  The trail came out to a beat up motel next to the park, so I turned around and went back to the main road.

I then headed back toward the campground.  I did a short out and back to the main road after going under the tunnel.  I went back the other way to go through a parking area.  Of course there were more rolling hills.  That was the theme of this tough run.  

When going through the lot, I saw a deer at the other end of the loop.  I thought about going down one of the trails, but instead I ran by the deer.  I eventually scared it into the woods and noticed that it was there with a baby and another adult.  I never get tired of running by deer.  I should start keeping track of how many I see on my runs.  Obviously, it would be a lot more when I’m on trails regularly.  We saw plenty of them walking around last night.  This park is full of them.

As I was heading back toward the campground, I noticed a couple guys coming up a path.  I decided to run there.  I ended up doing a short out and back.  It was worth it though as there was a spectacular view of the park’s river valley.

There was a trail there, but I was almost done so there was no point in exploring it.  Now I just had to climb the tough hill before the campground again.  That was quite the challenge.  It was the end of my run too, right as I got to the top.  It was a tough and slow 4 miles, but I was glad to be done.

The weather didn’t seem too bad when I started, but it was brutal as I ran.  It was so muggy.  I was sweating like crazy.  I went shirtless as usual too.  I guess the nice days of running are over for a little while now.

We left the track early today because I was getting tired and sore.  Plus, they had some issues with cars flying over bumps on the track, so they did a lot of work and had big delays.  Leaving early allowed me to get my run in around dinner time.  Tomorrow ends with a race, so I won’t be so lucky.  I am cutting back, so I only have to run 8 miles.  I’m not sure where I can do that though, since there aren’t a lot of places to run.  Add to that that it will most likely be dark when I go out.  I do have a headlamp with me if I decide to run some trails.  I’m not sure I’ll do that without a map.

My body felt recovered and rested before this run, but the combination of the walking at the track and running these hills today didn’t help by the end.  I’m not quite as refreshed as I was earlier in the week.  It will likely only get worse as the weekend moves along.  I’ll just have to battle through it though.  Regardless, it was a productive day.

It is now the end of August and I’ve had quite a busy month.  I ran 27 out of the 31 days this month.  I ran 28 times total.  My mileage for the month was just over 155.  It has been one of my most productive months ever and certainly the most I’ve done in over two years.

4 miles – 39:24 (9:51 pace)