Beltzville State Park Trail Run

Yesterday, my body got a much needed day of rest.  Today, I was back at it.  I'm sort of in taper mode before the 50 miler, now I guess.  I'll probably run with the same frequency, but run less mileage.

Kelley and I planned to run in the morning, but I cancelled the run since I felt like crap.  I was planning an easy and fun trail run in the afternoon anyway.  The temperature was around 60, so it was perfect.  I threw on shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

I always like trying new places.  I've noticed for some time that Beltzville State Park has a few trails.  It's nothing big, but I figured I could get a couple miles in anyway.  The lake is pretty long.  I found some loops that looked promising.  It isn't too far away, so I headed there.

I thought maybe I could run 6 or 7 miles, but I had no real plan.  I went to the Christman Trailhead.  I started off running downhill nice and easy.  It was a grassy trail that was kind of boring at the beginning.  Then, it dipped into a nice pine forest. 

There were a couple options to take and they were tempting, however I wanted to stick to my plan.  That was to follow this loop until the blue trail.  I did just that.

I ran on to the blue/white trail.  The blue trail goes over a creek and next to some waterfalls.  That was a cool place to run.  I took some pictures with my GoPro.  After briefly going up the waterfall trail, I came to the road.  I turned around and headed back to where I came from.

This time, I took the white trail.  It is the Cove Ridge Trail.  This loop is supposed to be 2 miles in length.  This trail was just awesome.  It started with a little climbing and had some up and down, but it was mostly through pine forest, along a ridge.  I love running through pine forests and seeing the lake below was neat too.

I enjoyed gliding in and out of the trees.  The trail did weave around, so it wasn't very fast.  After about a mile, it started to turn away from the water.  I knew this would be the crappier section of the loop.

This section certainly wasn't as good, but at least it still went through pine forests.  It was a little more open and I could run faster.  At one point, a lady was breaking off a log.  I ran past her and scared her.  I yelled to her beforehand, but that still startled her.  I saw one guy by the waterfalls, this woman and a third person later on.

I finished up the loop and head out to finish the first loop.  Eventually, I came to a parking area that was down the road.  I couldn't figure out where the loop went.  Later on, I learned that I cut across and didn't really run the entire first loop.  I'll have to check that out next time.

I decided to finish up by just running up the road.  It was a tough uphill climb, but it wasn't too long.  It was getting hot out, so I was sweating.  It was good to get to my car and finish up.  I wish I didn't cut the route and could've run longer.  Two more miles would've been nice.  Oh well, it was still an enjoyable run and somewhere I'll go to again.

Tomorrow morning, I'll run with Kelley again.  We haven't run in a couple weeks.  I'm going to do the LVRR Summer Series 5k in the evening.  I'm not sure if I'll give an all out effort, but I guess I'll run hard.  I hate 5ks, but I do need to keep working on my speed, especially as it gets hotter out.

4.06 miles - 42:20 (10:26 pace)