I wanted to explore some of the trail to figure out where to
go to take photographs tomorrow. We
drove first to Hyner Run State Park.
That was okay, but I couldn’t find a great location. Then, we went to Hyner View State Park. That was amazing! It has probably the most amazing mountaintop
views that I’ve ever seen. People come
from all over to hang glide there. We
got to see a couple people doing that.
It was awesome to see and maybe
I wanted to go in this area because I’ll probably run the
Hyner 50K. I wanted to run the trails in
the view area, but the climbs just seemed like a bit much. It was nearly dark too. I went back to Hyner Run to start this short
run.
The weather was very cold for a change. I wore a shirt. I’m not even sure if I have enough technical
shirts to run the rest of the weekend.
It was great to have outstanding weather for a change.
I stared off heading on to the woods road. It is a gravel road that passes through the
park. The course was marked, so it was
easy to follow. I was hoping there would
be a singletrack, but it took some time to get there.
The area along the road was nice as there was water and a
forest. There were cabins too, although
they looked a bit run down and none were occupied. They were kind of creepy. I thought that they would make the perfect
spot to film a horror movie.
Around a mile and a half, I finally came to some trail. This went by a creepy cabin road. Then, it was on to a dirt doubletrack. I thought that I might have to turn around at
a creek crossing, but then I saw a concrete bridge over the water. It was falling apart, but passable.
I continued on. After
the cabin, it was on to some singletrack.
This was a fun, little climb along a dry stream. It was mostly soft, with a lot of pine and
moss. That made it a little slick and it
could be challenging tomorrow.
I didn’t want to go out too far, so I came back at 1.65
miles. This climb was easy, but it was enough
climbing for me. It was slowly getting
dark. I actually saw a truck as I neared
the park. It was the only vehicle on the
road.
I got back to our vehicle and let my dad know that I was
going out the other way. I knew that it
went back to a singletrack. I ran up
that part. It was a steep climb
initially, but then it leveled off. It
was a nice gradual climb, along another dry seasonal creek.
This section was beautiful, but it was really getting dark
by now. I turned around after about half
a mile. Coming downhill and not crashing
in the dark was a challenge.
I missed the turn for the trail and ended up behind a
cabin. Luckily, it is part of the
park. I still turned around and found
the correct route. I came back to my car
and ran the parking area briefly to finish up.
I got 5 miles in for this decent little run.
The race starts at 5 AM tomorrow. I’m going to get up to watch that and take
photos. Then, I’m going to come back to
the camper for a bit and watch the marathon start. After that, I might rest. I want to get some photos a bit later
on. I’m not sure where to go as Hyner
wasn’t as good as I expected and some of the road crossings areas were
disappointing.
I will definitely run tomorrow. When I’ll be able to, I’m not sure. This race is so big that I can’t chase it
around too much. At the same time, I’ll
be out at one aid station area for hours.
I’d love to do some climbing and maybe I will in the evening, but I may
be resigned to simply running miles on the rail trail a few miles away. It would take some time to get there though.
5.02 miles – 49:29 (9:52 pace)
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