Hitting the trails!

I love trail running.  Love, love, love.  Unfortunately, I'm also quite clumsy and usually end up eating dirt and also can't find my way out of a paperbag without getting lost.

Today was a great day - perfect weather, no tripping and falling, no getting off trail, and the trails were in great condition.

I do a 4- mile loop, but there are several off-shoots that allow you to add on. I've done the 6-mile loop but it gets really technical and then I don't much enjoy that as much, because I'm constantly worried about killing myself on one of the rock gardens.   The 4-miler is perfect.   Technical in parts, a good number of short, steep climbs, a bunch of trees to jump and just enough of a challenge.

Here's the view at about mile 1.5 - the route crosses over a road here, so I'm actually on the overpass looking back over the trails.

Once you duck back into the woods, from miles 2-4 you are pretty much running along the water, or close to it.   At mile 2.5, this is the view:

It's interesting - there's an old, unkept road that is visible in pieces along this part.  Many times, it's completely under water if the water table is high enough.  I don't know what it used to be though - I wonder if this road was there before they dammed the river to make the reservoir?

This isn't the greatest picture, but this is about mile 3-ish - it's a swooping downhill right into another climb.  The mountain bikers who passed me were clearly not in the right gear and I heard some mashing of gears as they tried to quickly downshift in order to make it up the steep incline.  At least when running you don't have to worry about shifting, just about making it up the climb!