Call me Corrigan

It all started a few weeks ago. I went for a long run on a new route. I was going to meet the LW and Little Man for his soccer game. I wanted to do about 8 or 9 miles, but the field is only about 5 miles away. So I went to a convenient online mapping service, scouted out a route. Looked simple enough, and I ran it.

It started well, but I'd run most of the beginning of it in pieces before. The trouble came when I entered new territory. You see, it wasn't on roads, but trails. There are plenty of trails around here. Most of them are probably better described as forest roads, because they are so wide, they are however, closed to traffic which makes it a very attractive place to run.
But they're just not marked very well. So needless to say, I went a little astray. My 8-9 mile run turned into a 9.5 mile run. Not too bad. Except it was cold and rainy.

(And his game ended up getting canceled:

• Name at end of alphabet
• last call on roster
• didn't get the call before LW left the house
• Glad coach wasn't there, I'd have been bailing LW out of prison.)

Fast forward one week. I'm in North Carolina for a conference. I ran the first morning (it's great to be time zones ahead so you can wake up early and go for a run without the misery of waking up early.) It was a nice short one. No problems, just a little drizzle at the end. Over the course of the next two days I find a running route map outside one of the conference rooms. Eureka! It's perfect. I take a look that night and find a nice 6ish mile loop to run the next morning.

Great plan. 6ish mile loop. On trails. In the dark. In an area I've never run in before. Can you see where this is going? I think the best thing that can be said about that run is that I couldn't find the trails in the dark, therefore I didn't get miserably lost trying to follow them. My 6ish mile loop became a kinda 4ish mile loop with spokes shooting off it! Here's the loop, you just lose a bit of the frustrating "shoot, dead end!" aspects of it.

Fast forward to this morning. Not wanting to repeat my past mistake, I took a very close look at the route online. I saw where I'd gone wrong: I needed to take a left immediately after the house by the train tracks, last time I'd gone straight. So armed with that, and a list of the names of the three trails I needed to hit, I was off.

Yeah. Well little did I know, there were TWO left turns, only one of which was marked on any map, and you just couldn't see the other on any overhead imagery I could find. (Anyone think of asking Google if they could do a winter global overlay? No pesky trees to block trails.)

So needless to say. I got to do a bit more exploring. Due to my natural sense of direction (LW suppress that snicker), I found my way back to the main cobblestone trail and finished up. Nine miler becomes 11 miler. But....I didn't miss the Little Man's soccer game, or my name would be Mudd.

The good thing is, I've found quite a few neat paths through the woods, and with the summer coming it will be just lovely to explore some more.

Kit notice:
I bought an Amphipod Hydration belt online. I figured with running longer distances in the summer weather I'd need something more than the single 20 ounce Ultimate Direction bottle I had. (I'd gotten that one free a couple of summers ago in Hawai'i when the Ultimate Direction sales rep was in the shop when I went in to buy some new shoes). I really liked the bottle in the Ultimate Direction set up, but holding it in my hand just got a little annoying. So I bought the belt and ran with it this morning. It was great. I was worried about bounce, but there was none. I had to do a little tweaking with bottle position, but luckily that's not too hard. Over all very satisfied after one run. We'll see how it goes as the summer progresses.