A new crutch....

 

The trails in which we ran... 

Tuesday was a normal day, I woke up dragged myself out of bed grabbed some breakfast and rode into work. I was a little over-layered as I had been on Monday also but it seemed cool and damp when I took the dog out for her morning romp. Work was work nothing crazy nothing odd, just steady work. Paul and I had ran on Monday but were both trying to kick a little cold and figured if we ran it would work us a little harder and help clear the cold. He lives just footsteps from the office so he left to get ready as per usual and I went over to meet him after I got in my running gear. Luckily it was a warmish November day and I ran in shorts and a long sleeve shirt.

Waiting for Paul I decided that today we would take the trail instead of the road. I ran it by him as we headed out. it was a go. We had run the trail route before but it had been quite some time. It is basically a winding park walking trail that we do an out and back that ends up slightly over 5K which works into our lunch schedule just about right.

This trail is also the first portion of our lunch hour trail ride that takes us through some singletrack and over to the MTB park 4X and climbing training spot.

We got to talking about "trail running" as we ran along the footpath. I was wondering about the varying grade of trail running and if there were people who would run through a park and afterwards feel they had trail ran. As we came to a fork in the trail Paul said well should we and started to run into the Singletrack that we ride regularly. I took chase and it was on. my first singletrack "trail run". Well unless you count running with a bike up a hill that I blew a pedal on or running a km or so with a bike that i had broken a chain on etc. This was my first trail run for the sake of running in a trail. It was amazing. It helped that I knew the trail and all of the locations of the rocks and roots that were hiding under the fall leaves. 

Anyway we ran the length of the singletrack which spits us out in a field and then across the field over a foot-bridge and back onto the footpath and out to the edge of the park. On the way back I took the lead through the singletrack and saw another runner off in the distance. When we were back out and onto the footpath I talked to Paul about the other runner and it turned into a bit of a joke as he had not seen it and questioned me on the legitimacy of the whole thing.

Wednesday and Thursday went from ride days to more trail run days. I think we both caught the bug.

I still got in great rides morning and evening but lunch has been to the trails by foot. next will be to take on a longer set of trails by foot. Maybe an off-road bi-athalon or tri-athalon will be in my future...

Oh and to clarify this and the enclosed pic does not mean I will not ride trail any-more, it only means that for the past 3 days I chose foot over bike. To be fair the MTB was not in my office as one of my choices...