Training Log - Friday, March 26, 2010

Another chilly morning, but with a new training route on the schedule. My running buddies introduced me to Wade Mountain and its trails today. Granted, it had been a while since they had run the trails and they were kind of reintroduced to the area as well. Richard picked me up at 5:25 AM this morning and we met up with the other guys at the trail head at the bottom of the mountain at 5:45 AM. It was pitch black and I was the only one with a headlamp. We initially decided to wait until daylight but quickly realized that it could take a while. Instead, I took the lead and off we went. We started on Devil's Racetrack Trail and followed it until we connected with the Wade Mountain Trail. Having been running only for a few minutes, it was time for Richard's ceremonial faceplant, we have come accustumed to during our trail runs in the dark. Thankfully, he didn't hurt any limbs aside from his pride. We moved along slowly, respecting the technical trails just enough to avoid any further slips, especially considering the less than sufficient light source available to the four of us. Mike and James had gone all the way to the end of the Wade Mountain Trail in the past, but it did not reach the top of Wade Mountain at the time. This time, we hoped that the trail had been extended to reach the top. And we were in luck. We got to the top and continued on the trail, hoping it would swing around and reconnect to the trails we came in on. However, once we crossed the mountain top and ended up ont he other side, the trail came to an abrupt end. Well , sort of. The Land Trust had already marked the intented continuation of the trails with stakes, but other than that, no work had been done in regard to trail blazing. However, it was kind of fun running from stake to stake, trying to locate the next one. We continued this practice for a few minutes until we reached the end of the markers and started to just bushwack our way to where we thought we needed to go to get closer to our cars. Luckily, Richard located another trail just a minute after we located the last stake of the future Wade Mountin Trail extension. However, after about half a mile, we came upon a barbwire fence with a "No Trespassing" sign. Apparently, a local hunting club owned a piece of land that cut right through the unnamed trail we were on. We contemplated our next move, checking James iPhone and my Garmin and decided to go for it. We hoped that we would only have to cross to the private "hunting grounds" for a few minutes before finding another Land Trust trail to continue our run on. Again, we were in luck. After just 200 yards and lots and lots of shouting of "We're not deer, please don't shoot!" and "We're not talking deer!", we came upon another barbwire fence indicating another property line. We quickly crossed under the barbwire with a sigh of relief and reconnected with yet another trail after briefly running up a small stream. We had now entered the Rock Wall Trail. While James let us know that the name of the trail really did not make any sense since he had been here before and there was no wall, let alone a rock wall anywhere to be found, Richard pointed out just that beforementioned rock wall to all of us. It looked like one of those 3 foot civil war era walls that were used for protection and cover. We continued on this trail which was the muddiest, yet. The water puddles we had to run through resembled small lakes rather than puddles and we sank in ankle deep on numerous occasions. Mike and Richard were embracing it while James and I continued to tip-toe around 'em. Right before we reconnected with the Devil's Racetrack Trail I witnessed another first. James wiped out in a sharp and muddy corner and dove face first into the mud. It made for a grrat picture after we completed the run. We all took away small battle wounds from the various thornbushes we encountered (especially during the bushwacking section of the run), but that's all part of the fun of trail running. It took us almost an hour and a half to run a little over 6 miles, but that is easily explained by the trail blazing, bushwacking and orienteering we had to do. I am looking forward to yet another muddy trail race in the morning.