Thursday, August 26, 2010

Today I decided to go out to Riverside State Park to run before the GSL coaches' meeting at North Central HS.  I should have gone for a hike instead!  I wanted to do my favorite 5-mile loop from Bowl & Pitcher out trail 25 to 110 on the ridge above the river (?--if I remember the trail sign properly...my Riverside SP map doesn't have the numbers on it), then back down & across the Centennial Trail to another section of trail 25 that goes along the river and back to B & P.  This loop brings back a lot of memories of college training.  There is a section of this route that we used to call the Half Pipe, and we'd do hill repeats on it.  We also used to run from SFCC out along trail 25 to the Seven Mile Bridge--the guys' team would take the van out to Seven Mile & hide the key, and we'd run out & drive the van back.  Now I really, really miss those trails!  We were so spoiled for our training runs with Riverside right there!

Here's why I say I should have gone on a hike instead:
I made it to the top of the Half Pipe Hills and was started across the ridge when my calf started killing me.  It may have been that yesterday's hilly run was too much for it, or it may have been that I decided to try running without wrapping my calf first.  At any rate, by the time I got to the place where I was supposed to cross Centennial Trail for the river section, I knew that I was going to be walking back to the car.  Since I had to be at the coaches' meeting, I decided I'd better take the short cut by sticking on Centennial Trail.  I figure that this cut a half-mile off my route.

Today's Mileage = 4.5 miles
August Total Mileage = 254.8 miles