Staying with my in-laws at Cuba Lake (NY). Drove 5 miles up to Hanging Bog Wildlife Management Area to look for some trails, or at least run the very nice, shady dirt roads there. After a few false starts down old logging roads and the like, found a barely discernible trail in the woods. Some very old flagging. Eventually, the markings became better. I should have looked behind me at that point...I should have realized I just merged from an old, disused trail onto a more active trail...I should have realized that when I came back this way, I might miss the old, disused trail and stay on the more active trail and not get back to where I started...ahh, hindsight is so 20-20. But I have an old water bottle that says "you can't be lost if you don't care where you are" and that pretty much summed up this run. I knew I'd come out to a road eventually--in fact, I did, twice, the same road each time but I didn't know it until I went the "wrong" way the second time and came back to the place I was the first time...at which point, I headed back the other way and figured I would run until I got somewhere. I had about 800 calories and 2 liters of water with me, I could have gone a long, long way if needed....the security blanket of being an ultrarunner. Don't worry, be happy, just run. Sadly, it didn't take long before I figured out where I was, and aimed my shoes back towards the car. Might have gone farther but since I no longer had the excuse of being lost, figured I should head back to the lake for the swimming, wake boarding, and water skiing parts of the day. Got 1.5 hours in, probably 8 or 9 miles, a good day's work for a mid-week run.
As for the running: there was some awesome groove & flow on this twisting, turning, extremely runnable trail, and the synapses were firing away at being somewhere new and unknown. Several forest types--mixed hardwoods, including a lot of oak, some open, almost park-like stands, and beautiful red pine stands with lots of soft carpet. Tell me again why I used to run on pavement so much?.....
Highly recommended run for a Thursday morning...as long as you don't want to know where you are at all times...
Go run in the woods!
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