Happy Days to Kendall Lake & then some

This run was planned for last weekend, but since it was too busy and the Dirty Dog 10K race was going on, we decided to move it to this weekend. I spent the night at Brian's apartment in Streetsboro last night since we would be waking up around 7:30 to head out to Happy Days. Wilma from Youngstown met us at Brian's apartment this morning and we all left together from there.

The temperature wasn't too bad in the mid 30s. The only concern we had was the rain since the radar looked like there might be alot in the morning. The only thing I had with me was a cotton long sleeve shirt, so I decided to put band-aides on my nipples to play it safe! It ended up not raining much luckily.

We got to the Happy Days parking lot around 8:35 and waited until about 9:00 in case anyone else showed up. No one else did so we got on our way. We ran on the left side of the ledges going out towards Kendall Lake. The tall sandstone ledges always seem to amaze me everytime I run out there.

When we got to Kendall Lake, we decided to run a few hills at the cross country course and use the bathrooms as well. The first hill is pretty tough where people go sledding, but the second hill we ran on is INSANE!! It starts out like the last hill and then halfway through it kicks it up a notch. It almost feels like you're climbing up a wall rather than running up a hill. I tried to run most of the big hills today pretty hard to get good hill work in. Also, the faster you run the hill, the faster you get it over with!

On our way back, we ran on the other side of the ledges for a different route. At the end, the trail goes downhill quite a bit only to go uphill the same amount to finish. I pushed it up this last long hill and didn't feel too bad once I got to the top, just breathing a little heavy. Wilma said, "I couldn't run that fast up the hill if I tried!" So that made me feel good!

We got back to the car and were thinking about calling it a day with 7.5 miles. After talking some, Wilma said she was up for more if we were. Well there was no backing down now! We decided to run on the loop by the parking lot on the other side. Some walkers we saw at 8:30 when we first started said it was really muddy over there, so we were a little leary.

We ran a pretty decent pace on this loop. It was nice because most of the loop, it seemed, was a gradual downhill. We got halfway through the loop and didn't run into much mud. We figured the walkers were just wimps. Well, the second half was a complete change. In some spots your foot would sink about 4 inches into the ground. I knew we couldn't finish the run without getting a little dirty. We got back to the car, ran a little extra around the field to get 11 miles on Brian's Garmin, then called it a day. I was really happy with the run and glad we did the extra 3.5 miles!