Here There and Everywhere

My sister Jamie came home for the weekend, so we decided to go on a long run at Mill Creek Park today. We planned on doing the big loop, the small loop and a little extra to get 20 miles in. We arrived at the Lily Pond parking lot around 4:45, listened to some music to get pumped up, then decided we better get moving and try to beat sunset.

Jamie warming up for the run:

The trails were in pretty good condition for the most part. You could see the dirt and leaves on the ground. The trail was narrow on the west side between the steel and covered bridges though due to snow drifted up. It was still completely frozen. The trails were like this in even more places during the Covered Bridge FA 50K. You could still see our footprints deep in the drifts from the 50K. So anyways, we had to walk these sections to avoid falling off the cliff into the water.

The other section that is worth noting is at the YUT-C turnaround bridge by Lake Newport. These trails were muddy (as always) and it was hard to avoid getting your shoes covered in mud.

(Ducks in Lake Newport)

Both of us were feeling pretty good at the turnaround point for the big loop, but we knew the hardest part was still to come: The MONKEY TRAIL! These hills were still covered in snow and we had fun sliding/skiing down the hill by the "love log."

Once we got back to our car, we couldn't believe it was already 7:30 and starting to get dark. We decided to move our car outside the park onto the neighborhood streets and run around the area on the roads. We couldn't remember how long the big loop was, but I thought it was around 11 or 11.5 miles, so we figured we should run somewhere between 55-65 minutes on the roads.

The air felt nice and cool and we both felt like we could run forever. We ended up running by Chaney High School and did 2 miles on their track. It reminded us of high school track and we talked about all the memories we had. It gave me a weird feeling since I had a meet here in HS. Having run in both college and high school, it seemed like high school track meets had a bigger buzz and excitement to them than college meets for some reason.

We finally got back to our car. Both of us laughed because it felt like we had been running for days. It was a good mix of roads and trails. I tried to measure the route we ran when we got back home and I figured we probably ran about 19miles. I'm glad we got one final long run in before Boston. Next weekend my sister and I will be running the Cook Forest Half Marathon.

(The key to staying alive in

Youngstown at night is acting tough!)