the Way of the Turtle

12 Mile Run at Thacher Park
Sunday, April 28, 2007

My original plan was to go to the Pine Bush and do a long run (19 miles or so) today. But as I drove over the weather was cold and windy and it started to rain. Faced with the prospect of five hours of running in the rain... I opted to change plans instead, and headed up to Thacher Park for a shorter run (2-3 hours.)

It's funny how much I enjoy running at Thacher, given that up until last year the only times I ran there were for the annual Indian Ladder 15k trail race and then in 2005 the inaugural Hairy Gorilla Half Marathon. There are lots of reasons I like Thacher - the scenery is awesome, whether you're in the woods surrounded by trees and a variety of cool rocks, or running along the escarpment trail. Generally, the trails at Thacher are not at all crowded, except possibly the escarpment trail on a nice weekend. But best of all - Thacher is far enough out of Albany that the ever-present traffic noise that you hear everywhere in the Pine Bush is gone, and the only sounds are the sounds of nature.

Headed off along the escarpment, loving the fact that I was out running trails again. The streams were running strong, and the waterfalls were looking very pretty. From there I headed up the long hill on the old Paint Mine road... it was nice to see that I can still run up that (there have been plenty of times that I've done more walking than running on that hill!) At the top I gave in to a crazy impulse and ran part of the way to Roemer's High Point... made it up the hill through the fields, but decided to stop and turn around when I hit the steep singletrack. From there it was back down, and down, into the Hop Field swamps... that was a muddy, mucky stretch of trail! Just before returning to the Hop Field parking area and my car, I headed off along the stream and made my way back to the Paint Mine trails. Then it was time for a return run along the escarpment... that was particularly pretty because there was some sunlight peeking through the clouds. The last few hills were definitely tougher than the first few, but definitely not horribly so... I could have kept going for a few more miles before things would have really started to get ugly. Instead, I climbed back into the car (which now smells like a combination of "new car" and "Thacher mud" - wahoo!) and made the drive back to Albany.

So it was a mid-length, rainy, windy, muddy, mucky run... in other words, I had a great time!

I'll be doing the Pine Bush 19 miler after work on Wednesday... after all, NIPMUCK is only a month away...

JMH