the Way of the Turtle

5.2 Mile Run in the Albany Pine Bush
Wednesday, March 13, 2013

I know I should have been getting ready to head west tomorrow after work (and then really west Friday morning) but after being sick for the last few days I needed to get outdoors even more... so I headed over to Six Mile Waterworks Park (ie. Rensselaer Lake) to do a bit of easy running. I haven't been there in a long time - since well before they installed all the traffic circles and re-routed the entrance to the park - so I had no idea what condition the trails would be in.

The trails through the park have been somewhat neglected, not that surprising given all the work that's been done in the last year or so, making access difficult. The biggest surprise was that the trailer where the city used to rent boats in the summer is gone - guess it wasn't a money maker.

The trails over to and through the Pine Bush Rapp Barrens are exactly as I remembered them, and best of all - the bridge over to the peninsula has its decking again, allowing access to the unofficial trails over there. I would have liked to do another mile or two but decided to err on the part of caution... besides, I still had plenty to do between errands and work at home.

I doubt the Six Mile Waterworks/Rapp Barrens trails will ever become a regular fixture in my runs - they're just too short, and I'm not a fan of looping the same trails over and over - but I have some fun memories of them (I started my current stretch of regularly running races there back in 2005, with the 3rd annual Dodge the Deer 5k trail race) and it's definitely a fun place for a short easy run.

JMH