6.5 Mile Run in the Albany Pine Bush
Monday, December 12, 2016
On the plus side, it was only about 2-3 inches of snow, so my screwshoes were more than up to the task. More so than my legs, which reminded me repeatedly that I haven't run in over a week, due to a combination of being exhausted after work and then fighting off a bug which has had me dealing with an occasionally sore throat and occasional fits of coughing over the past week. But having today off (snow day! yeah!) meant I had a rare opportunity to go for a weekday run on trails in daylight, which was just too good a chance to miss.
I mostly looped my way through the Great Dune section, though near the end I did a short jaunt over toward the Madison Avenue Pinelands trailhead (which technically is closed for tree thinning, but it was late enough in the day that in all likelihood they'd gone home, if they were even working today.) Slow going, between the snow and my legs having a lot of rust. Found myself thinking about how much the trails and the Pine Bush have changed since I first started running there something like 16 years ago. A lot of trails re-routed and/or closed, and huge sections of what used to be woods (both decidous and pine) thinned out or eliminated entirely to "restore" the pine barrens habitat. As an amateur naturalist I have to support preserving the ecosystem as best we can... but as a runner I really do miss some of my favorite Pine Bush trails that either are no more or have had their character changed greatly by changes in their surroundings.
In any case, it looks like once again I'll be tackling my first snowshoe race of the season (this Saturday at Gore Mountain) with no opportunity to train a few times first. Of course this is after last season when I ran exactly once on snowshoes, and that race really didn't have enough snow for them. So I guess my legs are rusty in more ways than one...
JMH
