Training Log Archive: Tundra/Desert

Did no running today, but instead walked around the map looking at the Saturday and Sunday Fundraiser venues. I left the actual mapping for my December trip.

From my hotel in Morrisville, NC, ran to Umstead Park to check the Friday Sprint venue of the Fundraiser. The weather was gorgeous. The traffic, less so. With the hotel being in officeparkland and the park, more like in freewayland, I had scouted the terrain beforehand on Google maps and saw that it was possible to run through Lake Crabtree County Park.

I did go to the park website. It said certain things about partial trail closures, but nothing quite prepared me for what the reality was. When I got there, ALL trails were closed. As in, at every trailhead there was a sign saying "do not go here under penalty of incarceration".

I went in, ran on the paved road (kids were playing on trails, oblivious), waited for the park ranger nazi to get out of sight, and cut right through. I made sure to stay off the damn trails, as they wished. At the back end of the park there was a locked gate with razor wire. Fortunately I was able to squeeze through a gap.

What is wrong with this country?

Then, I ran back after walking around the map. The map will need some work, but not a lot, nothing like the FLO project.

As I passed the razor wire gate, I thought I might just give the nazis what they wanted this evening, and marched along, around the park's periphery. It was a 20-minute detour in heavy traffic. The sun had set. As I got closer to the hotel, I thought about cutting through the backwoodia in officeparkland, and did it.

The woods were nice and open, with no traps or fences; but halfway between the cul-de-sacs there was a swiftly flowing stream, the depth of which I dared not to test. So I found a log (I don't think it is the exact log that shows in the aerial photo, mine looked less than a year old; but pretty close). The log was really slow going because of the branches on it. Eventually I popped out of the woods right where I had expected, and stumbled into the hotel leaving dirty footptints.

It was a late afternoon jog from home to Allison's place for Thanksgiving dinner. I worked late in the morning on getting the info out about the Aptos camp, and then the server crashed and I spent an hour trying to revive it. Thus I ran out of time for the training run, and decided to run to the Villas instead of taking Muni. I carried my clothes. The weather was great.