Trail running: a new discovery

After my utterly miserable (but for one shining moment, detailed in dewy-eyed splendor in my last post) four-mile, never-say-die mostly-walk/sorta-run Saturday, I decided to check out one of the local parks. I'd heard there were trails suitable for jogging, so I got my youngest brother on board with me and we made plans for a little excursion Saturday afternoon.

And boy, am I glad we did.

Quarry Park isn't enormous, only a few miles of trails on county land. But what it offered was a little piece of nature on the edge of the city. Wooded pathways, old granite quarries for swimming and fishing, a patch of natural prairie, and enough variation to keep me interested for an afternoon.

My brother and I weren't there long, less than an hour. Not enough. So I headed back myself Sunday.

Being out on the trails alone was just what I needed. I've always been a nature girl, I suppose, always wandering away from home, striking out on my own across the corn field and into the woods behind our house, pretending to be lost for hours.

Some of my best memories were from those woods.

So it's no surprise that I've fallen in love with the park. Every day this week, sitting at my desk, I've thought of those trails. How it feels to climb the modest hills and to coast down them, not thinking of my stride or my pace, letting gravity do its thing.

It's the closest I've come to flying since being kept off horseback with my torn ACL.

And it's becoming harder and harder to simply consider running the next best thing. Truly.

These trails aren't particularly technical, but they test me differently than the road does. The road, it sits there, unrelenting, smoldering. Waiting.

The trails, they are dynamic, dancing. Welcoming.

Both are important. Both are still overwhelmingly difficult and frustrate my lack of endurance. But in the trails, I think I may have found a new home.

Last time I went out, on Tuesday night, I put away my watch and checked the time once I started to feel the drag of fatigue. It had been 48 minutes. By the time I got to my car, more than an hour had passed and I'd looped over 4.26 miles.

Magic. There's no other explanation. And I hope this brand of magic sticks around for a long time.