The trail marathon is next weekend in the Pinckney Recreation Area, and I'm planning to run the half-marathon, so I wanted to go down to the area and check out the trail. I don't run much on trails these days, and I'd heard the trails were tough, so I thought it would be nice to preview the course. The first image here is the half-marathon course. Runners doing the marathon get to do it twice.
The kids had sleepovers last night - Abbey had Rachel spend the night and Quinn spent the night at James's house. Rachel and James are siblings, so it was pretty much just a trade. Once Rachel went home and we had Quinn back, we packed up the kids, the bikes, some lunch, and a few gallons of water, and headed to Pinckney. I didn't want to run the whole course today, but I wanted to run roughly ten miles of it, so I had Cindy drop me off along Glenbrook road at the far west end of Hi-Land Lake.
It was warm out - probably in the mid-60s - so I wore running shorts and a t-shirt. I took my phone, two packets of Gu (or something similar), a map, and a quart of water in my Camelbak waist pack and set off in the wrong direction. I was suspicious that I was going the wrong way almost immediately, but after running about 8 minutes, I was sure. I was going clockwise, and I really wanted to run counterclockwise. I could have continued in my clockwise direction - the earth is round, after all, and it would have worked out fine, but I turned back and was at the Glenbrook intersection only 15 minutes behind schedule.
The run was great. The trail was mostly smooth, sandy in places, with lots of ups and downs and curves. Not too much of it would be consider a technically difficult trail, although there were some long steep climbs with plenty of roots. It would most definitely be a really, really, really fun mountain bike ride. Hmmm. There's an idea. There were lots of mountain bikers on the trail. The mountain bikes generally ride clockwise, while the hikers go counter, with some exceptions for those doing smaller loops.
The sun was shining, there was a light breeze, and I was mostly alone, except for plenty of wildlife, running through the forested hills. I was glad I had a map, because while there were some signs, there were also some places where I had to stop and sort things out with the map. It was really nice. It was tiring. I was very relieved to reach the Silver Lake Beach where Cindy and the kids were waiting for me. I had sucked down all of my water and both of my Goos by the time I finished. The Gu shots, by the way, were caffeinated and I think they nearly gave me a caffeine overdose while I was running. About five minutes after sucking down the second packet, I felt like I'd had way too much coffee. A few minutes later, however, I felt really good. I think next time I'll avoid the caffeinated shots.
I finished the in about 1 hour and 50 minutes. I think, given my wrong turn at the start, I covered about 10 miles. Doing the math, that's a terribly slow pace, at about 11 minutes per mile. I never run that slowly, and I'm pretty sure I was running faster than that today, so either I spent more time on my little breaks than I realized, or I ran further than than I've estimated. It doesn't really matter. Once I reached the Silver Lake Beach, I waded out into the ice cold lake up to my thighs for about 10 minutes to keep the swelling down. It felt great. I was pleased to run the distance on the trail without any significant pain or injury. The middle toe on my left foot suffered, a little, I think. The toenail is sore and rather red. Maybe I'll lose it. Want to see a picture?
We ate our lunch on a blanket in the shade of a tree beside the lake. The sun was still shining and there was almost no wind. It looked like a perfect day for a ride. The plan was to ride mostly straight south about 12 miles to Chelsea (home of Jiffy mix), and then come back the same way or maybe another route depending on how we felt. However, as we were walking back to the car, the sunny sky went dark, the temperature dropped, and the wind began to blow. We thought it was going to rain before we even started riding. Somewhat apprehensive about the weather, we set out on our ride, stopping first to pee in an outhouse full of wasps. That was fun.
Once out of the Pinckney Recreation Area, we decided to change our route. The road we had planned to ride (Territorial) for several miles turned out to be very narrow with fast, heavy traffic. It went off of our map, but we decided to go south on the Dexter Town Hall Road, hoping that we could catch some other road west once we'd traveled south a bit. Well, that didn't work very well. Dexter Town Hall turned way back to the east and never gave us a westerly road. And the wind kept blowing and the clouds looked ominous.
After several miles, we did finally get a road back west, but it was only briefly paved, and then turned to something other than pavement. It was nice, actually, it was mostly smooth and quite hard. This is picture of it:
It was quite hilly, giving us plenty of opportunities to practice shifting. Cindy and Abbey were shifting a brand new chain and cassette, too.
The road we were riding was Island Lake Road. Eventually it took us past Island Lake, shown in these pictures. There were a few houses along the shore of the lake, some were new, like this one:
Others were old, like this one.
We were really expecting the clouds to open up and dump rain on us at any moment, and the kids were quite chilly, so we decided to keep our ride short once again. We pulled out the kids jackets, but we hadn't even brought pants for them. Once we found a road, we headed back north to Pinckney without ever making it into Chelsea. The strong wind made the ride back to north quick and easy. However, the roads were very rough and narrow, and there was far more traffic than we would have liked.
Not a bad day at all, but once again we had our ride cut a little short. We're going to have to bump our mileage up to get ready for MUP tour in July. I just learned my parents did 55 miles today, with a total of 85 for the weekend. They'll be ready for the tour! Next week we'll be back in Pinckney for the Trail Marathon (half), and we'll bring the bikes again, but I think we'll go back to Chelsea in the car and ride the Waterloo roads instead of those in Pinckney. And we'll bring pants for kids, too. Even if the morning temperature is in the 80s.
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