Training Log - Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Richard picked me up at 5:30 AM this morning and we had decided to switch it up, again. We headed for Wade Mountain to run the trails there for a nice little 6 mile loop. When we arrived at the trailhead, it was still dark. Usually, that's not a problem, but today, we did not bring our headlamps. So we waited for about 15 minutes and took off. The temperature was nice and cool. We still should have brough some water along the run, anyway. We headed up the Devils Racetrack and merged right onto the Wade Mountain trail to continue our loop. We knew we'd eventually dead end into a fence across the trail indicating a private property section, but not until after we reached the end of the cleared trail. First, we had to make our way down a half mile section of marked (but not yet cleared) trail. When we reached that area, I noticed something really strange or cool. I am not sure how describe it, so here is the picture.

It was a deer with 8-point antlers (or 4-point, who knows, I sure don't). Additional bones of its remains were close by. Not sure how this beautiful animal ended up in its current state, but it was definitely an interesting find on our morning run. We continued to make our way down the marked but unclerared trail until we got to the fence. Once there, we continued on what should have been a 200 yard section across private property until we could rejoin the Landtrust trail that would take us back to the parking lot. Well, no such luck, we missed that cutoff and ended up running a loop back to the parking lot, finishing our run on a half mile stretch of country road. Overall, a nice 5 1/2 mile run, but very slow.