Desert Southwest Vacation 2007 (Day 3)

Day 3 (Monday, June 18th). Today the vacation really started--we had big plans for the next few days begining with todays drive to Zion Canyon National Park in Springdale, Utah. We began this morning with breakfast done right---the budget-priced breakfast buffet at Terrible's Hotel and Casino. The buffet was $5/person, the food was better than expected, and there was lots of it. After filling up we made our way out of Las Vegas on route 515 toward Henderson and then 146 to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We traveled along the scenic Northshore Road (route 169). This was an incredible drive, the vistas of scrub desert, brilliant red rock formations and surrounding black, brown and gray mountains were overwhelming. Unfortunately the picture at right just does not do justice to the amazing landscape we drove through. Our morning destination was the Valley of Fire State Park, another example of the Mojave Desert System.

The VoF, as advertised, was hot. There wasn't much shade and we decided on a short hike to Mouse's Tank, AKA the Petroglyph Canyon Trail. Mouse was a renegade southern Paiute Indian who pestered settlers and other indians back the 1890s and this area was his favorite hideout because it contained a secret "tank" or basin of water even during dry periods. We took off on the approximately 1 mile round trip hiking leisurely and wandering off trail to observe the numerous lizards that were actively scrambling over the rocks. The quickness and agility these creatures demonstrated running away from my pointed camera made me swear quietly to myself. Leapin lizards! Taking pictures here was challenging because the sunlight was so intense. At left is Jane and the kids embarking on the hike from the trailhead. There was a sizable and what appeared to be a deep waterhole at the end of the trail. Whether the pool just collected water or if there is a spring underneath that sustains it I don't know, but it's amazing that a pool of water, even shaded, could persist in the dry desert climate. We spent quite a lot of time looking for lizards (see picture below) .

We didn't stay in the VoF too long--this being just a brief stop on way to Zion. Of course along the trail were numerous examples of petroglyphs, hence the reason for the alternative "Petroglyph Canyon Trail" designation. Examples of the petroglyphs are shown below.

On the way out of the VoF state park, Elroy took a picture a famous rock formation called the "balancing rock" for obvious reasons. This picture in one of my favorites.

After the VoF we made a second short stop at the "Lost City Museum" which supposedly documents the histories of native peoples who had populated the nearby Virgin River Valley. I'll talk more about the Virgin River later. When Lake Mead was filling-up after construction of the Hoover Dam, an Anasazi Indian archeologic site called the Pueblo Grande de Nevada and its' artifacts were moved to the museum. The museum wasn't much to talk about but did have life-size replicas of pueblos that we were able to walk into and experience. The pueblos were constructed half underground to take advantage of the cooler earth and in fact were comfortable even in the blistering mid-afternoon sun.

Onto Zion. The town of Sprindale is the western gateway to Zion Canyon NP. Springdale is a cozy little town spread over about two miles and is part of the same canyon system as Zion. This is a one street town with a collection of nice hotels, B&Bs and shops nestled among towering canyon walls. Altough Zion has a Lodge in the park, I think I would rather stay in Springdale, at least at the time of year we went. Mid-June was not yet peak tourist season and there was plenty of parking throughout the town so we could shop for groceries, eat-out or do laundry. The drive from the Driftwood Lodge (where we stayed) to the Zion visitor parking lot was probably about 5 minutes and if we didn't want to drive, there were free shuttle buses running continuously all day lone. Out the back door of our room at the Driftwood Lodge we had an wonderful view of the surrounding mountains and eagerly awaited tomorrow's adventure.

Desert Southwest Vacation 2007 (Days 1 and 2)

This year we decided to go to a region of the country that I have wanted to visit for a long time but have always put off.....the desert southwest. In part, I feared that a summer vacation to the desert regions of Nevada, Utah and Arizona just wouldn't be a good idea. Boy, was I wrong. Although it was hot--on most days the heat wasn't a big factor. On those days when the heat was bad, the mornings and evenings were very pleasant for hiking activities.....and even during the hottest late afternoon hours if you were in the shade, the breezes and low humidity made it quite pleasant. My only regret is that we moved from one place to the next every couple of days and didn't spend more time in the places we really liked. We'll defintely go back.

The overall plan was to fly to Las Vegas and tour the local environs, rent a car and make a clockwise loop to experience Zion Canyon NP and Grand Canyon NP, Byrce Canyon NP, Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell National Recreation Area, Flagstaff and Sedona Arizona, and return to Las Vegas via the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead NRA.

Day 1 (Saturday, June 16th). This was basically a travel day. We left BWI airport in the afternoon for the flight to Houston with a connecting flight to Las Vegas. There were thunderstorms in Houston which delayed our connecting flight to Las Vegas. By the time we arrived at McCarran International Airport, retrieved our luggage, leased the rental car, and found the Tropicana Resort and Casino hotel parking lot it was late and I think we pretty much unpacked and went to bed. However, the walk from the check-in counter to our room was our first of several long, torturous walks through the cavernous casinos on the Strip. The Tropicana Resort & Casino is located on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. The main original building, with the Garden room wings (where we stayed), was built in 1957. The intersection of Tropicana - Las Vegas Boulevard has the most hotel rooms of any intersection in the world; pedestrians are linked by overhead bridges to the neighboring casinos: Excalibur Hotel and Casino, New York-New York Hotel & Casino and MGM Grand Las Vegas — the latter being the largest hotel in the world, with 5,044 rooms. The resorts at the four corners have a total of 12,890 hotel rooms as of 2004.

The Tropicana had the look, feel, and odor (particularly that of cigarette smoke) charateristic of the older casinos---but at least it was budget-friendly and had a nice outdoor pool....and a large mirror on the ceiling above the bed.

Day 2 (Sunday, June 17th). On Sunday we visited Red Rock Canyon, one of several National Conservation Areas near Las Vegas featuring a Mojave Desert habitat. Before heading out we first stopped at Mr. Lucky's (in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino) for breakfast. Afterward, I wasn't feeling so lucky after shelling out $60 for breakfast. However, the food was good and got our motors ready for the first day of hiking. RRC is about 30 minutes from downtown Las Vegas and features the Keystone Thrust in which older-aged rock (grey in the picture at left) of the La Madre and Turtlehead mountains had been thrust-up to a higher elevation than the younger-aged beige and red colored rock formations (known as Aztec Sandstone). After a quick stop at the visitors center and chat with a ranger we settled on a moderate 6 mile roundtrip hike to Calico Tanks. The rocks in Calico Hills were comprised of the Aztec sandstone and the trail led to a beautiful scenic overlook. The day was hot with lots of sunshine but the walk was comfortable; at the scenic overlook there was a great breeze that was especially refreshing. The picture below is typical of the terrain we hiked through to get to the scenic overlook; occsionally we had to scramble over rocks but mostly this a was pretty easy hike. When we finished the Calico Tanks trail we continued our drive around the 13 mile scenic park loop stopping at the Willow Springs Picnic Area to rest and take a short hike to observe some famous native american petroglyphs thought to be thousands of years old. This stop was our first sampling that there were sources of water (springs), even in the desert, and how important these springs were to life in this region. The picnic area where the spring flowed had more greenery and more life than that seen at Calico Tanks. Elroy set aside a few bits of oreo cookie on a nearby rock where we were lunching and within a few minutes numerous small chipmunks came to collect these treats. I'm sure these animals (and all the others we didn't see) don't stray too far from this important source of water. In addition, even though the day was starting to heat-up, where we were sitting in the shade was very comfortable. We made the short walk to observe the petroglyphs (see picture below) and then made our way back to Las Vegas and spent the remainder of the afternoon poolside.

In the evening we thought we'd walk the Strip. Although the walk was tedious at times---the distances inside and out of the casinos seemed to stretch on forever---I did think the activity along the Strip was interesting. We enjoyed walking into the Bellagio--one of the high-end casinos that was very elegant and hosts a choreographed water-fountain show in an artificial lake in front of the hotel (see picture below). The Bellagio is directly across from Paris Las Vegas which has a replica of the Eiffel Tower (also see below). We didn't go into Paris Las Vegas but viewing it (and other casinos like New York-New York Vegas and Luxor) from the outside was entertainment enough. We also happened into Desert Passage, a Shopping Mall that is supposed to suggest ancient trade route through Morocco. It was really cool---the ceiling resembling open sky and fooled me initially. Another notable stop was at Ceasar's Palace, where while looking for the Forum Shops (another unique shopping destination) we stumbled into a section of Caesar's called (I only found this out later---this was not planned beforehand) the Pussycat Doll Lounge where skilled cage-dancers performed to entertain weary gamblers. The picture of the PDL (see below) is not mine--when we passed the PDL, it looked like it was just beginnging to open for business--but I thought that a picture would be informative. After that, I was ready to call it quits for the day---and considered it a very successful day.

HATs Off

One would assume that after my recent experience at the Seneca Creek Greenway Trail Marathon I would be taking it easy for awhile. That was my plan until one of my running buddies offered me his entry in the HAT 50 K ultramarathon. How could I resist. This race was run in scenic Susquehanna State Park this past Saturday, March 24, 2007. Once again it rained the day before the race and the course was muddy---nothing like the SCGTM---but there were more and bigger hills which ensured a equally memorable race. The drive northeast to the park at 6:30 in the morning was marked by a nice steady rain that abated minutes before racetime. 400 runners began the race which started in a nice grassy field and contiued there for the first mile before entering the woods--approximately 323 runners finished. The high drop-out rate is due to the course being two loops of 16 and 15 miles and some runners choosing or conceding defeat after the first 16 miles.

Anyway, the picture above was my view (from the back of the group) of the long stream of runners entering the wooded section after having run the first mile. The first 10 miles or so was a lot of stop-and-go running as many traffic jams formed around muddy/slippery downhills, steep uphill climbs and a couple of wonderful creek crossing. On the right is a picture of a woman runner pictured going through the second creek crossing (which we had to do twice). The water here was pretty deep depending on which path one chose to cross the creek. I followed the same line as her and was surprized when water was swirling around mid-thigh with waist-level splashes.

I started the race along with a couple of running friends but after the first mile we got separated as I sped ahead. However, they eventually caught and then past me in the last few miles of the race teaching me a good lesson in humility. Anyway, the course was very scenic and I really enjoyed running through the forests although, as I mentioned earlier the course was very hilly, so much of the time in the woods was spent either going up or going down. You would round a bend along the trail to be greeted by the sight of runners toiling up steep switchback trails (see picture above) that, especially on the second loop, took the wind out of my sails. At times like these, Jane and I often refer to the scene in the opening of GI Jane (a movie about a fictional first woman navy seal, played by Demi Moore) when the Master Chief recites a poem by D.H. Lawrence, entitled "Self-Pity" to the navy seal wannabes.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself,
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough,
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Well, I know pretty well by now that I am not a wild thing because I'm capable of extraordinary levels of self-pity. I was feeling mighty low as I battled nausea from miles 18 to 27. I know....excuses, excuses!!! Around mile 27 or so the course takes runners really close to the finish line (even though you have the toughest miles to go including a gargantuan hill) and you can hear in the distance the race announcer welcoming the finishers and cheering spectators. It's a little surprize the race organizers thought-up to test the mettle of runners who dare to enter their race. It was here that my friends caught up with me and soldiered on with a steely look of determination in their eyes and more energy than I thought I could summon to follow them.
Luckily, I hooked up with another runner, Sal, and we hoofed the remaining miles to the finish line together mainly talking about how tough this race was. Sal had a large contigent of family and friends there to cheer us on to the finish line. I knew they weren't cheering for me, but oddly the effect was the same as if they were and it help me push-on to the finish. I was so fatigued at the end that, even though I looked at the race clock and heard the race announcer call my time, I couldn't register that information and had to wait a couple of days for the race results to be posted to learn my overall time. Looking back I enjoyed the race and even though I may have wallowed in self-pity, this bird didn't drop dead.
Here I am leaving the aid station after completing the first 16 miles in 3 hours, 15 minutes (or a little over 12 minutes/mile). I won't mention the mile/minute pace during the second loop.

George and Jane's Greenway Adventure

On March 3rd, 2007 Jane and I finally ran the Seneca Creek Greenway Ultra-Marathon we had been preparing for. We opted to do the marathon trail distance of 28 miles rather than the full 50K distance, which was a wise choice. The race turned out to be a far greater challenge than we had expected and we were tested to the maximum of our abilities by the horrendously icy and muddy conditions of the course. But, we both won the day completing the race with heads held high. I won't recap the entire race--the memories, although fun to privately relive, are still painful. Instead, I'll borrow a few qoutes from other hard-core ultra-runners as there seemed to be a collective need to share these common stories of misery with each other in the days following this race.

THE BEGINNING:

"There were plenty of runners on-hand, milling around on this pretty, sunny morning. We received a plethora of instructions before the race started and everything was rather low-key... I have run plenty of laid-back races before but when the instructions end like this: "So, be careful and have fun. *2 second pause*. All right, get going", I knew I was in for a different race."

"Rain a few days before and the nighttime freezes ensure long stretches of path covered in a thick, smooth glaze. As the race leaves the road at the start and enters the trail in Damascus Regional Park, I see where here and there a little sun finds its way to the path. In these places, week-old footsteps in the snow have become packed down, re-frozen slush, slick and craggy as a D.C. lobbyist."

"...the melted ice and snow had settled in to form the most slippery surface I had ever run on. "

Early in the race we crossed a sizable stream flowing with frigid water that completely numbed our feet by the time we reached the opposite bank. Man! I remember my feet hurt for the next hundred yards after wading the creek. TKH

"A runner in front of me slides down the slick side hill on his side towards Seneca Creek. Just before going airborne over the embankment and into the drink, he grabs a small tree at the edge and hangs on. I hear later that another runner misses the little tree here and takes the plunge. Most slide down on their butts, a few inches at a time."

THE MIDDLE:
"as the rest of the race would show, if you could jump off the trail to run around mud, ice, or shin-deep water, you would. "

"Every step was an adventure and if I was not sliding uncontrollably on my ass....I was doing my best to make sure my shoes did not get sucked in by the quicksand ice-mud."

Compared to the ankle-deep slick mud the ice was merely a mild nusaince. TKH

"Then they appear. The signs. Excuse me, the stupid signs, as the last of many to come self-admits. Tofu. A non-MCRRC runner near me asks “what the hell is that?”, pointing to a small sign stuck in the mud advertising “Tofu to come – mmm”. I explain that I do not really know, but I suspect that a bored race volunteer with a clinically abnormal sense of humor is advertising the goodies to come at the Sugarland Aid station. This station is MILES away still and soon we are on another sign advertising the fruit of the bean curd. Tofu torture."

"Even after running through streams and splashing water and mud up on me, let alone falling down, they (this runners legs) were still covered in rivulets of blood from the wounds I had sustained so far. "

Personally, I liked Tofu Town they had lots of good snacks--M&Ms, Milky Way candy bars, Girl Scout cookies, PBJ sandwiches--everything you needed for fuel to grind out the last seven miles. TKH

THE AFTERMATH

"As the last person finished in 8:25 minutes or 16 minutes and 17 seconds per mile this guy gets an unbelievably "waytogo" from me. That type of strength takes a set of stones I do not have in order to be out there that long and still finish."

"While there was no t-shirt (who cares), and no medals......a small medal would have been nice. The scars and cuts on my legs are nice proof of the effort I put forth but.....I would like a little more to commemorate my time. Just a little something that I will be able to look back upon and shake my head at what was one of the hardest races I have ever done."

"I regard running this “race” with a weird mixture of dissatisfaction, ......yet with an odd sense of pride at having finished."

"On the long trudge back to my car, I wonder if this race, flawlessly organized and supported as it was, should have been held today under these trail conditions. Now, it is well known that a race day forecast of a hundred-year flood, golf-ball-sized hailstones, and an impending asteroid collision would not deter trail runners from starting any trail race and, most likely, not from finishing it. Were these events to actually occur, these runners would just say “the course was tough, dude”. But this ice, this was crazy."

Water World

I have a few new additions to my aqaurium. Last week I went out and purchased some glossostigma. Glosso is a very nice small plant, made popular by Takeshi Amano, and used as foreground planting (see picturre at left), where it can carpet the bottom. Presumably it is fairly difficult to keep (needs a lot of light, CO2, and soft water). I provide enough light, occasionally supplement with CO2 and Flourish, but don't have a clue whether the water is soft or hard. We'll see what happens.

Also I have gradually lost many of the fish I had when I first established my 20 gallon long aquarium last year and have had to get new ones. One fish that I have always liked is the cardinal tetra and I got nine of them so they can school together. These brightly neoned blue and red striped fish are really pleasing to observe. One day I'll get the proper equipment for taking better photographs, but for now the picture of one cardinal tetra (right) is the best I can get. They dart around very quickly.

Here is what I'm especially excited about. I got my first invertebrates! Four ghost shrimp to be exact. I have been ogling various invertebrates in my favorite tropical fish stores but have been wary about investing in them thinking that they might get eaten by the fish. The ghost shrimp I got were very inexpensive, so I have a chance to see how they progress around some quite larger fish. I have one dwarf gourami and two plecos that, although reported to be good community fish, are big enough to do real damage to the shrimp should they have a notion to do so. So far so good and it is really very interesting to watch the shrimp forage along the bottom and swim around. The ghost shrimp pictured at right has a bunch of eggs under her abdomen and soon I should have many baby shrimp.

Presidents Day Weekend

Over Presidents Day Weekend we took Judy and Elroy on a college visit to St. Mary's College in St. Mary's County, MD. That was on Monday and I'll post more on their college searches some other time. On Sunday, we took Astro for a long hike behind Magruder High School. The area, nameless as far as I know, consists of acres upon acres of open fields and woods. Although this area had clearly once been farmland, and would make a great park, it is destined to one day become a cross-county connecter between two nearby interstate roadways. Even though there are countless trails crisscrossing the fields and woods, we've never come across anyone here and we can let Astro off the leash so he can run around without fear of meeting other dogs and getting into a fight. Until this area is developed we occasionally bring Astro here for leisurely walks. On this day as soon as we arrived at Magruder HS the sunny sky turned ominously dark gray (see picture above), shortly followed by an intense winter snow squall.

It has been frigid here for the past two weeks and the last snowstorm had left four hard-packed inches of icy-crusted snow covering the ground. The ice crust was so hard it even supported my weight and one could just shuffle-slide across the top of the snow. As we ventured carefully out onto the icy crust, soft snowflakes began to gently fall around us. However, ripping winds soon kicked-up and turned those welcome snowflakes into deadly ice crytals that felt as through they could pierce any exposed, unprotected skin. The snowflakes were being blown completely sideways by the gale force winds. I had to stop and put up the hood on my coat to prevent the lethal snowflakes from knifing down my neck. I was able to just get off a couple of pictures (see picture of Elroy and Judy) before my fingers ached so much from the biting cold that I was forced to bury them deep in my pockets to rewarm.

The squall subsided after 15 minutes and the sky once again cleared and the sun shown. As we shuffled through the trails, there were signs of life everywhere in the dry brown thickets. Birds were flitting about, little mice were scampering under brambles and the many deer footprints frozen in the ice crust were evidence of their passing through. Jane and the kids found a large hill that they could slide down on their backs. Astro also slid down, unintentionally, which made us all laugh. It looked like a lot of fun, but I was too cold to try. We had come to this spot at the exact right time for an adventure and were not dissapointed.

Home Addition

This morning we signed-on with the Design/Build firm that we contracted for our last home renovation project in 2002. In that project, we remodeled the kitchen and family room and gave the entire outside a facelift. Over the past few years we have received many compliments from our neighbors that the house looks great. Now, we plan to use the same firm to add on nice master bedroom and screened-in porch off the rear of the house. I think Jane and I have a pretty good idea of what we want to achieve, although there are a couple of remodeling issues to deal with. This will give me ample opportunity to update here the process as we go forward.

Pictures to Remind You of Summer

Here are pictures from our flower gardens that I have been saving to post during the coldest, darkest days of winter. Enjoy!

Big Wheel Keep on Turning

Here are some pictures of Elroy's wrestling team and of Elroy doing battle on the mat. To set the stage, at the beginning of each wrestling match the team limbers up by running a few circular paths around the mat, followed by a few token calisthentics and then they all dive to the center of the mat where they huddle up to....well, I'm not sure exactly what they do there, but it has that aura of galvanizing team spirit and machismo (except for the girl laying on the pile). Anyway, no other team they've wrestled does this particular pre-game demonstration, so I suppose it's the coaches' "secret weapon" to fire-up the team psyche to do battle and crush their opponent. But, in fact, in many of the meets this year the warm-up routine has been the singular highlight of the meet for Elroy's team. All kidding aside, the team and Elroy, did well against a handful of teams, but when matched against schools with a tradition of fielding competitive sports teams and having knowledgable, aggressvie coaching staffs the results were overwhelmingly one-sided. This has been going on for some years now and there doesn't seem to be much parent or school support for the team. The sad state of Elroy's wrestling team is reflected in the paltry parent turn-out for home meets, where usually there are more visiting team parents and friends in the stands. However, Elroy's wrestling coach, we'll call him Wheels, generally appears clueless to what is going on around him. While the opposing teams coaches are shouting instructions to their wrestlers, what moves to do or to get more active, Elroy's coach usually sits in his chair and has one verbal command......"Get up" and this usually comes just as the kid is about to be pinned. Get up, Geeett up, Gggggeeeeetttt uuuuppppp! It has gotten to the point of being comical, like Larry the Cableguy's signature...."Git-R-Done." Maybe I'm being unfair, after all Wheels is pretty old and maybe that was the most important wrestling move back when he was young....to just get up and he's teaching the kids all he knows. The best wrestler on Elroy's team this year had his own personal wrestling coach and fitness trainer. Elroy had Wheels.

It's just frustrating, but I think it's one of those coming-of-age situations every teenager has....the awful coach experience. Gosh, my football coach in high school was bad, bad, bad. It's normal for a coach, especially a football coach, to be intimidating but my high school football coach's principle teaching tool was humiliation. But that was years ago and I've gotten over that trauma, gotten over that trauma, gotten over that trauma, gotten over that trauma.......whoops sorry. Anyway, this reminded me of the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry's and George's high school phys-ed teacher, Mr. Heyman, purposely mispronounced George's name: instead of calling him Costanza, he called him Can't-Stand-Ya and gave George an atomic wedgie. Mr Heyman got fired for giving George an atomic wedgie, but the coaches like Wheels and my high school football coach, keep coaching even though they really aren't competent to adequately teach and prepare the kids on their teams to compete. Big Wheel keep on rolling. I hope you like the wrestling pictures of Elroy, we're very proud of him.

A Sinking Suspicion

I found out that there is a button on my laptop that controls the wireless antenna. Somehow it got turned off and I haven't been able to use the internet to post this past week. I didn't know what was going on (nothing new there), but luckily Jane figured it out. More about my incompetence, and Jane's superiority later, here's the real story.

So, I'm was blithely about my business at work last week when I get this call from Judy around one in the afternoon. She indicated that she had an important FYI to tell me. I should preface this story with the reason Judy and Elroy were home.....they had finished with their second-quarter exams and had a couple of days at home. Exam week is a hectic time and Jane and I spend a lot of time and effort coordinating their odd-houred exam schedules and after-school activities. The typical who picks who up and who goes where when, so I wasn't really surprized when Judy called. I expected something like.....I need to be at school can you drive me or what are we having for dinner tonight.....can I make one of the bundt cakes you got for christmas? I was wrong!!!

So Judy started her story. She had been taking Astro for a walk and was with him in the back yard when she noticed a depression in the ground. Being a curious girl she wondered why there was a depression in the ground....and as a natural progression of that thought......what would happen if she jumped up and down on this area. Now I have to say, and maybe I'm just more naturally cautious, but I would have use a stick to probe the area or more likely had Astro walk over the area first. Anyway, the earth gave way under her weight and she plunged into a gaping watery sinkhole that swallowed her up to the waist.....or the ankle, I wasn't quite sure. But she continued saying that she and Elroy had measured the depth of the sinkhole at around 4 feet. A four foot deep sinkhole in my backyard??? In my mind I'm seeing the both of them standing on the weakened edges on this sinkhole, jabbing a stick into just-about-ready-to-cave-in edges of the sinkhole followed shortyly by them hugging onto each other as the earth slowly gives way under them and they plunge out-of-sight. Needless to say, I told them to stay away from the sinkhole until I could come home to look at it.

After some examining it seems we have an old, very old, septic tank that is now crumbling and causing a growing sinkhole. So my quesion is what should I fill the sinkhole with?

Running Log Ending January 14th, 2007

I covered 37 miles during the past week-which is right on target for weekly mileage this far before the Greenway Marathon in early March. The individual runs this week were comprised of: on Tuesday; 9 miles, Wednesday; 6 miles, and Thursday; 6 miles. For the remaining mileage this last Saturday Jane and I ran with the trail runners group over a 17 mile section of the Greenway Trail in upper Montgomery County that is also part of the Greenway Trail Marathon course. See the picture below to get a sense of how the trail looks this time of year. It was a wonderful day, temps in the 40s and overcast. I completed the 17 mile section in 3 hrs 15 minutes, tired and muddy. To begin the day, we parked at Riffle Ford Rd. (see lower map) and were ferried up to Damascus Recreational Park (see upper map) which is also where the race starts. And we just started running. The organizers of this run had stashed jugs of water and food (cookies and pretzels) at a couple different stops along the way. The first was right after crossing Brink Rd. Along the way we ran under a picturesque train trestel, saw a few deer and ran by Lake Clopper. On race day, if you make the cut-off time you can opt to run an additional 3-4 miles around Lake Clopper to complete the 50K course. Otherwise, you'll just run the ~28 mile marathon course. We were really impressed at how beautiful most of the course is even though the park is not all that wide in any one spot and passes through a densely populated region. We looking forward to the race.