Sunday's Long Run

Access Roads: Best & Andrews

March 28, 2010

18.12 miles

3:28:07 hours

11.29 min/mile

What a day. This was a very long, tiring run. I wanted to hit some nice trails - even thought about doing the Falcon Trail 1.5 times but the snow we had on Friday knocked that idea right out of my head. I am so tired of running on slush and ice. It is the end of March afterall, right?

With all of that in mind, I decided to run on the dirt access roads across the freeway from the Greenland Open Space and take advantage of the warmer wind drying out the roads. I got a late start this morning but that was just fine since our temperatures are commersurate with the amount of snow on the ground.

I decided to run up Best road first just because I wasn't familiar with either road and didn't know how long each were or where they went. I found out Best is only 3.5 miles long today and a very nice rolling, slightly uphill, dirt road - on the way out, and slightly downhill on the way down.

After running up and down Best, I ran back to the truck. I had a sleeveless shirt on and my camelback was chafing my underarms terribly. I quickly took that off and put on the only long-sleeve I had with me, my fleece pullover. This was fine since it was a still a little cool. I took off up Andrews next and found out that this road continues up and down, up and down, an unpaved Roller Coaster Road if you ask me. What a long, difficult road; but what a good workout. This day was definitely not a trash run day.

On the way back to the car, after going 5.5 miles up that road, I started meeting quite a few cars. One stopped and asked me where the road went. Since I did not run the entire length of this road, I had no idea; however, I told them I thought it would eventually hit County Line or 105. After this inquiry, I had quite a few more. The passengers in one car finally told me that 25 was backed up and they were trying to find a detour. Good to know.

This road was very challenging for me and I plan to run it again because of the hills and lack of cars. However, I do know in the summer the dust might choke me since it is exposed and windy.

At the end of the run, I was definitely tired; but happy I was able to get my 18 miles in even though it took almost 3.5 hours to do so.