Girdled Rd.

trail run. Scott, Tony and I drove to the North entrance of the Girdled Rd. Reservation this morning in a blinding snowstorm for an anticipated 8-9 mile trail run. The terrain there is very rugged, probably one of the most intense of all the Lake Metroparks Reservations, which also makes this one of the best for trail running due to all the hills. After a couple of picture's we headed out on a short 1.3 mile warmup loop before heading down into the valley and up to the South side where all the XC skiing takes place. It was snowing pretty hard for the first half of the run or so, then it quit and peeks of sun came out, everyone was feeling good so far and we knew it was going to be a great run. The trails had about 4" of snow on them and the Park hadn't groomed yet which made traction pretty decent and the running difficult in terms of wattage output, meaning it's harder to run in 4" of snow than it is to run on bare pavement or trails.

We did the loop out to the skiing parking lot and then headed back to the North side with a few slips and falls and turned ankles along the way, but no injuries. Once we returned back to the parking lot, we took another pic and called it a day. Scott downloaded his Garmin GPS data when he got home and we ended up with 8.5 miles with 1,070' of climbing and 1:32 of running, everyone felt good afterward and we got in a great workout today.