Saturday Report: Durham Forest

Okay, I must start off by saying that meeting at 7am to run has its pros and cons. The pro is that the early morning means that it is cooler and you also have the rest of the day to recover. The main con is that it is 7 AM!!!

So a group of us met at 7am for a run in the Durham Regional Forest main tract yesterday for a run thru the trails. The main purpose besides running someplace new was to familiarize ourselves with the type of terrain to be included in the 5 Peaks race that is coming up in 2 weeks. As some of us are running in that race, it was a good idea. We started out with a light jog up a big hill, the trail was tight and winding. The route committee decided that starting with a harder portion at the beginning of the run would be better because people would be more rested and therefore more likely to actually run it. We tackled what has been dubbed "The Wall of Pain", it was a long, sandy hill with a log halfway up that you had to step up. All in all, the Wall wasn't any harder than the "Welcome Mat" hill that we run at the rouge every week.

We then followed some twisting single track trail and made our way back towards the cars. We followed the main trail up towards the main gates of the tract of trails. Just north of the parking area we followed some nice wide trails that will no doubt be part of the Sport portion of the race and may be included in the beginning of the Enduro course. After finding even more twisty bike trails (why can't mountain bikers follow straighter lines?) we treated ourselves to an easy run back to where we parked by following the really wide open fire road type trails featured on the maps of the Forest.

We had a couple of Noobies out with us yesterday. I think that they both handled the run very well. Even though you may have thought that you were holding the group back, you weren't. Everyone in the group was tired and feeling the effects of running these challenging trails and terrain at whatever level or pace that they were going. Thanks for coming out and please come again.