This is the third and final post on a great Memorial Day Weekend…
The status jumped out at me from the computer screen:
Marc StrozykAnyone want to join me tomorrow morning for a 14 or so mile run in Annadel???? Haven’t decided on route yet but I might just meander. Let me know.
After being seatbound in the car after almost 6 hours of driving, I was feeling pretty energetic. I fired back a response that I would meet my buddy Marc at the Parktrail Drive trailhead, and we would figure out where we were going on the fly.
I showed up fashionably late told Marc I wanted to see the trails I hadn’t seen before. He got a mischevious gleam in his eye, and we headed up the Veterans Memorial Trail (in honor of the day). We were both carrying Camelbak resevoirs and felt we could get back from anywhere a trail might take us in the park. We hit the Canyon trail and followed it to Marsh where we picked up an unmapped single track that wound its way up through the oaks to an open ridge with a spectacular view of the Santa Rosa Valley.
Marc’s Garmin told us between gasps we had covered just 3 miles. Fortunately there were few trails that ventured any higher so we were confident we could withstand the remaining 11 miles to meet our mileage goals for the day. We continued along the single track along the ridge top with a general feeling for the direction we were headed, but not really knowing like a structured trail run with a mapped out route. At this point I told Marc I had never seen the Rhyolite Trail so we made that our next destination.
After a brief detour down Lawndale we found the trail we were looking at and found the flagstone quarry at the end of the trail, amongst the redwoods on the North facing slopes. Another trail checked off my “never seen” list. At this point we returned to familiar trails with 8 miles of exploring done, and we knew we had about 6 miles back to the car.
Our return route took us to Buick Meadow, up and down South Burma trail to Richardson. Then the Lake trail took us to the dam at Lake Ilsanjo, and down the treacherous Spring Creek Trail. With 13.25 miles on our legs I negelected to pick up my feet on the lower part of Spring Creek and skinned up my knee a bit. It provided some amusment to the two horsewomen that witnessed the event. I shook it off and we finished the run without any further incident.
After the run with Marc.
Back at the car we cooled off with a Roscoe’s Amber Ale, and agreed it was an epic adventure. When Marc uploaded the track from his Garmin, He wrote:
Activity Type: Trail Running | Event Type: Recreation
One of my most fun trail runs of all time! John Martin and I set out to run 14 + miles and we said we would just meander. We went off the beaten path and made our way up to the beautiful Boob. We went down the back side and just picked whichever trail looked cool. We made it all the way out to Lawndale. We checked out Rhyolite trail and then came back via Marsh, South Burma, Richardson and Spring Creek. John bit it on the downhill of Spring Creek but we were both running on some tired legs. We finished and enjoyed an ice cold beer together at the finish. We agreed that we are some bad ass trail runners. BTW – I thought I was immune to poison oak. After today’s run maybe not. This was definitely one of my favorite runs of all time. Thanks John for the awesome company.
Elevation profile for our Run Elevation Gain: 2,295 ft
Mile splits for our run. "long, slow, distance" was our motto
I headed for the Ranch and got a shower at my folk’s house. Despite my tired legs, my youngest insisted we catch horses and go for a ride to visit the neighbors. So we rode and visited with folks along our 4 mile route. Sydney was a pro handling her mount “Candy” and proudly showed everyone who would watch how she could trot and rein her mount. It was a great capper to the day. My Gelding Shorty was full of pee and vinegar and probably should have been on our run route that morning.
Looking back on the day over a grilled hamburger and cold beer, I felt pretty satisfied with what we had accomplished over 3 days. Numerically it was 750 miles by car, 84 arrows, 14.25 miles by foot and 4.04 miles by horse. It was truly an epic few days.
