Trail Running

Yesterday I was at Ft. Bragg and decided to go check out a trail that a friend had told me about. I found it easily but just as I arrived, about 75 soldiers were lining up for a ruck march. I checked with one nice young man, and he confirmed it was okay for me to run, and that I wouldn't be interrupting their training. The bad part was that I had to run past all of them as I started out--I'm sure you can only imagine what a nice clip I was running at first!

I run exclusively on roads, so it was such a pleasant change to be on a trail. This trail seems to be pretty sandy but it had just rained, so it wasn't too difficult to run on. My shoes got pretty dirty, but it was a lot of fun. Plenty of natural dips on the course, and I ran up one decent hill before stopping to take my jacket off and turning around. I ran 2.4 miles which is a good run for me, and if Ft. Bragg wasn't so far I could see myself going to run that trail every single time. On a hot day running in the shade of all of those trees would be fantastic.

I kept expecting to come upon the marching soldiers, so I forced myself to keep running even though I wanted to walk. My pace was slower than I expected (10:17) but I guess that's okay for a trail. When I finished all of the soldiers were still at the start of the trail, so I cut through the woods to avoid having to run past them while all red-faced, sweaty, and gasping for breath. I'm sure they thought I was crazy, but at least I felt like my dignity and appearance as an actual runner was intact.