Today was another new adventure for this blog. The location for today's run was the Greene Valley Forest Preserve. This was the first time that I had run there. I had bicycled through Greene Valley oncve before, and around it may time. In my one adventure bicycling through it, I decided that it was not a good bicycle trail. The main trail is choppy in places -- due to use by runners, cyclists, hikers, yes horse, and yes dog sledders. Oh, normal erosion too. And horse piles. Some fresh, some not so fresh. Addiitonally, the main trail has a lot of turns and elevation changes. I started at the West trailhead and my objective was to start on the Tricky Tree-Key Trail which is only 0.8 mile. Tricky Tree-Key is also called the Caruso trail, after an Eagle Scout who built most of this trail and who later lost his life in Iraq.
However, I actually started on a service road that leads out to the campsites. Besides being a forest preserve, Greene Valley also is the site of a youth camp sites, called Thunderbird. Out and back on the service road was actually 1.5 miles, but the road was gravel in spots and not a good road to run. This path is actually referred to as the Thunderbird Spur Trail. Then, I picked up the main trail until I crossed Greene Road to the Valley Trail, and I came back to the Main Trail which took me back to the West Trailhead.
It was kinda quiet there this morning. The temperature was 38 F and there was only a slight breeze from the E - definitely not a factor. Saw a few hikers early, and I followed a couple runners from the Valley Trail back to the trailhead. The most exciting part was when I came to within 10 feet of three deer while on the Valley Trail. They looked at me, but they weren't alarmed at all. About 40 yards further, I came upon another group (?) of deer, who scrambled deeper into the trees when they saw me.
As I finished my run, I came across a couple who appeared to be training their dogs to pull their dog sled. I hope they were rewarded, because those dogs were working hard.
The first mile seemed slow, but I ran it in about 9:08. I picked up the pace after that running a few miles in the 8:40 range. Garmin reported a short third mile, so I subtracted .1 mile from what it reported. Total run that I credit myself with - 6.4 miles.
