Bradbury Powerline 10

December is always a weird month for trail running in Maine. We usually get a little snow, not enough for the snowmobiles to get out and create a network of trails for us to run on, just barely enough for snowshoeing, too much for "normal" trail running. We always see a drop in the size of our groups this time of year, and then they pick up again once we've had a few solid snowstorms.

I decided to run at Bradbury this morning, hoping that at least a few people would have been out packing the trails since I last ran there two weeks ago with Erik. Erik was back for more today along with Valerie and newbie Monster Nate. It was cold weather for standing around but once we got moving it felt a nice temperature and the wind we noticed in the parking lot seemed to disappear once we got into the woods. We headed off on the east side trails not really sure what to expect.

There had been good foot traffic on the Link Trail, and once we got to the Snowmobile Trail we followed ATV tracks that eventually lead north out of the park. No snowmobiles, but the ATV tracks did help to create a narrow lane of packed snow. Shortly after we left the park we hit a section of trail that had seen at least one snowmobile, probably two weeks ago, but it helped. With the recent thawing and freezing there was a fair amount of ice, and Nate quickly understood why the rest of us all had screws in our shoes.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the trails were in reasonably good shape all the way out to the power lines. It's exactly 5 miles from the park to the power lines, this often serves as the foundation for many of our winter runs and it was nice to be able to get all the way out there today. I really wanted to continue on the power lines but hadn't come prepared for a long run today so we turned around here (although Valerie had turned back a little earlier). It was nice to have Erik out running these trails again, we had done a lot of exploring together two years ago but he missed all of last winter due to injury. I'm glad you're back Erik!

On the way back I decided to pick the pace up just a little bit. i hate running positive splits, even though I do it all the time in races I hope that if I train enough with negative splits maybe one day it will pay off in a race. This is a rather difficult route to run a negative split on because it's mostly downhill on the way out and mostly up on the way back. But Nate and I did manage to run almost two minutes quicker on the way back, and we finished the same time as Valerie who (despite turning back early) took a longer way back to the finish.

Now I can't wait for the next snowstorm to get these trails in better shape, I've got some longs runs to do.

time: 1:32:39
distance: 10 miles
pace: 9:15

weather: low 30's, overcast, breezy

conditions: crusty, not well traveled snow

gear: Inov-8 Roclite 315 with screws, Smart Wool socks, tights, longs sleeve shirt, shirt sleeve shirt, buff, mittens