another tuesday morning

Location: Sleeping Giant, Chestnut Grove trailhead
Time: 6am
Folks: Anne, Mirela, me
Temp: 18 degrees at start; 24 degrees at finish
Duration: 1hr, 10 minutes

My favorite run of the week: the Tuesday trail adventure. This morning, I was suffering from the effects of bad decision making, in the form of a post-dinner cup of coffee the previous evening at It’s Only Natural in Middletown. It just went sooo well with the coconut cake I shared with my friend Sarah (a little calorie-loading in preparation for the run). Consequently, I had about three hours of sleep. On the plus side, it was a semi-productive insomnia: I cruised through five or six more songs in my piano lesson book (another New Year’s Resolution), and then wound down with a few chapters of Sense and Sensibility.

As usual, we began our run in the dark. Mirela was alert, listening for signs of the Quinnipiac Valley’s most fearsome forest creature: the dreaded Giant Chipmunk. All three of us were sore at the start: Anne from Monday boot camp; Mirela from doing squats at the gym; me from skiing at Brooksvale Park. My quads were groaning after the first or second ascent. The trail conditions were unsympathetic, at least in the beginning: running in the lightly-treaded powder was a bit like running in sand, and we slipped and slid in spite of our Yaktrax (or, in Mirela’s case, screws). We did our usual loop: violet-red triangle-yellow. Most of the course was packed powder and surprisingly runnable. We did encounter some ice on the yellow trail, after climbing the grueling staircases. We were rewarded soon afterward, however, by a deep orange and red sky to the west, and pinkish clouds to the east. Just opposite was the slightly obscene light show that is Quinnipiac University. Aren’t the students on break? So why are the dorms lit up like Giants Stadium?

Daylight was fully upon us as we approached the end of the trail. I was overjoyed to see my car (Bryan’s car, actually) still sitting in the spot where I had parked it. About two miles back, I’d had a flashback to the time I had emerged from the woods on this very trail to find that my car (Bryan’s car, actually) had vanished (it had rolled backwards into a small grove of trees on the side of the road. Who knew the emergency break doesn’t always engage in those things?).

The three of us bumped fists in acknowledgment of a tough but satisfying aerobic workout. Hail to the trail.