My stride was somewhere along Bent Creek Road between the Arboretum and the turn-off to the Hard Times Trailhead. I don’t know how it got there, but that’s where I found it. It is the damnedest thing how you can spend an hour and a half looking for something and then decide to pack it when when, wah-lah, there it is. Right in the last place you look.
It probably did not hurt that there was another runner ahead of me. Forgive me father, for I have harbored the sin of competitiveness in my breast. I can’t seem to help the fact that the prospect of overtaking another runner on the course gives me a little adrenaline jolt. I also can’t help the fact that the runner had a blonde ponytail swinging behind her. (Although I do get very nervous for women who run alone in Bent Creek given the history of that place. I’d like to suggest that they not do that, but doing so while they are there, by themselves, and it’s just me talking seems pretty creepy. Your thoughts on the subject are welcome.)
After navigating all three loops (Pine Tree to Explorer, Explorer to Pine Tree, Pine Tree to Deerfeild) I traversed to a road which I believed would convey me to Wolf Gap Road in the Arboretum. This it did, but not having been that way in over a decade, I had forgotten that it was such a beautiful connector. I suppose it is possible that it was not so beautiful 10 or 12 years ago, but on the first full on fall day of fall, it was gorgeous. As was the performance of my legs, which have not had such an opportunity in three weeks or more. The lungs are a different story and will need more work, but at least the legs are there. Monkeys beware.