North County Trail - 12/23

This morning, we were feeling adventurous!

After gathering our things, we headed out, albeit a bit late. Someone decided to sleep until 6:15, ate, and then slept until 8:00. In this house, that is unheard of. We are usually up and moving by 7:00, when the first feed of the day is between 4:00 and 5:00 am. Thanks, O, for the early Christmas present! 

Anyway, we headed to the North County Trail to test it out. I plugged it into my phone's navigation and off we went.

"You have arrived at your destination," said my lovely phone. Ummmm doesn't appear so.  We were in the middle of a FedEx and Coca Cola distribution plant.  I looked on my phone's map app and saw that the trail was only about 200 yards away, so we headed in that direction. Luckily, there was an access point we could hop onto. (It happened to be the South County Trail at this point, which heads towards the city, but we headed North towards our intended trail).

Bob at the access point to the trail

One mile into our run, we stumbled upon the parking lot (below, on left) I was intending on parking in. Thank you very little, GPS. Hopefully we can find it next time!

Oh, look! An official parking lot.

 The trail was great, well paved, fairly wide, and not too wet from last night's rain. There were only a few puddles on the sides of the trail, no standing water in our way.

Paralleling the Saw Mill River Parkway.

Approximately 1.6 miles into our run, my co-pilot bailed. It was almost 10:15 exactly, and he was done. The JJ Cole keeps him so nice and toasty in there, I'm sure it was cake to fall asleep. Conveniently, he woke up right when we returned to the car to stretch.

Someone's having a good time.

Trail split at a highway crossing

Anyway, here are our times from this morning, not bad considering it was our first run back in almost a month! (Gasp! has it really been that long since our back to back 5Ks??)

Mile 1: 8:40

Mile 2: 9:12*

Mile 3: 8:49

Mile 4: 8:58

Mile 5: 8:51

*Mile 2 - I stopped to take a picture of the parking lot and forgot to stop my watch, oops! Oh well.

Total: 5 miles in 44:30. Average 8:54/mi. I'll take it for now! 

Happy Holidays and Happy Running! :)


Here's the imported Garmin data (I finally updated the software and updated about 16 months worth of runs - notice there was a hiatus or two in there. Oops!