Ten Mile Trail Run at Tribble Mill Park

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I usually like to get my long runs in around the house.  I know there are many other better places to run, and some very nice trails within just a short drive, but when it comes to a long run I like to run from home because I know it is already going to take me 90 minutes or longer to complete the run, and I don't want to add the drive time on top of that.

Since I really don't like to travel for my long runs, I wasn't too excited when my daughter Payton told me right before church on Sunday that she and her friend were going to go to Tribble Mill Park in Grayson to do their long run.  Whenever she tells me this, I know that this means I am going to make a trip to the park.  Since I had a long run scheduled that day already, I knew it would be crazy for me to not take advantage of being at the park to get the long run in.  When I asked her, she told me that they were planning on running 10 miles, so this put pretty much anything over 10 miles out of the question for me.  I don't mind asking them to wait five or ten minutes, but anything more than that I won't make them wait alone for me.

It was quite cold all morning and the temperature read 39 degrees.  It felt much colder than that so I got everything ready and dressed for the colder temperatures.  When Payton's friend arrived at our house I made fun of her because she was wearing shorts, little did I know this would come back to bite me later on in the day.

I have run out there on several occasions and have always run the paved trail around one of the lakes.  My daughters and their friends always run the dirt trails but I didn't know where they were.  This time I asked Payton where they were and I headed to the dirt trails instead of the normal paved route.  When I first started I stayed on the wider trails to the outside of the park.  I ran almost 2 miles and then the woods opened up to a lake.  This lake is not the same lake that I normally run and is much more secluded.  The picture at the top of this post was one that I took during my run.

I made my way around the lake, hugging the lake as much as possible.  I was surprised to see that the trails were still pretty muddy in some areas from the melting snow over the past couple weeks.  One of the coolest things I saw was a beaver farm.  I am not sure what else to call it, but I saw some trees down near the lake that some beavers had obviously been chomping away at.  I just had to stop and take a picture since I have never seen that before.  They had fallen one tree and they were still working on the others (not that I saw any beavers around)

Once I made my way around the lake one time I decided to head off and try some of the smaller more technical trails which I really like to run on.  Some of the trails were very hard to follow since there were no signs to be found anywhere.  I am sure that if I ran here often I would learn them, and I am sure I didn't hit very many trails at all compared to what is actually out there.  I was more worried about getting lost and turning my 10 mile trail run into 15 or more miles, or even worse having to stop to ask for directions.

I headed around the lake a couple more times seeing my daughter and her friend on a couple occasions before starting to head back at the 7 mile mark.  I headed back the same wider trails that brought me to the lake.  I made my way out of the woods and I still had about 1.5 miles left to finish so I headed over to the paved trails around the other lake.  I ran out about 3/4 of a mile and turned around and headed back to the car.  I finished up just before getting to the car which they already had running trying to keep warm.

Speaking of keeping warm..... I found fairly quickly that I was overdressed.  It was not windy at all back in the woods and felt closer to 45 degrees, much warmer than what I dressed for.  It wasn't too hot, so I didn't do anything about it, but I did have to eat crow when I got back to the car and complained about being hot.  Payton's friend would not let me slide on that one unfortunately.

Before leaving I had grabbed the only recovery type drink that we had that wouldn't need to be mixed up.  I wanted it to go along with some water for after the run.  What I grabbed was some Gatorade Recover 03 which my wife had found on sale somewhere.  Just incase you are wondering about this stuff.  It is the absolute worst tasting recovery drink I have ever tasted.  I am sure it is chuck full of great ingredients for a great recovery, but it about made me sick.  I really don't know why they bothered putting any flavoring in it at all because it didn't help.  I would rather taste the raw flavor than try to dress it up.  Like they say, you can put a dress on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I was not asked to try this, and I was not provided with any samples.  I am sure if Gatorade ever sees this they will never offer me anything to review, but it is what it is - yuk!  They are my preferred sports drink, but I will stick with the basics from them from now on.

Where do you like to run your long runs?  Do you like to run from home or do you prefer to venture to some far away place to start?  What about this Gatorade Recover 03.... have you ever tried it?  If so, what did you think?

Since we are talking about my daughter running I want to invite you to stop by my Family Running page.  Please stop by to "Like" it and share it with all your running family and friends!