Visitor Center 2 Visitor Center Marathon

Today, I headed down to the Crowders Mt State Park for another of my visitor center to visitor center runs. Typically, I do these in the summer time but I decided to do something a little different this year. 

I left the Crowders Mt State Park parking lot a few minutes after 9 AM. With the temperature here in Charlotte dipping in to the upper 20s, a late start sounded pretty good to me. According to my car, I barely escaped the 20s with a temperature of 30 degrees.

Even with it being cold, sweat was dripping from my brow as I neared the top of The Pinnacle. The air was crisp with the wind blowing out of the north. Yet, the view was still spectacular from the top.

I was surprised to see a number of people enjoying the trails. A few runners were out earlier than me making their decent during my climb.

The Ridgeline trail has not fared will the recent storms. The sections between 2 and 3 miles had numerous trees across the trail. It was weird to see. It was as if someone had taken the back of their hand and swatted the trees down. From the looks of it, the State Park guys have cleaned up about ¾ of mile of the trees, but there is still about ¼ mile left. Their equipment is still out there so I would assume in another week or two, they have the trail completely open again for running.

As I was about to turn on to the service road section on the South Carolina section of the trail, a hiker stopped me to ask directions. He was asking me how to get back to the Boulder Access parking lot. I pointed back up the trail that I had just finished running. I told him that he had about a mile or so back to it.

Three or so miles later, I rolled in to the Kings Mt State Park visitor center. I grabbed a drink of water and ate my peanut butter crackers. My legs had that fatigue feeling. I was worried that the trip back might be a little tougher.

Normally, I head straight back but today, I decided to do the battlefield trail today. I figured this would give me enough miles to push me over the marathon distance for the day.

Having never done this trail, I found it interesting to do. They have a ton of history out there about the battle that took place here.

The battlefield trail is loop so once I finished it, I headed right back along trail which would take me back to Crowders Mt State Park.

I was churning along the service road when the glimmer of something in the distance reflecting the sun caught my eye. Nearing it, the shape and color made it all the more recognizable. Someone had lost a Valentine’s Day Balloon. It was a big one.

My legs were still dragging so I pulled out some Sports Beans. About 30 minutes later, I started feeling better, and my legs too were feeling better. The climbs didn’t seem so hard. I ran nearly to the top of The Pinnacle. The railroad ties were not creating the same burn that they normally do.

Once I was over the top, the run back to the parking is easily my favor part. Even with old, tired legs, I can still run pretty well on the downhill.

In all honesty, I should have run more of my runs here in January and February. This sure beats running here when the temperature is pushing the upper 80s or low 90s of most any summer day.

Kickin’ up some trail dust

The Cool Down Runner