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Another Ana-(and-Matt) adventure

August 11, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Drove up to Wheaton Regional Park, where Ana had never been and I had maybe been when I was 5-years-old to run the carousel and train but maybe not who knows. I picked it out because we both like exploring new trials and since Ana wanted to do a 5-6 mile run, I figured there probably weren't any substantial trails within a 3-mile radius of our neighborhood she wasn't already familiar with. We met in the parking lot a few blocks off of Georgia Ave and started into the woods along a bike path. The park has a gorgeous botanical garden where we managed to run a through some couple's pre-wedding photoshoot. After a couple false starts down dirt paths that looked like trials, we found a shady dirt equestrian trail with solid footing which we followed for over a mile. Since we were in a park that was roughly one mile wide, I figured we couldn't ever get too lost as long as we stayed within the park boundaries. I didn't bother to look at a map or plan a route beforehand. At each trail juncture, I did my best to free my highly-disciplined disciple from her impulse to choose "the best route" or "the correct route" and allow herself to just impulsively frolick wherever her curiousity carried her. I think was maybe partially successful? We'll work on this over the next four years.

Nearly the entire run was in woods and though we neared the park boundary a couple of times we never ran down a trail that ended at a road and hardly ever repeated a segment. We did get kinda lost as we were running out of miles, but turned out we were still only half a mile or so from the parking lot so we didn't end up having to stroll or go dramatically over Ana's mileage goal. Judging from the map I found later, we probably couple have done 2-3 more miles without any repeats (the map claims 4 miles of paved trails and 7 miles of dirt trails, but based on my network science/graph theory knowledge, it seem like it would be impossible to reach some of them without having repeat other trails along the way). All in all, a delightful run on a refreshingly temperate summer morning in good company.

Distance is approximate and includes the striders we did after.