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At one with the deer

May 5, 2020 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
If you were to design an over-the-top parody of a Matt Simonson adventure run, this would be it. After cheering on and timing Abby Murphy at the Duke Ellington Track for a mile time trial (from a safe distance), I headed off into the woods to do some exploring. I was pretty tired from staying up till 4:30am making a last-minute sign for the Smurph, so I was bit slow, but it was still a good run. Finding myself in a part of town I don’t usually get to except after many miles of running, I decided I would take advantage of my location and play around the various side trails of Glover Archibald Park between the third and fourth intersections. As you can see from the map (https://www.strava.com/activities/3404680330), I traversed just about every inch of footpath except the main one that we always ran on in high school. I remember hearing back then that there were three parallel trails in this part of the woods, but I had failed to find them on my runs there with Noah Kravitz and Ilana Zeilinger last back in March so I had begun to doubt it was true. I can now attest that there are indeed three north-south trails running pretty consistently from the third intersection until almost the fourth. The middle one is hilly and has trouble existing at times, but the upper one is pretty well-maintained. The lower one is the main one we all know and the only one consistently marked on the official National Park Service map. There are also dozens of connector trails, some of which may have been made by deer. In fact, I found myself at one point lost without a trail somewhere behind the Field School athletic fields, but upon seeing a herd of deer, I decided to follow them so that they could show me where a trail was. They do leap pretty high over shrubs that are hard to run through, but I was able to discern a trail and follow the footprints in it. At times I found myself saying things like "be like a deer" or "the only way off this log is forward at full speed!" or "what would Matt Simonson, the character, do?" and of course, "a trail is a state of mind." These motivational sayings were followed by that chilling song "The Hanging Tree" from The Hunger Games echoing in my head. Interpret as you will. At times, I found myself thrusting through thickets, meandering through mud, spurring through streams, and leaping off logs. The last of these was very satisfying. Also, I must say there’s something rather liberating about deciding that you have probably already run through poison ivy and that you have to wash your shoes and scrub your shins anyway so there’s no point in continuing to be careful about it. This whole run took about an hour and a half and covered only 6 miles but it was certainly not easy going. Some of these trails are not for the faint of heart!

90% of the trails you see on that map are real! At least half were made by people!