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June 14, 2006

A Change of Scenery

Man, I just totally fell off the face of the earth there, didn't I? You'll all be happy to know that I'm not dead, trapped under something heavy, or working out my stress in a room with padded walls. I was just in Baltimore last week for work, and between keeping on top of my work e-mail, personal e-mail, and bloglines, the writing of the blog entries? Just didn't happen.

However, there was running! I'd planned to run 4 of the 5 days I was there, and only made it out for 3, but those three days were fantastic. Mostly because by harnessing the power of the internets, I was able to get the skinny on places to run in the area where I was staying, which meant that I wasn't stuck with a week of hotel treadmill running (ugh). Instead, I got out and about and enjoyed the local scenery, which there was plenty of.

The first recommendation I got was to go run on the NCR trail, since I was only a few miles from the southern end of it. In that recommendation, they said that "unlike the rest of the area, it's flat." My ears immediately perked up at that, and I asked where I could run that would be Not Flat, since the idea of running over some topographically interesting terrain was almost more than my little stressed-out brain could handle.

When I arrived in Hunt Valley on Sunday night, I was armed with numerous places to check out, both flat and not flat. Monday morning was a run around the neighborhood where my hotel was - nice and rolling. Wednesday morning was a run over by the country club, and, wow. Just, wow.

I was running down a two-lane residential road, with all sort of hills and twists and turns and up and down and it was, to put it mildly, awesome. I finished my 5 miles and thought, "That's it? It's time to go home already?" I was pretty bummed out, and if I hadn't had to get back to the hotel so I could get showered and dressed for class, I might have stayed out there all day. You just don't get hilly tree-lined two-lane roads in Chicago.

I might have wondered how ridiculous it would be to move out there just so I could have hills to run on all the time.

Finally, on Thursday, I decided to hit the NCR trail figuring that taking it easy on flat ground would be a wise choice after Wednesday morning's hilly run. It was - the run was fine, but my legs were definitely feeling a little dead. The trail was nice, but nothing new or unusual - there are similar trails out in the suburbs here. It was a nice way to round out my week out there.

Now I'm back in Chicago, running on flat ground and city streets. It's fine, but I'm already missing the hills and trees.

Posted by Dawn at June 14, 2006 08:41 AM

Comments

Posted by: Jay T at June 14, 2006 08:52 AM

Posted by: ali at June 14, 2006 09:15 AM

Posted by: RunningJayhawk at June 15, 2006 09:01 AM