Zack and I drove to Mount Pisgah for a run. I figured we could find some not-insanely-hilly trails around the base of it, in the arboretum. We looked at a poorly-drawn map at the start and figured out a place to go, and about 50m in we realized it was just absolutely ridiculously difficult. We started laughing at how ridiculously steep this trail was (we had picked it hoping it would be gradual) and I had to stop because I couldn't breathe, due to laughing so hard and due to trying to run up such a steep hill. We continued up it, stopping every once in a while to rest, especially because Zack had originally wanted to go easy because his leg has been hurting. When we got to another trail we took it just to stop going uphill--this was at about 6½ minutes, and we had probably not even gone a half mile. The second trail was more narrow than single-track, and had a bunch of places where it would be easy to trip and fall or twist an ankle. We took this trail maybe a mile, but it was getting dark and Zack's leg was hurting so we wanted to get back, and the trail was definitely heading away from the parking lot. So we took a trail that was even skinnier than the one we were on, and it went down probably even steeper than the uphill we had started on. Every once in a while we could sorta run a little, but mostly it was gingerly stepping down. I don't remember how long that lasted--I only had my watch going when we were actually running. It eventually came to a clearing, and there was a nice big bark trail that we got on which was absolutely great for running. It would have been perfect if we had started out on this trail. We took it back to the parking lot and headed out, deciding that we had run 2.5 miles and that it had pretty much been a disaster.
We got Mexican food afterwards, and we'll head back to Mount Pisgah some other time and take the good trails, so the day wasn't a complete loss.
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