Luke - 12.7

12.7mi, 98:49 (7:46)
Drove up to the top of Fox Hollow and parked at the trailhead...wait, let me back up.  As I was pulling out of my driveway, a naked guy was walking down the sidewalk in front of my house.  Okay back to the run.  So I started out by following the course of the second leg of the Ridgeline Ramble.  First mile was a decent effort, then the next two I really pushed, mainly up the trail to the top of Mount Baldy and then the downhill to Spring Blvd.  I continued down the roads at an okay effort.  When I got to a T in the road I started to take a left, past a gate that only covered half the road, but then I saw a No Trespassing sign and another gate about 200m away at the bottom of the hill, so I turned around and went the other way.  I got to what was looking like a dead end and I figured I'd taken a wrong turn again, but the gravel road turned into a trail...just before that a German Shepherd was coming out from the yard by the house at the end of the road, past the Beware Of Dog sign, and he chased me a bit down the trail so I just took the trail instead of trying to turn around again.  The trail got more and more vague and I kept expecting it to just sorta end, but it never did.  At one point it was a stream for about 200m but after running through that it was a regular trail again for another half mile and then came out to a bigger trail under some power lines.  I could see that they were the same power lines that I run under at the top of The Wall on my Relentless Hills run (but on the other side of 30th Avenue, a highway-type main road).  I ran South (away from town) under them for a little ways and am thinking I'll have to go back there some time and see how far out I can go just on the under-power-line trail.  Anyway at one point I got to an intersection so I headed left and the trail turned into a gravel road.  A bit later I had to hop a gate, and a minute later I was at Lane Community College, about 50m from the Ridgeline Ramble finish line.  I headed back on the Ramble course and a couple miles later I was coming up the hill I had originally almost gone down before turning around because I thought it was the wrong way.  Headed back up the roads and when I got back to Ridgeline I took a bit of an alternate route.  At one point I tripped and landed in what pretty much amounted to a mud pit, so the last couple miles I had a good bit of mud on me (although I got a lot of it off by hugging a mossy tree).

Pretty nice way to spend a Friday afternoon, especially since it's so nice here (mid-60ºs and sunnyish).  My legs were pretty tired since I'm back up to acceptable mileage after a couple months of blah.  Next week my mileage will be back down in the 50s as a rest week slash taper for the Eugene Half Marathon.  No idea how I'll do on that, but it was free entry and should be fun.