kasia in a nutshell

It was a beautiful spring day today in the bowels of Connecticut, which of course calls for an outdoor run in the park! I've only been running in the more-populated, asphalted and non-muddy lower reservoir up to now since it's been, well, too muddy to run in the less-populated, asphalt-lacking and much-more-fun-to-run-in upper reservoir. But today.. a beautiful spring day, been sort of dry for a while, snow has melted.. time to hit the upper reservoir! The "haven't been there since last fall" part becomes relevant soon.

Since I haven't been doing much running lately[0] I decided on one of my shorter routes [1].. say no more than 40 minutes or so. It was such a beautiful day though, that halfway through my run I decided to do an additional little loop and head towards the center of the park to circle a lake. That's where I ran into a scared little old lady. She had a hiking stick, a hat and looked close to tears. She hiked all the way from the lower reservoir (some 3-4 miles at a guess) and was lost[2]. I tried to explain to her how she can get back to the main (blue) trail.. but it was confusing even me, so decided to walk her there. It wasn't too far off my route and I felt bad for her. After she was well on her way back to her car and much more cheerful I went back to my running.. except at this point I've been out much longer than planned, with no water on a very sunny day and was a little scared I'd run out of steam before getting back to my car.. so decided to take a short cut.

Yes, you guessed it! About 15 minutes after helping someone else find their way out I was hopelessly lost myself! Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration... but it wasn't until I hit the pipeline trail that I realized that instead of heading closer to my car I managed to head in the exact opposite direction.. So instead of running for 40 or so minutes.. I ended up running & hiking for well over 2 hours.. my legs hurt!

[0]I really cannot stand dreadmill running and am too chicken to run among cars on the street.. hence I only run in the park which is hard in winter. The park isn't plowed.. so in winter it's mostly non-usable for running. Unless someone is really a masochist and can pick out trails without seeing any signs of them.

[1] Upper reservoir is where I tend to do my longer runs, since the shortest commitment is at least 3 miles.. well, unless one turns around.

[2] It is really easy to get lost in that park.. it has some 50 miles of trails and most look the same. There are only trailblazers on the mail loopy trail.