Signs of Spring: Wildflowers

We have been blessed here in northern Ohio with two gorgeous days in a row — and by gorgeous, I mean it’s picture perfect and warm enough to wear shorts (even when you’re not running).

I’ve taken advantage of the nice weather and run pretty much all over the place.  The picture to the left is along my favorite running trail — the needles from the evergreens make a nice soft carpet for running on.  As usual, I take my camera along just in case I see something worth shooting.

(I carry my camera — a very thin Olympus point-and-shoot model — in an ipod case strapped to my arm.)

There are signs of new life and spring everywhere.  It’s hard to believe that a month ago there was two feet of snow on the ground.

Here are a few wildflowers I stopped to take pictures of along my running route:

Along the suburban areas of my regular running route, I also passed quite a few nice gardens with beautiful spring flowers:

And then of course there are deer everywhere.

inspiring trail envy

Runners are meant to go off road. It is good for our souls. Some scenes of the Rocky River near Cedar Point from my favorite running trail:

Why didn’t anyone tell me my hair was getting this thin. Ouch. Maybe I should shave what’s left off. Eeep.

And why didn’t anyone tell me I look so pale? Double eep. It might be time for a moratorium on Jenny pictures.

On the other hand, this may have been the best picture of the day:

Its a bright orange tiger lily that I found growing wild by the side of the river bank. I spotted it from the running trail: a lone fiery flower.

It was growing wild in solitary splendor. I zoomed in with my camera to get the image and I think it came up pretty well. Normally I am particularly bad at taking pictures of flowers.

Its hot in Cleveland. Altogether now: “How hot is it?”

Hotter than the surface of the sun. Hotter than Hades. Hotter than the barrel of a Confederate cannon at Gettysburg on July 3.

Although everything looks lush and green along the running trail, it actually hasn’t rained in quite awhile here. We could really use some thunderstorms to break the heat.

was worth it, though

I am like any other runner: sometimes there are days when I just don’t “feel” like running. I know I should go running; there is no valid excuse not to go. But it is almost like there is some little troll up in my brain that sometimes tries to convince me it’d be better to be lazy. Every once in awhile, the trolls wins out. Well, I am glad the troll didn’t win today.

It was a hot and steamy run. Well, maybe not “steamy” — the humidity is still pretty low. Still, it was hot. Like summer hot. Like 73 degrees at 7:00 in the morning hot.

I made two good choices today. First, I decided to run a route I call the Lagoon - Riding Ring Run. You’ll see why I call it that momentarily. The second good choice was to take my trusty digital camera. As a result, you’re going to get to enjoy a copiously illustrated “virtual” run with me. A run with LOTS of critters.

The route starts at the Lagoon. The picture to the left is what the route looks like. Its a dirt trail. I read once that running on dirt is like giving your legs candy. I love dirt trails. They do make your legs feel really good. I have been running mainly on asphalt as of late, so the soft dirt felt extra good.

The Lagoon was absolutely filled with wildlife — which is why I am glad I brought my camera along. Oh yeah. I even photographed a member of homo sapien named Jenny.

Yes, you can see in my oh so cool Adidas mirror sunglasses that it was a self portrait. And yes, I still have hair. Its just sparse and ugly hair.

And yes, I know its dangerous, but I like to listen to Snorky while I run. For those of you who don’t visit very often or who forgot, Snorky is the name of my rusty (Snorky is truly rusty), trusty hot pink ipod. I turn Snorky down way low when I run trails, sometimes I turn her off completely, but I am so used to having my ipod on my arm, I feel naked without it.

ANYWAY.

Almost immediately, I started spotting wildlife. It began by the falls. Here’s a picture of the falls and here’s a picture of the first critter I saw: a chipmunk.

Hey! Don’t go yet. The animal pictures are going to get better, I assure you.

But first you’re going to have to suffer through some wildflower photography. I spotted some really beautiful flowers on this run and couldn’t help but to stop and try to photograph them.

This run takes me on a circular path around the Lagoon. It was on this loop that I started seeing wildlife galore.

Perhaps I saw so many birds because, as the sign says, this IS an important bird area. But I used to run here a lot and to be entirely honest on those runs I usually saw nothing. Today was a banner day for bird watching, spotting, and even photographing.

First, I flushed out a mother wood duck with her brood. I felt bad that I startled them. The mother duck was quite flustered and kept making anxious noises — I think because she was worried about keeping such a large brood of babies together. When I stopped to take a picture of the mother wood duck, I also peered into the water. I caught a couple fish in the water. You’ll have to look really close, probably, to see them but the second picture shows a few small lagoon fish (they are nothing compared to the size of the big steelhead trout you see running in the Rocky River)

If you’re done looking at the fish, I have even more baby pictures for you. How about a pair of proud Canada geese with their two cute fuzzy yellow goslings?

And then I saw a Great Blue Heron. Now he / she didn’t appear to have any babies, but the Great Blue is a big stately bird, always worth expending at least a few photographs on.

After circling the lagoon, the trail I run takes a hard turn and goes up one heck of a steep and dangerous hill. You can check out this gnarly hill.

The reward for making it up this gut busting, leg trashing, lung lashing climb is a pine tree forest and a path carpeted with ever so soft pine needles.

Its shady and its cool up here. But you still have to be careful because this isn’t designed as a “oh my God lawyers will sue me if I don’t put up rails” trail.

Now I told you before that I’d explain why I call this the Lagoon - Riding Ring run.

Well, as you come out of the woods, there is a large field and a riding ring for horses. This is, by the way, a bridle trail. That means you get to enjoy a well maintained trail, but it does get used fairly frequently by horses. So you have to watch your step.

(I even saw two horses today. They were actually coming up that steep hill I have nicknamed “The Gut Buster.”)

Here’s a couple more images: note the big grassy field that the trail circles around (and in the sky you can note the thunderheads that are building and promising that it may storm later) and note the proverbial fork in the road (I took the road less traveled by)

As I rentered the woods and began to circle back (this is a loop route), I saw a couple deer. One was a buck who’s antlers were just starting to bud. The other was a very large doe.

 

I finished up the run and ended up driving down to Mastick Woods to play in the sprinkler I photographed for yesterday’s entry.  I hope you enjoyed coming along on my virtual run and all the pictures — especially those of the critters.

I got in a fight with a tree root.

Tree root 1, Jenny 0.  Rematch tomorrow?!?

I got in a fight with a tree root today. And I found out that even the bugs don’t like me anymore. Boo hoo. Poor Jenny. Even the bugs don’t want to eat her anymore.

I have no clue why I posted this picture — its obviously way over-exposed. (Ok, in truth I meant to stick another picture here and I am just too lazy to switch them now.)

So I went running in the park like usual — this time on the bridle trail. Now the bridle trail really doesn’t have any tree roots — some loose rocks and stuff, but nothing dangerous. But I couldn’t stick to the nice tame bridle trail. Nooooo, Jenny had to go off cross country.

There’s a path that runs roughly parallel to the bridle trail but is closer to the river and is pretty much a single track. That’s what I took off on today.

All well and good until you guessed it. A tree root jumped up and I went tumbling.

(Oh and here is a better not so overexposed picture of Jenny. Jenny is all arms and legs. hahaha.)

I just scraped my knee a little bit. But it bled some. I thought being that close to the river I would attract bugs but apparently not even the bugs want to bite me anymore. I guess chemo tastes bad to them. Finally. A good side effect of chemo.

The highlight of the run — other than my oh so graceful fall — was seeing a pair of wood ducks.

through the woods

It was back to the woods this morning.

The past three days, I have been getting up at 6:00 to run. This has been very helpful: the sun is low in the sky and the heat isn’t that bad.

[Typical Cleveland weather: we skipped right over spring and literally woke up one day to find it had gone from a cool and crisp 51 to a hot and humid day in the mid-80s. But at least its not snowing.]

[Clevelanders always say “Well at least its not snowing.” There may be a huge meteroite hurtling towards earth and our demise may be imminent, but we’ll still say “Well, at least its not snowing.” Its just something we Clevelanders say.]

Anyway, today I took to the woods. I ran my favorite stretch of the Rocky River Reservation: out and back from South Mastick Picinic Area to Cedar Point on the bridle trail.

The trail was a bit muddy and there was actually a lot of fog in the Valley this morning. The Canada geese picking through the wet grass were shrouded in the fog. It was pretty.

The actual run itself went ok. Nothing special. I didn’t overheat or anything, so I guess it goes down as a good run in the books. But it was very humid and when I was done running, I was pretty much drenched.

We could use some thunderstorms to cool things off.

break on through

I am definitely a warm weather runner. Well, maybe not a <em>real</em> warm weather runner, but since the Cleveland temps have risen high enough that I can do most of my runs in the 50 degree range in just a t-shirt (or at worst just a longsleeve tech shirt) and a pair of shorts, my running has become inifinitely better.

I’m not fatigued. I feel strong. I can hold a much faster pace — even into the dreaded wind.

Other than the temp, I have made three other changes that I suppose could also help account for my better running. First, every night I have been working on those gosh darned knots in my calves. The left one is the worst — there is a spot about mid-calf where if I press it just makes me want to yelp. I’ve been massaging that spot, pressing on it as hard as I can, etc. Since I have started to do that, my legs feel much better when I run. They aren’t quite as tight and they have much more spring. They do not feel constantly tired and fatigued.

Second, I’ve started drinking more water right before I run. I used to stop drinking two hours before running because sloshing stuff in my stomach grossed me out. Now, I’m drinking a small amount right before I go out. I notice my mouth isn’t dry.

Finally, I’ve started doing two or three runs a week on the dirt. Really the only two good dirt trails near where I live are the bridle trail between south Mastick hill and Cedar Point (approximately three miles one-way) and the dirt “bunny” trail (the Wildlife Management trail) behind the Nature Center. The latter trail requires running laps to get a decent distance, but running five or six laps on an almost perfectly level, packed dirt trail through the woods is not the same as running laps around a track. I don’t have a Garmin, so I’m not quite sure how long the trail is. But I’m going to guess each loop (by how long it takes to run and using the Google Map Pedometer) is somewhere between 2/3ds and 3/4ths of a mile. So its not that bad a loop to run. (Plus the loop is about as flat as you can ever find — perfect for tempo runs and stuff like that) I think the dirt running is helping my legs — its such a nice break from concrete.

I think I may finally be breaking on through to the other side with my running. I am feeling strong and I even have the confidence to push the pace a bit. What a change from just a couple weeks ago. Wish I knew why my running suddenly improved, but I guess I will just take it!

trails made for running

Today I had a great run. The contrast to yesterday’s hellacious run was extremely marked. I again drove down to the Valley and ran on the bridle trail. Those who don’t run on concrete won’t understand, but the packed dirt (with some stones here and there) of the bridle trail is like candy for your legs. The soreness in my knees from pounding concrete sidewalks instantly goes away when I run on the bridle trail; even my calves don’t hurt. I just have to make certain I wear trail shoes. Although the bridle trail I run on is a far cry from a technical trail, being mostly packed dirt and flat, it does have some uneveness to it. For me, running it in a neutral pair of road shoes like my Wave Riders seems to result in ankle pain. Plus, I feel every little rock and stone and I’m currently nursing a sore sesamoid bone. My trail shoes are great — I can run the bridle trail without pain AND my sesamoid doesn’t even hurt like it normally does at about mile 5 of a run on concrete.

I love trail running not only because its easy on the legs, but also on the eyes. Instead of garbage like yesterday I was treated to pileated woodpeckers. Mallard ducks. Flying Canada geese. Wood ducks. Cardinals. Blue jays. A pair of white-tail deer splashing across the river. And its easy on the nose too. Rather than my nostrils being bombarded and assaulted by garbage and (worse) the garbage truck, today I enjoyed the smell of earth and shale and the river. Even the occasional horse dropping didn’t bother me — horse droppings are way way preferable to garbage!

So today’s run was good, and I ended up doing the second half even a full minute and a half faster than the first half. Maybe I am not in such horrendous shape after all …

Oh, and even though it was only 35 degrees, I wore shorts. Wearing shorts makes me feel infinitely better. (I passed several runners today, but I was the only one in shorts.)

Life was good today.