I love trail running! Although sometimes I feel like I should call it “accelerated hiking” rather than running, based on my average pace. It’s hard for me to run up really steep, long hills without wearing myself out, plus some trails are so rocky I roll my ankle if I go too fast. There is no shortage of beautiful trails around Whidbey Island. Coming from Florida, it’s absolutely amazing. I really can’t describe how much happier I am living in Washington, with its beautiful mountains and lack of extreme heat and humidity, than Florida. To be fair, you can do a lot of kayaking, fishing, water sports, and maybe even surfing in Florida, but those aren’t as much fun to me. I’ll take the mountains over the beach any day! Of course in Whidbey you get both but it’s too cold to go swimming! I’m sure there are many people who feel the opposite especially with some of the cold, dreary weather we get here.
Anyways, a couple weekends ago I decided to do trail running instead of hiking. First I went to Fort Ebey State Park to run along the Bluff trail. I had looked it up online and it seemed like a pretty, relatively flat trail that was over 5 miles round trip. Of course it turned out that there are two different bluff trails and I ended up at a different one! It was very pretty but I was a bit surprised when it ended at 1.3 miles, which would make only a 2.6 mile round trip!
I’d wanted to go at least 5 miles, so I had to decide where to go to get extra mileage. Luckily they posted trail maps at most of the intersections. Unfortunately most of them didn’t have topographical lines, so I was unaware that the path I chose went into a very steep downhill into a ravine and then back up! This is where my hip first started to bother me. I did this run the day after snowshoeing, so another weekend of back to back activities! It’s been three weeks and it still bothers me when I run more than a couple miles, so I might need to put running/hiking on the back burner for a bit. Plus I’m going to focus on hip and ab strengthening exercises.
Anyways, I managed to fit in 5 miles by stringing together some other trails. There’s also a lot of mountain bikers around here but I could usually hear them coming so it wasn’t a problem to get off the trail so they could pass. I will definitely come back to this park for more trail running though!
The next weekend I went back to the Anacortes Community Forest Lands for a run. However this time I wanted it to be flat since my hip flexor hurt the most going uphill. I thought that I’d given it enough rest that this run would be fine but clearly not! I ended up going 7.3 miles which was probably more than I should have done. I don’t have pictures because this route was not as pretty. I did a loop around Cranberry Lake and then another out and back. The only annoying thing about running in the ACFL is that there are so many interconnecting trails! Every 0.2 miles I’d have to stop and pull out my map to figure out which trail to take. Next time I might plan out my route ahead of time in more detail and write all the turns on my hand.
I’m beginning to think about trying out a trail race in the near future. There’s a half marathon in the Deception Pass park in April that I might try out. I’ll be gone for three months starting in mid-May so I’d like to do something before I leave.