I've just learned that the old phrase "What/where in Blue Blazes..." actually translates to "What/where in hell...". Maybe a little appropriate for one of these runs.
Blue blazes also mark the Buckeye Trail, and they also mark other ones as well. Some of those others are in the Colis P. Huntington State Park in Redding, CT. After reviewing the trail map, it appeared that the Blue Trail was the "main" one, and that following that most of the way around would be an ambitious run. I'd planned to do a longish run of about 15 miles, give or take, and figured that such an endeavor would be good to do on trails such as these.
When I'm running well, it's reasonable to assume that I can run 15 miles in two hours, or possibly a bit longer. Well, I did run for two hours and three minutes, but I only ran nine (9) miles. That's almost unbelievably slow. The problem was those terrible tough trails. There were rocks of all sizes, ruts, roots, twists and turns, hills, you name it. I started slow and simply got slower and slower. Four miles an hour for the first four, then 5 MPH after that.
My second run in Redding was a bit faster. I ran 13 miles in a bit over two hours - just about the same amount of time it took me to do nine miles the day before. Even this run was still not fast by any means. For this run I took the short route over to Joel Barlow High School, ran around the trails through the woods a few times, and then hit the track.
The trails there were more gentle than the ones at the park, so I was doing these at a "speedy" eleven minutes per mile. There was a mile of them, and I did a couple loops as well as some back and forth around the school grounds. I had seven miles done by the time I hit the track. Once there, things got faster: I did five 1200's in (a respectable) just under five minutes each.
That proved to be a good way to top off my Connecticut weekend running.
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