National Running Day, 2010 - Training - Lowell State Forest - 4.7

Day 153 - Scooter, Teddy, and I celebrated National Running Day by getting ourselves lost in the woods of the Lowell/Tyngsboro/Dracut state forest.

We started out in Lowell, but ended up in the other parts when we just followed the pretty extensive trail system around and around and around. We started out at 7:30PM, so it was dark in the thickly covered trail system when I realized that we were completely lost.

Thankfully, I had on my Garmin GPS and I used a trick that Fil used when he got lost on a Boston training run.

When I had no idea which way was up, and started to panic a little bit, I switched on the map mode on the Garmin. I could clearly see where I had started, where I had been, and where I needed to go.

I continued to run, with Teddy and Scooter right next to me, until we finally reached our starting point, 4.7 miles later. This was originally supposed to be a 3.1 mile training run for Teddy to get use to the distance, but he was a trooper and even led most of the way. I plan on entering the two of them in more canicross races, mainly for the humorous aspect of seeing them kick the other dogs asses.

(You can see where we were chasing our tails)

I am now convinced that Fil and I are the only ones who have ever used this function on the Garmin. Very handy.

The worst part of the ordeal were the mosquitos! I got eaten alive if I stopped for more than five seconds to check my bearings, so I had to keep moving (Teddy and Scooter had to mark their territory on the run).

Overall, I am loving this trail system! Very wide trails, some of it technical, and it just runs on and on and on...

I plan on returning many more times to get lost (Sorry Mine Falls).