A Southside Project?

I've been fairly solitary in my training patterns lately, generally avoiding group runs, preferring to strike out alone on 10-20 mile nightly workouts.  I like the flexibility to go hard when I want, go easy when I want, run as far as I would like.  I've learned that  I can run 10 mile workouts on a nightly basis, and even run a 20-miler on evenings.

On the other hand, I have a marathon in a week, and  a bit of achilles tendinitis so we'll see how that goes.  It's getting better quickly, but I think it happened in my last week of training before tapering.  A lot of time on the bike for the last two weeks.

The flexibility afforded by running alone has given me an opportunity to check out new places to run inside and outside of Lawrence.  I read a description of an area on the southside of Clinton Lake boasting 50 miles (FIFTY MILES!) of trails.  The trailhead's only about a 12-15 minute drive from my house, so I figured I should at least give the trails a try.

First problem, finding an an adequate trail map.  Here's the only one I could find online:

This map shows not much detail, and looked old.  I put a call out on twitter for anyone with a better map, and Mike Eglinski who does orienteering in the Lawrence area, hooked me up with a better map.  While this one was old too (from 1990) it at least had contour lines and I could get a general idea of what was going on.

Friday afternoon, I set out to scout out hte area on a short run.  I put in about 2 miles (see Achilles tendinitis, and "taking it easy").   Looked like there were still three main trails going through the area, one near the top of the ridge, one mid-way down the ridge, and a third trail almost at lake level.  Here's my scouting map:



Note, that the main connector that goes from the trailhead, intersecting the three main trails down to the lake, is much steeper than can be shown from the map.  It drops off about 150 feet pretty quickly.  Also the trails are a little rougher than what we're used to.  It reminded me more of the trails at the Flat Rock 50K than at the northshore trails.

Again on Sunday I went out for another short run, this time just exploring to the east.  Put in about 3 miles total (once again, see "taking it easy").  This time the trails were really muddy, and there appeared to be some missing trail markers (read: I got lost).  With some good early summer heat, and less rain the trails should be in good shape by mid June I think.  

In short: My summer goal, to run all 50 miles of trails on the Southside of Clinton Lake.. if possible.  Send me a message if you want to join me for a few miles.  I think it should be a lot of fun!