This week I found myself in Ohio (Cleveland area) for work and decided to use a couple evenings to put in some miles. I was staying in Willoughby and narrowed in on what looked like a great park about 5 miles south of there – the North Chagrin Reservation. Indeed, it was a great set of trails – lots of forest – a number of deep ravines with creeks at the bottom – a perfect mixture of trail types, lots of constant up and down rolling. In fact, if you swapped out 90% of the trees and made them evergreens, the trail itself reminded me a lot of my hometown Whatcom Falls Park. Perhaps not in vegetation, but in overall topography, trail texture (lots of exposed roots), and so forth – it felt familiar.

I ran twice.

6.0 miles in 1:08:52 @ 11:33 min/mile and with 421 ft. elevation

6.2 miles in 1:11:52 @ 11:31 min/mile and with 224 ft. elevation

The Monday night run was mostly uneventful, other thn getting constantly lost as the different trail loops intersected over and over again. Oh, and I totally fell. There was a downhill section that I decided I should take fast and about 2 steps in I caught my toe. I sped up my legs to try to get them under me, but was quickly rotating forwards. What followed, given my speed, was actually pretty impressive. I planted a hand on the trail, tucked my right shoulder, and did and full somersault roll across my back and right back onto my feet and continued down the trail without missing a step, so to speak. I was impressed, in any case.

On Wednesday night, I knew it was forecast to rain. When I got to the trail head, indeed, it was a bit drizzly. However, given the dense canopies of tree above, I figured I would stay fairly dry. And, I did. For the first couple miles I suffered with the 100% humidity but got very few cooling drops of rain on my face. The, I hit a clearing in the trees and felt some nice cool rain. “Ah,” I thought, “I wish there were more breaks like this in the trees so I could cool off more.” Be careful what you wish for. About 30 seconds later a loud noise began above, quickly crescendoing into a deafening roar.  Torrential downpour. It was coming down so hard that I couldn’t see the trail in front of me clearly. I took shelter beside a tree, but still was soaked through within a minute. It continued for 5 minutes or so, and then slowed. The previously dry-slightly moist trail was now a series of large puddles, linked by moving run-off and instant gooped-up mud.  Fun. I soldiered on – fully soaked but happy to be out for a run. It slowed me down quite a bit and towards the end I could sense a couple blisters forming from the wet socks.

When I got back to my lodging, the coworkers I was going out to dinner with asked, “Do you still want to drive all the way in to Cleveland to eat?  You know, since there is a tornado warning and all.”  WHAT?! Thanks guys! None of them bothered to call or text me on the trail to warn me to get inside.  Oh well. I survived.