trailhonky

Westside, until the mile markers ran out

Posted on 08. Jul, 2008 by Brad in Training

Today I decided to make a southerly turn after crossing the bRRidge and check out the portion of the Riverparks trail down towards 71st Street. My original plan was to go until I saw the 5.5 mile marker … but they seemed to run out after the 4.5 mile post! I suspect with the recent trail work they removed the marker to make way for new fencing and guardrails.

So after running just about an hour, I turned back around. I figured I was pretty close to the Turkey Mountain trail heads and after consulting the maps once back home, I indeed was quite near them.

I do like this trail though there were fewer water fountains than I expected. I opted to use the one conveniently located near the waste water treatment plant around 41st Street on both the outbound and inbound portions. Looking back, it was probably not the best selection of a water source, but nothing tasted funny!

Overall this was a really great training run. I went a little over 11 miles in just over 2 hours with relatively even splits (right at 11:00/mile pace), particularly since I practiced some power walking on a few slight uphill sections in the second half.

Landmark highlights for the run included:

• The PSO power plant lit up on the return trip
• The Channel 2 tower lit brightly on the evening sky from across the river
• A small pedestrian/bike bridge crossing an inlet of the river just north of I-44
• The railroad crossing on the trail, and finally
• A exhaust torch burning off excess energy at a plant just south of I-44…this puppy is right on the other side of the fence from the trail and you can feel a significant temperature increase for a few moments!
• The TATUR Estim8ur turnaround spray paint which is now quite faded on the trail surface.

Tags: riverparks, trail running, tulsa