Brookton Hill & Dale Star Posts (2026)

[adamengst]

Use this topic for posts that will collect community stars for the Brookton Hill & Dale course. You can also ask questions or make comments about this course.

Here’s how it works.

• Click the “Post Using This Template” button below to create a new post with a Story heading and boilerplate text.
• Replace the boilerplate text with your report for one or both sections. The Story header is key for distinguishing between posts and replies—don’t change it.
• Your post must be on the same calendar day as your run as entered in the leaderboard.

Story

To pick up a community star, replace this text with a write-up of what your run was like, a photo you took on the run, a link to your Strava track, or something similar. Don’t delete the Story heading above.

[dennis-s (Dennis Stadelman)]

Story

Bad Newt News
I was on the sidelines for the 2022 Challenge, so this was my first time on most of these roads. Overall, a very enjoyable country run, even on a cloudy day with brief spots of sun and sprinkles, though with the nearby dark clouds, I was under frequent threat of a Desmond-ic deluge @steve-desmond.

Cows, corn fields, historical markers, views, old barns, a farm stand with an old truck, and many flowers. I started the run thinking it was pretty cool to be running along Six-Mile Creek here, after running along it on other courses closer to Ithaca. Later, I saw signs posted for Coddington Valley rail trail under development, which I assume will connect to South Hill Rec Way someday.

Along Coddington, I was surprised to see a red newt on the shoulder of the road. Unfortunately, it was dead stiff. Turned onto Ridgeway Road after the long stretch on Coddington, and took a brief detour where it crosses the rail trail under development to check out a large pond and wetlands area.Thoroughly soaked my shoes doing this!

Shortly after turning onto White Church Road from Ridgeway, I saw several hundred newts, maybe more. But the bad news is they were all dead, mostly squished by traffic, except for this one

I used my phone to try to nudge him to the side of the road. He did not care for this and either rolled on his back and pretended to be dead or took poses like this as I nudged him

The dead newts finally thinned out some but I didn’t stop seeing them until shortly before Caroline Depot Road.

I enjoyed the last few miles on the north side of the main road with an old farmhouses and another cemetery among the sights. I started down the seasonally maintained section of Vandermark Road to find it blocked by several large NYSEG trucks working on newly installed utility poles. I managed to make my way past the trucks on the opposite side from where they were working and no one said anything.

[bobtalda]

Story

Morning Run

Trying to take advantage of some late Indian summer weather and thinking about the long training runs I used to do at 4 AM Wednesday mornings with a group 20 years ago, I decided to try a long run. I picked a route that hopefully would be running with traffic so that I had some road between me and the cars. In addition, the roads on the last half of the course had better shoulders.

The run got off to a rocky start. I was a little later than I intended, and I discovered to my dismaymy headlamp no longer worked despite claiming it had enough charge. But since the first part of the run was on a dirt road that was rarely used, I headed it off in the dark keeping my phone ready to serve as a light source. The first mile was fine but naturally the first two cars I encountered had to pass each other right where I was standing at a narrow point in the road. Fortunately there were no cars on the bridge nor on Brooktondale Rd as I crossed over to White Church Road.

I was surprised and dismayed to discover how many cars were on White Church Road at this time of day. I did not expect it to be that busy and the road did not have any shoulder so I did a lot of crossing the road to be away from the cars and the occasional truck or school bus . Other than that, it was a relative pleasant trot that improved as the lighting improved and the fall colors came into play.

I was holding a surprisingly steady pace, but as I made the turn down Ridgeway and then up Coddington to start back I kept waiting for the, well, figurative wheels to fall off. There was a lot of traffic on Coddington so I was ultimately happy about my choice of route and most of the vehicles coming my way were very considerate - and in fact, the only ones who didn’t move over either couldn’t because of oncoming traffic or because it was a school bus about to pick up a student at the driveway I had just passed. The most interesting part of the stretch was that I never heard a dog bark, but I heard lots of roosters crowing. I was also surprised how much less color I could see from this side of the valley.

I was getting tired, so the run was becoming a point to point event. Can I run to the 6 miles mark? then can I run to the Belle School intersection? Etc. my planning was somewhat disrupted when it turns out the 8 mile mark was the turn onto Middaugh. I had forgotten how much downhill was on that stretch which was a plus as my left ankle was threatening to give out at any moment so I really appreciated just being able to lift my legs and let gravity carry me down. There was some semblance of a shoulder that I used frequently as I again had no clue how many cars and trucks used that road.

I rather quickly got to the bottom of the hill and and sprinted through the intersection to avoid three cars, but then resumed chugged the last mile along Brooktonale Road. There was still a lot of traffic, but this was more manageable as there was a big shoulder and it was also more urban with lots of houses and driveways. I began to get even a little excited when I realized I was gonna finish close to two hours and so I picked up the pace slightly to finish the last mile. I got back to the start just to discover that the market had opened at eight not at 8:30 and so my car was awkwardly parked for 30 minutes.. oops. But it was nothing that a good breakfast sandwich and cup of coffee couldn’t fix!

post note - my headlamp wasn’t broken - it was locked! completely forgot I had locked before my last trip .., and didn’t have any pre-run caffeine to stimulate appropriate brain cells…

Note: colors were just too muted for a photo…

Strava Activity