Well, they don’t call it a challenge for nothing! The upper part of the trail is still pretty muddy, but not as bad as I feared, hence my before and after shoe pictures aren’t as impressive as I’d hoped, @Paula_Klaben 's shoes seemed to fair much worse. Jamie is boasting an injury from his fall, but at least he only fell once this time. I was grateful for the cool weather and did not overhead in my long pants.
I enjoyed the scenery on this course. Running through the pine sections is just lovely, and not muddy. The fields of wild Geraniums are gorgeous, and I loved spotting the May Apples and Jack-in-the-Pulpits.
In addition to mud there is a fair bit of poison ivy on the course, and downed trees and branches. The trails are quite overgrown so tick repellent is a must.
Thank goodness for RunGo but I still got off track a few times and had to stop, pull out my phone, and reorient to re-find the trail. Except for the little loop on the blue and yellow trails, it is safe to just follow the white blazes.
Stupidly hard so did stupidly -as in I hadn’t done anything close to this dumb in months.
pluses:
met all 3 goals: finished; without getting lost; and without falling
jog/hike up “run” down strategy worked well - even got a negative split!
Maurten fueled me well - bottle of 160 on way up 2 gels on way down
not so plus:
HRM never connected -until I was back at the car
RunGo directions were wack for awhile - finally figured out they were lagging me by several hundred meters - the distance between the veer right by Butternut Creek road and the right into thomas rd - I got warned about the former as I did the latter. Oddly enough GPS must have caught up then as next instruction was right in time
phone decided to stop RunGo with about 3.67 miles to go. and as always trying to restart RunGo on an out and back course failed miserably
lots of mud and brambles after leaving state park.
other notes:
FL trail vanishes shortly after crossing Hines Rd - appears to have been washed out. Next trail blaze is visible so can figure it out
on return, shortly after turning on blue trail, come to small ampitheatre - or perhaps a camping lean-to..no blazes, but need to turn right through seating - and then turn right immediately upon entering farm field
, and @Tristan_Lambert once out on the trail, and @klaas back in the parking lot.