Use this topic for posts that will collect community stars for the Pseudo Skunk Cabbage course. You can also ask questions or make comments about this course.
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After hanging out for a while at the finish of Forest Frolic 15K, eating watermelon, cookies, and Cheetos, and knocking down some Capri-Sun juice packs, I decided to tackle some of the remaining 5 courses in my personal challenge. Unfortunately, all of them are predominately pavement. So, I might as well tackle the Pseudo Skunk Half Marathon.
Sunday afternoon traffic was moderate, with only one jerk motorist. The afternoon sun baked the blacktop, which roasted me. Some shady spots, especially at the beginning of Thomas Road, and a few light breezes felt nice along the way.
One of the really nice aspects of road running is the slow pace compared to driving. So many more interesting things are seen at the slower pace. The Freeville Fly-In course has a historical marker indicating a stop on the underground railroad, and Pseudo Skunk has this marker along the first climb on the return on Ellis Hollow Road
Interesting that it uses rod as the distance measure, but even more interesting to note that slaves were owned this far north at one time. Often think of slavery as only in the South. Since a rod is 16.5 feet, the burial site is almost 750 feet from the sign. There is a house, yard, and driveway right across the road before getting to a field leading to the edge of a woods, but I didn’t see a path through the field.
Just up the climb from the marker is a very scenic view looking back over a horse farm
I’m guessing that’s @stephen-jesch’s sign, but there’s also @FLAndrew’s sign on Ellis Hollow Road past the Ellis Hollow Creek intersection heading toward Rt 79.
end of a week of time zone hopping without running (though lots of walking through airports and old World cities)
wonderful fall morning - crisp and clear (VERY crisp at the start!)
decided on a nice loonnggg run … though 2 hours in was thinking maybe a little too long! But rather than break down and walk I took the last hill as a challenge and held a steady pace - if only to look “good” for all the passing cars …
I suppose I should have taken some pictures, but my phone and gloved hands were not getting along, and the phone was buried under a couple of layers of clothes. It was a pretty run, with the early morning sun bringing out the best of the remaining orange and yellows in the past-peak foliage. And for the most part it was a pretty uneventful run; while there were quite a few passing motorists, most were courteous and more than made up for the couple of jerks - none of which I met on Thomas Road, fortunately, as that road has little or no shoulder. I was in my own head a lot during the run, convincing myself that I could keep going for just one more mile - until the last down hill, when I only had to convince myself to run a last half-mile.
It took me awhile to post my results, and when I did so, I noted that I missed @mclark starting his final Challenge run by 10 minutes - glad to see he made it!
@bobtalda sorry to have missed you that day and you kicked my butt with your faster time! It was a lovely crisp morning for the Pseudo Skunk, and kinda glad I procrastinated that morning for it to warm up since the temperature was in the 30s. My companion Maggie likes to lunge at passing cars so it was a “challenge” run in several ways for me. I’m glad to say I didn’t walk any of it, although I think walking could have been faster than my stumbling along on some of the uphills.
Did you see the three deer carcasses on Rt 79? I can’t quite figure out how all three died in same heap so I wonder if they were dumped.
Anyway, congrats on the Skunk and you only have a few to go for the 44 challenge runs!
@mclark I wondered if you had Maggie accompanying you! Yes, I saw those deer carcasses. I was wondering if they had just been dumped there by a road crew because of the lack of damaged car parts in the vicinity. They certainly were frozen stiff! I just hope they weren’t too much of a distraction for Maggie… there were enough passing cars that that would’ve been enough of a challenge for you to manage.
