Day 3,968 —a New Route by the River + a Bridge Tour—

 

I wanted to get a 50K in today, but I didn’t know where I wanted to run, so I was thinking I would stick close to home. I headed out, going towards the river, and ran on the rocks instead of taking the path, and I was surprised at how low the water was. It was in the 40s, so I had my shorts on, which was fine for most of the run, but at one point, it got insanely windy.

         I ran by the river until I ended up on the Riverway and saw two groups of runners out going the opposite way. One of the groups turned around, and I looked behind a few times to see how close they were. I went left, heading towards Cradonlet Park, not knowing where this path goes exactly; it had been years since I had attempted it, but I didn’t want to do the same old route on Grant’s trail. The path connected all the way to the park. The last time I tried, I remember it was still under construction, but once on the other side of the bridge, everything started looking familiar. I like the big pond in the park; there are always a lot of birds there. I couldn’t remember the road I used to take to connect to the other trail, but instead, I just headed back the other way and ended up on Morganford.

         I was listening to music again and enjoying taking a break from books and trying something different. I decided to just run down Morganford and see where I would end up. I found the “Donut House,” which had a hat on the building. I was wondering where this road would go when I started to notice familiar streets, but I ran past them. All of a sudden, I realized I was right by Grant’s trail. I had looked down from the bridge and seen this area so many times, so I decided I would jump back on the trail. I was almost at 10 miles, and I hadn’t had anything to drink, but I decided to keep going even though I knew it would be almost 6 miles until I saw water again.

         Once on the trail, the wind started getting so intense that I was shivering, but I was too thirsty to be concerned about being cold. I counted down the miles until I made it to Grant’s historic site. I knew it would be open, and I could drink water there. I drank water for minutes before warming up in the bathroom. I used the blow-dryer for a few minutes, which helped out a lot.

I ran straight to my house after that at about mile 20 and opened the door to smell potato soup. I took a break and changed clothes before heading out to finish my run.

I decided to do a bridge tour and see how many crossings I could make. I was in familiar areas, but I hadn’t done this route before and was about to cross 6 different bridges. One of the walkways had bible scriptures tied to the fence. I get the locks, but this didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t exactly a bridge high enough to try to convince people not to jump, so I wasn’t sure the point, but to each their own, I guess. Maybe, I need to start tying messages to things with the phrase “There is no god, but you shouldn’t need one to tell you to be nice to other people,” but that’s a little too long.

I don’t know what I am going to do next. Part of me thinks I should keep going tonight, but I am already pretty tired, and I just want to take a bath.