I ran another great trail here in the Seattle area. Found out about a continuous 9.6 mile trail which goes all the way around Lake Youngs, which is only a 15 minute drive from my place in Kent. I had envisioned this trail meandering around the lake with great views of the water. That's really not at all what it was like. In fact, I never saw water or any part of the lake. Apparently the lake is protected watershed and there's a tall fence and perimeter road on the inside of the fence to keep people out. Along the outside of the fence is a nice wide gravel/dirt path which occasionally narrowed to a single track on the east side of the lake. The trail is very, very hilly in sections and has mile/half mile markers posted on the fence. They seemed to be accurate. The trail was well shaded and quiet for most of the trip. The weird thing about the path is there are numerous turns around the lake but all of the turns are exactly 90 degree turns, which meant all sections fo the path were a perfectly straight. Kind of weird but I got used to it. I had forgotten my Garmin so I used a stop watch to time my total run and some occasional miles based on the fence markings. Mile 3 was 8:24, mile 6 was 8:10 and I really pushed mile the last mile which was very hilly at 7:50. Ran past where I had parked in order to make it an even 10 miles.
Total time was 1:21:58 for 10 miles = 8:11 pace.
I will definitely be doing this run again.
There's an inexpensive marathon/half marathon west of Olympia on Saturday. I'm not in marathon shape but I may do it anyway. If not, then definitely the half. | 