Another Trail-running Weekend!

 It's the weekend so I decided I would try and get in another long(ish) run at Komoka Provincial Park!
   Hydration's been a bit of an issue this summer on my trail runs and while I have been looking at hydration vests they are still pretty low on the list of things I think I can spend money on right at the moment. What I did do was ask the boys if anyone had an old backpack they weren't using anymore (which they did) and I figured out a way of carrying extra water in it. Just took a large drinking bottle, filled it part way with water and then let it freeze. Just before I set out, I filled it to the top and discovered it fit very neatly on its side in the bottom of the knapsack. Found another little pocket for a small sandwich and then headed off!

Found a backpack to use but then
made the mistake of leaving it
on the table for too long! I also had
a pile of change stacked nicely---
wonder what happened to it...?

   Unfortunately, with all this extra prep, the one thing I forgot was my Garmin. If I'd been any farther away from home I would have just made do but seeing as how home was only 5 minutes away, I whipped back there and got it. After some preliminary strap-adjusting with the backpack, I was off.
   The park is big enough and I am new enough to it that there are still some portions of it which I have yet to explore. This was my goal yesterday. 
   Part of the attraction with Komoka is that many parts of it still seem pretty pristine and un-traveled. Obviously because there is a path you know that people have been there before but in many places I ran in yesterday the path was so overgrown that it was hard to imagine any regular traffic ever went through there. It was not an easy run!
   I started from the parking lot and headed west, toward the old parking lot. From there I continued west almost to the boundary of the park. Part of the issue I was having yesterday was that there were thunderstorms in the forecast and although I left in the sunshine by the time I got to the old parking lot and there was an opening big enough to see the horizon, there were some pretty ominous clouds not far off.
   I continued running toward the clouds (which didn't seem all that intelligent) until I was running on trails I was totally unfamiliar with. I wouldn't say I was lost exactly but as the trails are notoriously poorly marked I really wasn't sure if I was on the white one, blue one or orange one. Given the look of the sky and the forecast, I took whatever trail which looked like it was headed back to where I'd parked. Finally, I ended up back in familiar territory, amazingly to me, and I now have a slightly better understanding of that end of the park.
    The hydration angle worked out perfectly. I still wore my Fuel Belt armband bottle but every time it got empty I would just stop and refill it from the larger bottle in my backpack. A bit of a pain in the butt but way better than having to make trips back to my car or ration my water. 

A reminder that the seasons are changing

   The signage in the park is really starting to bother me, as far as knowing what trail you were on and where it headed. Even the online trail maps are inconsistent with one another. Some of the plastic trail blazes are so faded that it's actually hard to tell what colour they are. I suppose when it was a free park it seemed like only a small inconvenience but now that people are being charged for going there, it just doesn't seem right! I really am contemplating contacting the people in charge to see what perhaps could be done about it. I'm not even sure how you do a trail map but I would be more than happy to help out, if there's anything I can do.
   On a side note, it was not a particularly busy day in the park----I suspect the overcast conditions conditions and the weather prognosis had something to do with this. I did pass by a couple of other runners, however. One was a younger woman bounding along the pathway quickly. I really wanted to give her a fifty pound bag of cement to carry (giggle) and the other was a one-armed man (who I wanted to high-five but I couldn't...so we just nodded).

Ominous clouds but still a pretty pic!

   I'd been planning on running maybe 9K yesterday but the weather played a little part in changing my plans. It had started to rain at one point so I cut things short at 7. I was still exhausted however---so many hills and rough terrain! I do find that I'm really enjoying the trail running so much more than on the streets and am at the point where the prospect of running 5K in my neighbourhood is becoming less and less appealing. On top of everything else, other runners' blogs I follow just seem to make trail running seem so much more badass!