A Middle-Of-The-Week Run! Who knew this was even possible?

   One of the nice things about the switch to Daylight Savings Time is that it almost instantly makes it easier to squeeze in a run after work and before dinner. Today was the one day of the week I get off the earliest (4:00) and that, coupled with the fact that it's actually sunny today, gave me the urge to get out there on the trails.

Out of the park and into the forest...

   There is a park about a hundred meters down the street from us and one corner of it leads into Warbler Woods, another of London's environmentally significant areas, and that is where I headed. I never really think of this as an entranceway to Warbler and, instead, I usually run or hike over a kilometer to get to one of the other entrances. So tonight, I thought I'd just walk a hundred meters over to the park and another hundred meters later I'd be in the woods! And it almost worked out that way!
   I did find myself running along a nice little trail in the woods but this only lasted for about three minutes before I popped out again into the subdivision!
   

...until I came out of the forest!

Now if I had really been remembering the geography of where I was headed, I would have realized this would happen but, then again, I'm not really at that rememberin' age and so I found myself somewhat perplexed as to which way to go next. Fortunately, I took a few steps in the right direction and then saw another opening into the forest off of a nearby side street. From there I headed back in.
   It had been awhile since I'd run in Warbler and for some reason it seemed different. I put this down to having entered a whole new way and it took awhile for things to start to feel familiar.
   In my last blog post, I bemoaned the fact that we had had such little sun over the past month and the running gods must have heard me because today was beautiful and sunny, if somewhat nippy (0C). Things have continued to be dry and tonight presented pretty well the best running conditions I've had lately, with almost no mud at all!

Back INTO the forest....

   As I've talked about before, we had a huge windstorm here in London about three weeks ago and there was a fair bit of damage in the woods tonight. At one point near the end of the trail, a huge uprooted tree lay across it and I had to somewhat nimbly crawl my way through. This has been par for the course in London's forests the past three weeks.
   I finally made it to the far side of the forest and popped out on the Commissioners Road side. From there I ran in the grass along the sidewalks most of the way home. All in all, it was only about a 3K run but the forest part of it featured many steep climbs and descents and, for all intents and purposes, I had done a pretty intense hill repeat session. Probably even more importantly than that, I actually ran during the week! Whoop!

...only to have my way out blocked!