In the Hocking Hills for a wedding. I had done some research, but not enough on the specifics of where we actually were. And we had poor reception and no wifi!

I realized the Buckeye Trail went right by the property we were at and it appears that the trail might have connected into some of their private trails. At that point no one was around to ask and actually I would have missed some of the best parts of the trail. 

The Buckeye Trail goes around the entire state and uses a variety of hiking trails and walking along the road. So I left the lodge with the statement that the trail goes off into a meadow from the road. When I woke up it was just turning light and I had to use my phone’s flashlight to run by. Not ideal! I ran past a grassy road and turned up it. Didn’t see any blazes so when it intersected another grassy farm road I decided not to run up the hill and ran down into a little farmstead. Oops, retrace steps. Back on the road I ran until it ran into a farm road. A short bit down, there were a bunch of trees down. So I turned around again. This time I saw the small sign with the blue blaze! Success!

I turned into an overgrown meadow and followed the trail through a bunch of briar. Fortunately the wedding would be in pants as my legs got horribly scratched up! 

When the trail got into the woods it was a small path that was barely worn into the side of the hill. It was well marked for a little while and then joined or crossed another farm road and I lost it. I ran up the hill and noticed a sign, so I turned on it and that brought me back to the bottom of the hill. Oops. 

I went for awhile again staying on the trail as ot ran through the woods and crossing farm paths. I lost it a few other times for short periods of time. One time due to a fallen tree. At one point I ran through a bunch of mowed trails, which I assume were from our lodge. 

And then it popped out with a nice gate and trail register. The gate I ran through was well marked as being the trail, but I had no idea which way to go from there! Does the trail cut back down the hill on the gravel road or up the road or on some other trail? I didn’t see any blazes or signs. 

I opted for the road. And shortly saw a blue blaze. The rest of the run was on the Buckeye Trail and stayed on the roads. The trail would have turned left and stayed on the roads for a bit, when I was staying off to the right. I wasn’t sure how far I had to go to get back. 

The rest of the run was uphill and was uneventful. It was warming up with the sun. The Hocking River sure looked inviting! 

When I got back to the lodge I checked out some of their trails and from the map you can see I got really close to where the Buckeye Trail went by. I finished running up the hill from the creek to the lodges. 

The final totals were 8.5 miles in 1:33:35. I was supposed to get 10 in but didn’t see an easy way to get it done. 

After cooling off a little bit my brother-in-law came out and said let’s go workout. So we did an 11 minute workout that was 

3 Rounds for Time of

100 single unders

12 53# Russian swings

Run down the hill

12 slam balls

Run up the hill

And then 40 shoulder twists with the light band.