On tap this morning was a 2 x 5K with 10 minutes of rest in between.  It was a nice cool-ish morning.  Theodore Wirth Park was abuzz with activity getting ready for an Adventure Triathlon.  I decided that the 4-ish miles of new event trails would be a good place to run.  They were marked for the race, but I tried to be careful and not step on any of the flour markings!

The event trails are primarily mountain bike trails, but they will be good for running on as well. This was my first look at the Karate Monkey section of the trails and they were nice. This is the harder section of trail due to some tight turns.  There is one section called something Spaghetti and that is a few tight twisty turns. This will be a fun section to get out on and ride sometime soon.  I had ridden the Area 36 trails before and took the quick return route, today I took the longer route. It isn’t any harder, just longer and winds back in to the quick return.  My 10 minute break was in the Area 36 trails.  I walked about 5 minutes of it and jogged the last 5 minutes.

After the event trails, I still had a lot of miles left so I ran down and cross Hwy 55 and ran the prairie loop I usually skip just northwest of the lake. I was basically trying to get as close to home as possible but still giving myself some cool down time.  It ended up working out pretty well.

The two 5K times were: 30:03 (9:42) and 28:35 (9:13).  Total mileage was 8.38 in 1:26 (10:16).

This picture is on one of the event trails.