Post for 8/8/09
I went exploring today to see if I could piece together a longer run. It seems a shame to keep doing the same four mile route when there must be other beautiful spots to train. The trouble is that most of the main roads between villages don’t have sidewalks. There’s usually a three or four foot grassy margin between the edge of the pavement and the hedgerow, but the surface is uneven and I would hate to twist an ankle eleven weeks before race day. That would be a stupid reason to miss the marathon. An even worse fate would be to get squished by some guy driving a Renault Twingo who’s not paying attention to the road!
So, I headed away from the house and towards the sea... and I got lucky! Yesterday I saw, from the bedroom window, a man running along a track between the ocean and the golf course just behind the house. He must have been about a half mile away, so I couldn’t see what trail he was following, or how he got there. But seeing that there must be a trail of some kind along the water, I decided to try and find my way down. Lo and behold!
This trail is called the Tour du Golf and it consists of a gently rolling 1.5 mile path that connects the residential areas of Saint Briac with the beaches. Each beach is connected to the Tour by a steep, rocky little descending path, along which families with their dogs and inflatable beach toys struggle down to the water. The only disadvantage to running on the Tour seems to be the amount of foot traffic. That and the fact that the loop is only 1.5 miles long. I can connect this loop with my 4 miler from earlier and build a respectable distance, but I’ll have to figure out when the foot traffic along the Tour is least dense.
Such beautiful country!
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