PA Rise Up--Show & Tell

A western PA sunrise atop a hill at Alameda State Park in Butler. When you follow this trail down the hill, you need to secure all personal items...

I wouldn't want to live in Butler, Pennsylvania (no offense to my wife Robin or any other Butlerites). But I am envious of my brother-in-law for his proximity to sweet trail running terrain. You walk out his back door, jet down a hill, across a street, and within about a half-mile, you are flying down a sizable hill in Alameda State Park.

On Saturday, I grabbed a Rise Up run on the PA trails, logging 1 hour and 45 minutes, with a few photo stops. Pretty well all single-track trail, with pretty rough (to a flat-lander) climbs and descents and very little level running. A good bit of the trail zig-zags along the top of a hill before the bottom drops out and sends you screaming downhill, to then zig-zag closer to the bottom, climbing back up to complete a loop.

The view from the trail along the top of the hill as the sun comes up.

Some things to note about trails in August in western Pennsylvania: no ticks to speak of; very little poison ivy growing across trails; much less humidity. It's year-round trail running, unlike our own Tuckahoe State Park.

A good run on the trails drove home how much I have missed trail running during the last month plus, and that I badly need to find some off-road runs in the very near future. Stay tuned on that front.

A dense back country forest? Nope, just a ferny stretch of Alameda single-track.

Running this morning--a standard 8.25 - 8.5 mile route up Oxford Road and back--also got me thinking about the Rise Up Runners and the "national" miles logged since we've been running together. During that time, I've run in Delaware and Pennsylvania, in addition to our own Maryland. Joel his hit Vermont and PA; Landy has been off to New York; Keene has had day-long hikes in Utah; Dominic put some miles on his feet in Colorado, just to name a very few.

So a few photos and a brief write-up of a road trip with run. That's my show and tell. Looking forward to a good Sunday run, route, location, and time to be determined. Feel free to add suggestions!