Farmdale Folly

We decided to do a training "run" this morning at Farmdale Resevoir near East Peoria. Started at 7:30 in what was already some pretty good muggy heat at the main parking lot area just east of the dam. Ran along creekside trail on the winding single-track mountain bike trail, across the Farm Creek bed, then along the more rolling "tnt" single track on the northeastern edge of the park. Across the service road, just down from the n.e. parking lot, is some pretty gnarly trail. Ended up going straight up this elevator shaft hill probably a good 60+ feet--rivals anything in this area for an intense climb. At the top of this hill (blue chevy hill, for obvious reasons) is a '54 or '55 chevy that someone drove in at some point and decided to permanetly park in the woods.

About an hour and a half into the run we somehow got off into the open meadow area west of the back trail and wandered around aimlessly in the heat for 30 minutes or so. the positive here is that we ended up looping around twice to this open ridge with an amazing view of the interior of the basin, and we had some more time to concoct a plan for hosting a race, speaking of which, Pam came up with excellent concept for a trail ultra race. I'm hoping this will pan out, details to come in the future.

We finally found our way back to the service road, cooled our feet in the shallow waters of the creek for several minutes, and winded our way back to the parking lot. an intended run of 1:30 turned into 2:20, which actually works out pretty well in terms of training. Nice solid run. We didn't even hit the hilly mountain bike trails on the south side. if you could carry more water or the day was cooler, you could easily get 3 solid hours per loop, at least at the speed we go, which is admittedly slow. I didn't realize how huge the reservoir actually is.

Dip net fished along the pond shore tonight at sundown. Large, orbital orange farmer sunset tonight. Ended up netting 20 or so baby warmouth, hybrid sunfish. A good day despite the heat.

Reading an older book on Mongolian history. Just started last night.