Wear and Tear on the Ossipee Trails

I was scheduled to run 11 miles this morning. Kevin and I rode bikes on the Ossipee Trails a few days ago and I saw that trail conditions were very good for late Winter/early Spring. I normally don't like to run over the same section of trail over and over again because I like variety, but other trails in the area are still snow covered or are wet. The Ossipee Trails are a joy to run on right now. So I did three repeats of the entire length of trail, looping around Polliwog at the far end and climbing the steep banking up to the Rescue Barn at the near end each time. I avoided the snowmobile trails further up the slope which still have snow on them and stayed on the single track close to the river where about 75% of the trail is now melted down to the dirt. I used my antiquated GPS to determine that each repeat was about 3.3 miles. Add the slightly more than half mile to and from the trail and I had a pretty near perfect 11 miles!

I ran for about 1 hour 45 minutes and never got tired of looking at the same stuff over and over again because there was so much to see. The crows that have been heckling me each time I've been out there lately, showed up on my first return trip and stuck around in the trees over my head for the rest of the run. I saw a beautiful huge Pileated Woodpecker on my second return trip. He was right where I had, on an earlier outing, noticed an enormous pile of wood chips under a dead tree. Kevin had told me they were from a woodpecker but I had been skeptical that one bird could do so much to a tree. After seeing this guy close up, I believe it now! I saw ducks floating around near the gravel bar and lots of deer tracks. Before I knew it, my three out and backs were done.