Trail Running in the Lowcountry

Last Saturday, I went trail running with my running group.  It was beyond awesome!

The trail we ran is part of the Palmetto Trail. The Palmetto is crazy long and reaches from the coast to the mountains (I would love to run the entire thing - someday)...

The Awendaw Passage of the Palmetto Trail at Buck Hall recreation area is really nice and really fast (it connects to the Swamp Fox Passage of the Palmetto Trail).  This was our first trail run as a group so we decided to do an out and back (8.5 miles total).

Okay...  We didn't really decide, I just stopped at some point and we all went back :)

The trail was in great shape.  There are some tight turns, down hill and up hill stretches, big roots, pine straw and a few muddy spots.

This was the most technical trail I have done so far.  Most of the trails I run around here have been packed dirt or paved trails through woods (kinda faux trails).

I was wearing my Salomon XR Crossmax trail running shoes and they performed really well.  They are a little heavy for road running and for long distance, but for this run they were perfect.

Although there were no great elevation changes, it was fun to run down hill as we ran toward the marsh and then back up as we ran back to the parking lot.

The views of the marsh were incredible and having Michael (Ninja Stuntman) up front for the first part of the run was great (he cleared all the spiderwebs).

There were several small bridges that we crossed as we got closer to the water and there were some strange "milk crate tops" (or something like that) in the ground near the areas that tend to flood (actually a little hard to run on when its dry).

One thing I noticed during the run was that everyone looked like they were having a blast!

I was running with a few new runners from Coach Greg's running group, but mostly with my group from the Bulldog Challenge (Cathy, Annie and Michael).

Those guys are not only runners, they are adventure seekers like me.  Annie was even laughing and saying how much fun she was having!  Cathy and Michael were blasting through turns and hills like we were on an obstacle course.

I really felt like I was falling in love with running all over again...

At the end of our run Annie took the lead and we all sprinted after her.




It was a great ending to an awesome run!