5 PM
running (trails) 54:20 [2] 6.43 km (8:27 / km) +120m 7:44 / km
shoes: Merrill Bare Access XTR
Another piece of the Midstate, which I kind of screwed up in multiple ways. After flying earlier in the afternoon, I drove down to do this. We stopped flying because the incoming clouds made flying any more a really dumb idea. I dropped my bike off at the place where I intended to finish the run, except that involved going around in a lot of circles because I couldn't figure out how to get to where I wanted to go. Roads that GoogleMaps wanted me to go down turned out to be gated-off dirt roads. Eventually I got close enough and locked the bike to a tree near the end of a dead-end road, and drove back to where I had finished up last time.
Some of this was rough and rocky, would have been too hard to mountain bike. A bunch of it was just paved roads. One section was a formerly paved road, then there was a place through a gorge that probably has a really nice waterfall in the springtime. Or maybe later this same afternoon. I got to the place where I intended to leave the trail and head toward where my bike was, but the road dead-ended into a fenced-off area that looked like a sandpit, and another side branch that just went to some dumping ground. Google Maps had said this would be roads, they even had names like First St. and Fourth St., I was expecting a residential neighborhood. I found a spot where I could cut through a short section of woods to get to a wide ride that went up a steep hill.
multisport adventure (trails) 23:28 [2] 2.4 km (9:47 / km) +93m 8:12 / km
shoes: Merrill Bare Access XTR
At the top of the hill, I looked again at my other map app: weather radar. It had been looking like there was pretty serious thunderstorm activity a bit to the north of me, but I had thought it was going to pass by. The radar indicated that I was going to at least get the edge of it, so I decided to wait out the rain in a relatively sheltered spot.
It wasn't just the edge, I got hammered by a thunderstorm. I managed to stay almost dry by standing on the downwind side of a tree (the day's prevaining wind had been SW, but during the storm, the wind was howling out of the NE). It didn't last all that long, maybe 10-20 minutes. Fortunately, there was a dirt road adjacent to the ride, and it looked like it was the one that led to my bike, so when the rain let up, off I went.
I reached the gate much sooner than I expected, and started looking in the woods on the right for my bike. But although things looked familiar, I came to a house on the left that I didn't remember... huh? I checked with my phone, and... doh! I wasn't on the road to my bike, I had looped back and was heading back along the Midstate, the way I had come! That's why it looked familiar. I briefly considered just retracing my steps to the car, but that would be a long way, so I turned around.
I got back to where I had sheltered, and there was another road, which the GPS indicated was the one I wanted. It went around the upper rim of a huge quarry, and the "residential streets" I had been expecting are actually the tiered extraction roads within the quarry. That road did in fact lead me back to my bike. A better choice would have been to go a bit further on the Midstate, to the center of Oxford, but that would have extended the bike ride back longer than I wanted for today.
pedaling (town bike) 23:34 [2] 8.31 km (2:50 / km) +92m 2:41 / km
And back to the car. For the first half of this, the rain came back, though without the wind, but honestly, I was already pretty wet by that time, so whatever.
And amusingly, the place where I had locked up the bike was very close to a familiar spot, I recognized it when I made the last turn in the car up the dead end road: I attended a notable wedding there once.