Today was take the truck in for an oil change and tire rotation over at ACAR in Augusta. The joys of getting to Fall and getting vehicles ready for what looks to be a nasty Winter this year – at least all the signs are there for it to be “one of those Winters”.

This means that I get to run somewhere in Augusta or Hallowell. This morning I decided to head up the Rail Trail and see where the Old Mill Park past Bond Brook path leads.

My first mile was comfortable and just over 9:00 pace, which is where I wanted to be. I purposely slowed down a LOT today to keep the pace easy. The last two days have been harder runs and I knew that I really needed a nice and easy run more than another beat me up even more run.

The Rail Trail was sort of busy, but not too bad since school is back in session and it was a Monday. Most of the people who were running in the other direction so I got to do some waving and say “hi”, which is fun.

When I got to the end of the railroad bed that has been turned into parking to, turns to a path, it got seriously sketchy for a minute with some guys doing some shit in the woods there. I think in the future I will turn down the road before and avoid the sketchy section where visibility is better and other problems are not problems.

I found out that the path around Mill Park, runs up past the old dog park and then turns into a double dirt path. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the warm and fuzzy feeling on this path either and turned around pretty quickly. No, I didn’t see anything going on, but I have learned the hard way to trust my intuition and when I do, I tend to stay out of trouble.

Then I ran up over the big bridge and around the Capitol Buildings before heading back towards ACAR.

I did exactly what I wanted to do during the run today.

I ran easy.

Every time I was tempted to pick up the pace or felt myself creeping up the speed too much, I purposely slowed down again. If you look at the pace chart from my Strava feed it is all over the place, but I kept the overall pace slow.

The truck is back on the road and ready to go for the start of the Winter season. I love my little Ford Ranger, but I have a feeling that next Spring it will be time to start looking at something newer and probably with a little more room.

Then back to house, eat lunch, take a nap, mow the lawn and do some more chores around the house. Yeah, just another day in the life. 😉