Giant spiders and running in circles!

Target mileage for this weekend; 30, target trail; first 15 miles of the Backbone Trail from the southern end. Success rate 13.5/15, that is foiled by a road crossing at the almost halfway point!

Knowing that my mileage is due to only get longer my wife and I had a heart to heart and she has basically granted me a guilt free run pass on my long runs as the extend further into the day, it was becoming clear that my estimates of return times were becoming woefully inaccurate and leaving the family at home waiting for me was really unfair! If you were to look up supporting and/or understanding in the dictionary you would see a picture of my wife! I had switched my long run from Sunday to Saturday and so this would be a reversed back to back from Friday’s 15 mile run.

Starting at a major State Park; Will Rogers, I had to wait until the park opened until I could park my car at 7:00am and shortly after I was on the trail. As always the trail heads up and this close to the coast into the fog, the coolness was welcome and meant a delay to the heat of the day which would be along soon. I passed some mountain bikers on the trail and at this point I realized that I was the first person out the trails that day, cobwebs the size of dustbin lids lay across the trail! There were also hundreds of webs on the sides of the trail which were picked up by the dampness, there are tarantulas and black widows in the area so I left these things well alone and headed towards “The Hub”. Talking of dampness, high grass gave me a real wash down!

The Hub is nothing more than a junction of trails and is where one park; Will Rogers meets another; Topanga. The trail wound its way along towards Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock so called, I understand, due the shape of it looking like an eagle's head rather than the number of birds you'll see. Taking this trail is slightly off course but is a more scenic route. From here I headed down into the next canyon towards Dead Horse parking lot and it was from here that things came unraveled.

Two road crossings lay ahead, Topanga Canyon and Old Topanga Canyon from where I would pick up the Fossil Trail through Hondo Canyon, the NPS website states that these are 'exceeding obscure' trails….oh yeah! Up down, down up, left right, right left ; could I find it - could I heck and to use the vernacular of the old country; bugger! At this point I turned around and headed back the way I came, an uneventful journey back to my car left my mileage short and so I took a couple of laps around the polo field to bump it up to within 10% of the scheduled 30.

On the way home I took a detour in the car to try and find the missing crossings and managed to find the ultimate destination crossing which was quite easy to find it’s just the mile in the middle that proved problematic, if I have the chance I’ll go back and have another look, if not I’ll just “road it” life’s too short to go round in circles!

Here’s the Garmin Connect link and some photos including the uber spider webs!