Run 52: Mt. Auburn

We started our Mt. Auburn run from the grand stairway of Mel and Nick’s place on McGregor Avenue (aka “The Mac House”).  Mel and Nick greeted us on their porch with an offering of perfect, tiny pears and a handwritten route of our course.

I thought Mel looked so cute with her “State Avenue Running Club” shirt (a Mel Shaver original) and her big specs!

We were soon joined by another Kayla and her boyfriend Scott, who had run over from their place in neighboring Walnut Hills.  Months ago, before I met the other Kayla, Nick was telling me about her and said that she also ran, but that she was “a real runner.”   Whhhaattt?  What does that make me?  I’ll have you know that I have held several nonprofit fundraiser race titles and that I’m a founding member of the State Avenue Running Club.  

Eh, whatever, I’m totally over it.

Sort of.

We used a giant Jenga set as a tripod and took a picture of all of us.  From left to right you have: Kayla 2.0, Donnie, Mel, Nick, the original Kayla, and Scott. 

 

And the Jenga:

 

We started up Highland to Dorchester and spent a few minutes in Hopkins Park.  Hopkins Park is edged by these beautiful condominiums and townhouses, and the Mt. Auburn House.

 

 

Hopkins Park also faces this cool flatiron building and has picnic tables ready for games of chess:

 

Our next stop was Jackson Hill Park, which has a great view and a long, grassy stretch for sprints:

Here is Nick, taking it all in (and possibly contemplating the difference between real runners and the rest of us):

Here is Donnie, who you may someday see again in a Google Image search for the term “furrowed brow”:  

Leaving Jackson Hill Park, we ran up Auburn and then down the steep hill to the site where the Glencoe-Auburn Place Row Houses once stood.  We paused for a minute to reflect on the site, which seems smaller than it did when the row houses were standing.

Next, ran past the William Howard Taft Historical Site and Taft’s childhood home, which is unfortunately obscured in this photograph by a telephone pole, wires, and some stoplights.  But you get the idea!

As we were running in Mt. Auburn I noticed two themes.  First, the architectural details in the old buildings are absolutely stunning.  Here are just a few examples:

 

 

 

 

Second, so many of the houses in Mt. Auburn have gorgeous front yard gardens.  I struggle to keep four potted plants alive on my patio, so I was impressed with the flower and vegetable beds that are so abundant in this neighborhood.  I wish I had taken more pictures, but here are a couple.  Is this broccoli?

We finished our Mt. Auburn run down Reading, past the United Way building:

Thanks so much, Mel and Nick, for showing us around your neighborhood!  And thanks Kayla 2.0 and Scott for joining us, this was a fun one!


-K.

View the full route with mile markers here: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=522962

Run 52: Mt. Airy

On Sundays my college cross country coach would drive our team to the forest preserve and leave us with the same instructions, "go get lost."
 

Some of the team took this advice to heart; they would run blindly into the woods, seeking out winding stretches of single-track trail until they were absolutely lost. The most lost of us required search teams to bring them back. Fortunately, I was never in that extreme category--I always made it back before anyone came looking. My secret was simple: follow the sun.
 

Mt. Airy forest was the perfect place to get back in touch with my navigation skills. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: Mt. Airy is the largest municipal forest in the United States. That means it's larger than Central Park. It’s one thing to hear someone utter those words and another thing to actually drive into the forest and see the sheer scale for yourself.

Before we even got out of the car, we came across this possibly rabid--and most definitely angry--raccoon.  He(?) didn’t flinch when I stopped to take a picture.

Starting out from the parking oval off Colerain, we had a few trail options.  For no good reason we picked the H Trail, which starts with a steep and rocky descent into the woods. Here I am silently nervous that a raccoon crossing our path might be bad luck:

 

And here is Kayla, feeling a bit brazen:

 

If you’ve been following the blog, then you know that my love-hate relationship with trails is well documented.  To make matters worse, I started this trail run feeling a bit sluggish after a trip to the all- you-can-eat buffet at the Horseshoe Casino the day before.
 
With me grumbling behind her, Kayla led the way down the steep path; this was a good call as she is very agile (lots of free yoga classes) and I am very clumsy (lots of Greek yogurt in glasses). Fortunately, we would discover that Mt. Airy isn't all rocky terrain. 

(Kayla here, proofing this piece.  Not sure what to make of this last bit.  Yoga classes?  Greek yogurt in glasses?  What is this, Dr. Suess?)

 

 

 

After a good bit of exploring beneath the forest canopy, we emerged in a grassy field that reminded Kayla of Twilight, which reminded me of Kayla watching and reading Twilight while I pretended to gouge out my eyeballs. 

 

When Kayla stopped prancing around the meadow, I told her we were lost.

Puzzling our way in search of some familiar marker, we came to a sign for the Ponderosa Trail.  This seemed vaguely familiar, but, then again, I could have been associating the Ponderosa trail with the  Ponderosa buffet with the Horseshoe Casino buffet.  Nonetheless we forged on.

The Ponderosa trail has everything that I look for in a trail: well-packed dirt, very few roots, soft turns, and a few  gradual climbs.  I could run on a trail like that all day every day. Enjoying some running rhythm, I forgot that I had no clue where we were.

At the edge of the Ponderosa trail, I stopped and looked into the trees. Where had the sun been when we started? I was pretty sure we had been running toward it and that now we should turn and head away from it in whatever way we could accomplish that. Kayla agreed.

Soon we began to see familiar signs: a cedar trail sign with red arrows; a footbridge with a few missing steps; a steep slope.
 

 

And then, at the top of our final climb we were back at the parking oval. Thankfully, my navigation skills hadn't failed me, and we actually managed to see a good bit of what the trails had to offer. 

Before heading home, we explored a bit of the Mt. Airy neighborhood that lies outside of the forest.  We found a quaint business district and some charming homes.

 

 

But for the runner, Mt. Airy is all about the trails. 

--Donnie

P.S.  No map or route on this one, just drive to the trailhead and take off!

Run 52: Mt. Adams

If John Adams hadn't shown up to Cincinnati with a big idea about an Observatory on top of Mt. Ida, then Mount Adams would be called Mt. Ida, and old Ida wouldn't be staring down from the side of a wall with her face in a tree.

How do I know all this, you ask: well that’s because on our Mt. Adams run we were accompanied by longtime Mount Adamsite/historian, Liz Gottmer, who hand-charted our course and then led us around for what would be one of our most informative runs of the entire project.

Here’s our whole crew:

But who’s that other guy? That’s our other guest-runner, Javan, King of the HIll, Lapp, who didn’t bring much Mt. Adams knowledge, but is well-known in his hometown of Asheville North Carolina for traversing the mountain side faster than anybody around. This was also Javan’s last run in Cincinnati for a while as he was returning to his native North Carolina to take the bar.

Liz’s course started at Immaculata Church which serves as the end of a daunting yearly pilgrimage for worshipers who trek up an intense set of stairs to express their faith.  

Immaculate is a good word to describe the rest of Mt. Adams as the quaint streets are lined with unique house after unique house. It really is unlike any other neighborhood that we have run.

Hilly is the other word I would use to describe Mt. Adams.  Looking through our pictures, it's hard to find one where we aren't either heading up or down an incline.  On an unrelated note, it’s also hard to find a picture where Kayla is actually running with the group.

I wasn’t kidding....

Mt. Adams also has some incredible views, and to make things even better, we were running on a beautiful day.

We spent a good amount of time winding around the Mt. Adams business district. Sunday afternoon was the perfect time for this, as, once the sun sets on the weekend, the party buses start flooding the brick streets, leaving little room for curious runners. Our favorite spot in Mt. Adams is the Blind Lemon where we like to finish the night with an Irish coffee and listen to the acoustic set. Kayla usually requests Kenny Loggins' Danny's Song, not to be confused with the Celtic classic Danny Boy, not to be confused with Chumbawamba's I Get Knocked Down. Crowley's (pictured below) is the oldest bar in the city dating back to the late 19th century.

Once we headed down the hill into Eden Park, Kayla got a little nervous as this is disputed territory and it is unclear where Mt. Adams ends and Walnut Hills begins (One neighborhood at a time, alphabetical order!). There is a Mt. Adams sign at the foot of the hill, suggesting that the neighborhood is staking its claim to the bucolic surroundings, which include an ornate aqueduct and Eden Park's iconic gazebo which was where Cincinnati gangster George Remus's mistress was murdered, which in turn inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's depiction of Daisy's demise in the Great Gatsby, which later inspired the Great Gatsby soundtrack.

In the midst of all this beauty and history,there were a couple of strange moments. First, Javan found comfort in an abandoned garage on the hillside.

Then Kayla had a Brittany Spears moment at the swanky bus stop when she sat down on the floor for a photo-op. (Is it more sanitary if it's art deco?)

At the very end of our run, a terrier mix named Rosie rushed from Liz's house and right into Kayla's lap with the intention of getting to know this running woman who was hanging out in her driveway. It didn't take long for Kayla to make a new best friend--proof that, despite Kayla's wariness on many of our runs, not all unfamiliar dogs are to be avoided.

-Donnie