In celebration of turning another year older, I got the idea in my head a couple months back to run the Greenleaf State Park trail (http://www.ouachitamaps.com/Greenleaf.html). Greenleaf State Park is a nice quiet and clean park a few miles outside of Camp Gruber near Braggs, OK. The trail itself is about 18+ miles long. The markers on the trail do not exactly hold true to that measurement, they end at 17. My planned route and elevations can be seen at: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5834659.
I did the run with a small Coleman double compartment backpack. In the main compartment I packed two 1-liter bottles of water, a Capri Sun 12oz. resealable juice pouch, two peanut butter and honey sandwiches (cut into halves), an apple and a small container with mix of almonds, sunflower and chia seeds. In the secondary compartment, I stashed my wallet, keys, some TP (just in case) and some chamois cream that I thought would be good for chaffing, if needed. In the outside mesh I put my GPS unit. I had a 20oz. handheld bottle that I filled with water. In my pockets I had 2 Gu packets.
I started slow, doing a brisk walk for the first mile which runs along side the lake and takes you out to Highway 10 for a quick jaunt (@1/4 mile) over a bridge for the initial course downhill entry. If you have run Turkey Mountain or the trails off Old Highway 51, then this would feel familiar, rocks, roots and dirt in a mish-mosh aggregation. My idealized goal for this trip was to average 10-11 minute miles for the whole course which would have my run time be @ 3-3:30 hours with time for breaks and taking in the sites I figured 4 hours to finish. So I started off at that pace, plodding along feeling good and enjoying the start of my run. At the 2 mile mark, one of the more prominent features of this trail is the swinging bridge. It's pretty cool, strung out with wood planks and steel cabling. It swings left-to-right and up and down over a nice stretch of clear green water. Fun stuff.
I decided to take the biggest hills of trail first which meant taking a right on the blue trail after the swinging bridge. This means running the trail backwards in terms of mile markers, but the markings run both ways, so no big drawback for this approach. The hills start pretty quick. I made the decision to run any inclination as long as I could land with a relatively flat foot. Once the inclinations required me to get up on my toes, I started walking. The first hill is probably one of the biggest. To the pros, I'm sure that it would not register as much more than an entry way to an actual hill/mountain, but for me it was taxing. I think the biggest hill is @240ft. I got to the top and started trudging along. Twice I kicked a small rock and started to stumble. The first time I caught myself, the second time I took a tumble and ended up banging my knee on a rock and getting a couple abrasions on my hand. I did find that a waterbottle can act like an air bag for reducing impact, so +1 for carrying the handheld. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, spritzed my wounds and got on my way. This particular section of the trail is pretty scenic and well marked with blue markings and arrow/pictogram badges. Nice rock out-croppings, small water crossings, etc.. These sections go up and down with fair frequency.
At @ mile 7, I came to the mid-trail link to Mary's Cove along the white trail. I had originally planned to not take this route, but when I got to the split, I could not easily make out where the blue trail went, so I took the pass to Mary's Cove. From there I picked up the blue trail again, but not before making a couple wrong turns and having to backtrack to Mary's Cove. For reference,the trail goes to the right and veers somewhat inland and not toward the shore of the lake. The elevations are not too bad for this section, but the trail marking really start to get kinda sparse. I often found myself having to stop and search the trees for the trail marking. There were also a couple larger water crossings where I had to get into the brambles to get the optimum traverse. I thought it was better to keep my shoes dry and suffer a couple scrapes. Nothing too bad though. One thing that was kinda cool was that throughout the trail were rutting armadillos. They were not too concerned with a passing human. They kept on about their business, looking for lunch. The deer on the other hand were always on the move and I would usually just see the flash of a white tail and then they'd disappear.
At @ blue trail mile 10 (which was @ mile 13 of my run) the trail markings were getting harder and harder to find. I was starting to get frustrated and when I came to one big rock with no sign of the blue trail, I did a bit of bushwhacking and connected with the lower part of the blue trail back to Mary's Cove. Looking at my watch I could see that I was already at 3 hours and 30 minutes with 6 miles to go. So much for the sub 4 hour finish. At this point I was feeling the miles of rocks and roots. The uphill sections were starting to prove more challenging, luckily this portion was flat in comparison to the previous miles and it runs along the lake so there are some nice vistas. Of course, most of the time my head was down looking at the trail, reading the rocks and working to stay upright. I think that with the pack on, I was leaning forward more and as a result, my hips were starting to feel sore. From Mary's Cove, it's about 3 miles to the swinging bridge and about 2 1/2 miles from the bridge to the trail head. Those last 5 miles were kinda intense for me as I was starting to push the outer boundary of my distance limits. Other folks who do this kinda thing regularly would probably just start to be getting warm, but I was ready for the end when I got there. This trip was about the longest that I have ever done. And I can easily say that it required more effort and concentration than my previous longer outings. I did run 20 miles barefoot last year, but that was along the river trail and I did not have to carry too many supplies.
All-in-all, I really enjoyed the run. I have been on this trail hiking and camping previously, so it was kinda fun to cover the whole thing in a single outing when previously it would have been an overnight trip. I ended up finishing 19+ miles (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5838100) in 4:48:39. So I averaged @ 15 minutes per mile. I checked my GPS to see the mileage and found that it had not acquired satellites when I had started, so there was no tracking data.
I am planning on doing this run again next year at around the same time. It would be good to make it an annual affair. I would recommend this trail to anyone who is seeking to enjoy a typical Oklahoma-style trail run with a little more length and elevation than Tulsa's Turkey Mountain or the Keystone Lake trails.
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