September 28, 2006

Was in Madison, WI earlier this week on business. I stayed in a hotel on the southern end of Lake Monona. I knew there were pretty good trails in Madison for biking and running, and I have seen some tracks running around the lake that people have uploaded to MotionBased and FavoriteRun.

There was a path right in front of the hotel and I followed it to downtown past the starting point of IM Wisconsin. The path then goes away and you go through some neighborhoods. I knew as long as I could see the lake I would be in good shape. I then noticed arrows and 'LMR' on the streets. I followed the arrows and felt confident that I wasn't going to get lost.

I did lose the arrows at one point because they went through a park and I wasn't sure if there would be any other markers, so I went back to following the lake. I found the markings on the road again, but again lost them because there was some road construction going on and the streets were torn up. At about 10 miles I stopped to ask a guy who was walking if I was on track and how much farther I had. He told me to stay to the right and I had 2-3 miles.

I did get spooked around the 7-mile mark when a rabbit jumped out of some bushes in front of me. I immediately thought of the rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The run was very pleasant and the weather rocked! It was in the high 40s for most of the run.

I eventually found out that the LMR markings are for the annual Lake Monona 20k. The start and finish are in the park I was unsure about running through.

Before I got to Madison I corresponded with Stu of Simply Stu fame. He lives in Madison and provided me with some running options using the trails. I finally decided that the run around Lake Monona would be the best adventure.

My training plan called for an 18-mile run, but I ended up only doing 13. I didn't want to push it with an 8:30 meeting that morning. Now, in retrospect, I wish I had woken up an hour earlier so I could have done 18 based on the weather and the nice running paths. Maybe on a future visit. . .

UPDATE: Google Earth file (KML).

UPDATE 2: View path with Google Maps.