About NATRA Blog

This page is meant for folks to post their thoughts on the Saturday group run. I (Neil) will post a blurb about who showed up and where it was held. From there, I hope that other runners will share their thoughts since we often have different experiences on the same run. Enjoy!

Monday, November 11, 2013

Oldham Variations and Girls on the Run

(Thanks to David Blanchard for the post!) While Neil was off in Vegas running his first Ragnar Relay in nearly 4 years, twelve runners showed up for the Oldham Trail run at Buffalo Park -- along with many young girls for the "Girls on the Run" 5K race. Seems like this has happened before with one of our Buffalo Park runs.

After crossing the pipeline, there is a fork with the older Oldham Trail veering right and the newer Arizona Trail (AZT) and Flagstaff Loop Trail (FLT) bearing left. The faster runners opted for Oldham while the more sensible runners chose AZT/FLT. It climbs slowly on a well designed trail and skips some of the steep "Oldham Steps" then rejoins the Oldham Trail for the final climb up to Elden Lookout Road. From there, we jumped on to Rocky Ridge -- which suffered some serious erosion during the heavy rains this summer. Cross the road and then we were on the AZT again to Easy Oldham and up the final climb into Buffalo Park. As we traveled along the straightaway, the GOTR were running the outer loop and then finished at the park entrance. It was a great finish for us -- and for GOTR.

Of course, we ended up at Kickstand Kafe for coffee and conversation on a very warm and sunny November morning. Autumn days do not get any better than this.