Running trails just for the thrill and feel of it?

I don’t like turns because they slow me down. My favorite trails are the wide ones with a decent slope that allow me to open up my stride for maximum velocity. It feels like I’m running a 400, but at the effort of 5k pace.

When I was running in JC, we drove to a different trail almost every day that we weren’t on the track. Some were relatively flat, some rolling, some had well over 1000 feet of climbing. We loved it

in hindsight, this probably made our easy days a little too hard, but we loved it. When I transferred to a 4 year school, all of the runs were from campus and either went around town or went on the levees of irrigation canals. I remember feeling astoundingly bored with running and losing much of my desire to get out and lace up my shoes.

I should add that back in the day, we felt that all the time we spent on trails made us better at cross country, whereas these days, I see a huge focus on locking in to certain regimented paces. Our local D2 has been known to go up to 8 miles tempo....on the track.

In hindsight hilly runs with 1000-1500 feet of total elevation gain may not have been optimal for our bulk mileage, but I had a ton of fun with it.