Trail Running Blog

Running Trail Map Legend (Total Miles)

Here is a quick guide to the number of miles each checkpoint is in our running trail. As I have said in a previous post, the trail begins at a water tower and is a bike path through a wash. We run along the path, which is adjacent to a nearby driving range/golf course. Halfway through the first mile, you can finally start running on a real dirt/rubble trail. Live Oak and beyond is pretty much a horse trail (actual horses run on it!) with some sandy parts, and gravel as well. Now that I think about it, it was pretty tough running on our trail, and there have been times when we have tweaked our ankles because of the surfaces, we always had to be aware of what was ahead of us.

Live Oak to Longden and back was the best because it was only .5 miles away from each other, you almost never noticed how long it was (unless you were super tired).  At almost all of the checkpoints, there is some type of water fountain around where we would be able to take a break and drink some water. The names for most of these checkpoints are either because that’s the street name that we stop at, or something around it that describes where we were.

The End (although not quite the end) was a real feat for us runners, we did not run there often and when we did, it was a heck of a run. My first running log entry, I went to the end (although not the first time I went to the end). It’s sad that we call it The End, because it’s simply a gated fence in the trail that is designated as The End. Except to keep going, all you have to do is cross the hole in the fence that was made by a past runner and keep going on towards the rise.

Now The Rise is even better than The End, not just because it is farther, but because of how you have to finish this checkpoint. It is a fairly steep hill that kills you, since you are at the end of the first half of your run. I have only been here a few times, but it was quite a run when I did though. Wilderness Park is a sort of urban legend/myth because nobody we know really has gone there, except maybe my coach. It is beyond The Rise, and is literally at the base of a mountain. So if you keep running that path, you will be going into the woods. And to think, we first started off at a water tower in a wash.

It is an amazing trail, now that I look back at it, and if anybody is in El Monte, CA  91731, try to get a run in at this old trail..

• Live Oak: 2
• Longden: 3
• Camino: 4
• Duarte: 5
• Railroad Tracks: 6
• Huntington: 7
• The Park: 8
• The End: 10
• The Rise: 11
• Wilderness Park: ??

Looking at other blogs I saw today, and probably from now on, I noticed that others are a lot more intense with their workouts (with respect to distance and time). But I guess it is because this is High School Cross Country and we trained to run 3 mile races, not 26 mile marathons. But I do commend the runners that do train that hard, because if I thought what we did was hard, I would not survive one day training for a marathon, and that’s a fact.