First I need to say that I love the idea of multi-use trails. I think it is great that we have trail systems that hikers/bikers/horses/ORVs can use, but I have to admit - I am not particularly fond of sharing the trail with horses. It isn't the people or the animals, rather it is the condition they leave the trail in and the large quantities of poop that are left behind.
Let me share... this past Saturday the sun appeared for the first time in 2 weeks, it was glorious. Given the lovely weather Matt and I loaded our bikes and headed to our local trail system (Capital Forest). We departed in the same direction, me on foot and Matt on bike to complete 80 minutes of our respective activity. Upon completion of that we meet at the car and I acquired my bike to join in the fun. Not so fun... After 80 minuets of running hilly, muddy, poop encrusted trails my legs had a HARD time making the transition to biking. None the less I didn't want to be a weenie and give up, so after a couple of miles when Matt asked what I wanted to do I quickly said "lets keep going". About a mile later I ate my words. The trails were in AWFUL shape. I wasn't having fun. Why do I want to spend my Saturday afternoon peddling through mud that is so deep your foot gets swallowed on the down stroke? No thank you, not me! Back to the car we went. All in all it was a good day, I had a great run and the mud and poop factor wasn't too awful. The other trail we took for the later bike ride, well, it was bad...
Onto Sunday. Given my new training schedule I am supposed to do back to back long runs over the weekend. Sunday also happens to be a running day for Matt, so we head back to the trails. The difference was that sun wasn't out, not even close. It has been dumping rain since early Sunday morning. Driving to the trail head we noticed signs for a "Spring Ride", uh oh, this might be bad. Drive a bit further and we start to see a lot of large trucks and horse trailers drive by us. "Well at least the ride appears to be done". We get to the trail head, lace up the shoes and head out.
Within 10m we are greeted by giant steaming piles of poo. This in and of itself isn't so bad, however, when you mix it with the terrible, awful rutting of the trails, well, it makes passage a bit more tricky. I ran for 25 minuets before I gave up and headed back to the car. The trail was in such horrible condition that it made it difficult to run for more that 10m at at time. The horses do a number on the trail, words cannot even begin to paint a picture of what the conditions were, but I will try.
Picture running in a lovely, hilly area where you are pretty sure you shoe is going to get sucked off and lost forever is giant holes of a watery mud/poo mix. If you accidental miscalculate your step and land in the aforementioned mix it comes up past your ankle and leaves you struggling to continue your forward movement. To add insult to injury not only are you aiming to avoid the mud pits, you have to dance around the poo as well. Sometimes this leave you with the decision on which you would rather go though, poo or mud. Really it doesn't matter, you know the mud mix has some poo waiting for you in it...
There you have it, the reason for my current horse frustration. All the people I have come across that have been on horses are very nice and I have no ill will towards them. I just wonder if they realize how much damage their pastime is causing? Maybe waiting until the trails are a bit drier would allow all users to enjoy the area more? That being said, I realize that each user group is going to have a different set of complaints. I suppose I should just suck it up and be happy that I have such a great resource so close to home!
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