Running on the road has it's ups and downs. Some on the occasions are dangerous and somewhat ill advised. However, when everything falls in to place, there have been some great discoveries whilst in a strange hotel and heading out the door in the hope of finding something enjoyable.
One of these runs occurred this week in Knoxville, TN. Specifically, a suburb near the airport called Alcoa. It is rare that I find an enjoyable run near an airport. One of the few examples are Kansas City Downtown Airport and Greensville Spartenburg Airport. Normally it begins with a somewhat courage filled warmup on a busy road, jogging along the grass verge with cars whipping by at speed. After this short period, then run quickly enters the discovery phase and you find yourself jumping from a fear of death to total joy, leaving the busy road behind you and stumbling on to a running path which snakes through the country. A path that you would have never believed to be so close to your industrial area airport hotel.
This is precisely what happened in Alcoa. Although the road at the beginning was not a severe as some I have run on. The verge was nice and wide to allow you plenty of diving room. That said, it's always interesting running passed a local police station, along a busy road with no sidewalk and hoping that the authorities don't mind too much.
When I started out, I had a vague idea that there was something to be run on. I needed about an hour and had found a online pre-drawn map of a previous run. As I crested the first hill, just after the police station (which, fortunately, at least two police cars could not have cared less) I was presented with a cracking vista or hills rolling in the distant, slightly misted to add to the view. At was about then that I thought I had found a good spot to run. Quickly thereafter, I stumbled across a path similar to the type that we have an abundance of in Minneapolis. Long winding, seemingly endless bike and pedestrian paths connecting all the area. The path I found was in Steambrook and took me on a winding, undulating run through the woods and farmland that surrounds the Knoxville airport. The temperature was just right and the sun was shining. Along with a stomping playlist, this run really got the endorphins flowing and the smiles spreading.
I would highly recommend, with a short bit of research to be sure, going out and discovering some of the great runs that can be had around your hotels when in a foreign land. However, I still doubt any of them will be able to top the one I got to experience near Mt Fuji in Japan! Now that was a corker!
Good luck to us all!
