Some photos of where I run

After Saturday's 20 miler, we have started a "mini-taper" period. Our weekly runs scale back to 40 minutes each, and our LSDs will start reducing in length.

So today, I armed myself with my new Olympus 790SW camera and took a few pics of my route. For those of you familiar with the Newport Beach Back Bay area, I start my runs at the Newport Aquatic Center (NAC). I head north through Dover Shores, and take off toward the upper Back Bay. For a 40 minute run, I do a 20 minute out and back:


Immediately leaving the NAC and turning north, the first thing that you will encounter is a hill. It's not much of a hill (87 feet according to my Garmin), but its enough to get the heart pumping:

Next, you wind your way through Dover Shores, a development of older but nice homes. Most of the homes in this neighborhood are in the $2.5 to $4 million price range. It is a quiet neighborhood, but there is enough traffic to require some caution. About two miles from the start, you pop out of the neighborhood and encounter the Back Bay trail. From here on, you will get to enjoy views of the ocean, bay, flora and fauna:

For me today, I ran about a mile of the Back Bay trail and then turned around and headed on back.

There is one thing that is really neat to know about this trail. The Back Bay Trail is actually an organized trail maintained by Orange County:

The club that I currently run with, Cal Coast Track Club, also has marked the trail. The markers actually start at Corona del Mar High School (I'll show that some other time), and the trail is marked every 1/2 mile:

And at each mile:

When the trail turns, you need only to follow the arrows:

To be sure, there are tons of other mileage marks around, but if you do use this trail, the yellow mile markers are accurate (set by GPS).

All in all, if you start at the Start/Finish line next to the track at CDM, and follow the marks around the back bay, you can make a nice 12.5 mile loop! But that's for another day!