South Tulsa Running Route #1

Last Wednesday I got a kitchen pass from Sweetie to go running after work. I generally run on Wednesday but this summer we changed it up and we had a lot of fun biking after work. School has started though and it is getting dark so no more biking. Plus the Tulsa Run is in a month.

The Tulsa Run 15K is the run I look forward to all year. I have run 14 of them. This year will be my 15th in a row. A couple times I’ve run the race, skipped the complimentery beer, ran home, changed and raced to the airport to catch a flight. Once to go to a friends 50th birthday party in Houston and the second time to go to my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration in Scottsdale.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. The race is 9.3 miles long. The longest I’ve run lately is 5. So I have to start increasing the mileage at least once a week.

I was going to run on the Arkansas River trail after work. I went to the parking lot where I change and notice I didn’t have the right shoes. 10 years ago I would have just gone ahead with the wrong shoes. I have put about 10,000 miles (no lie) on my feet since then. So now, I go home and get the right shoes.

I didn’t want to drive all the way back to the river so I ran my favorite route in South Tulsa but went a mile further than usual. Its the route I run in the morning. It is pitch dark at 5:15 in the morning so it was kind of neat running it when I could see it!

Tulsa has got some great trails. Most people think all they have is the Arkansas River trails. Not so, there are other trails that are relatively new. I try and tell people about them, and most don’t believe me. I think only about one person in a 100 knows abut them.

Below is where I start, at a community college. See how nice the trail is?

Below is a half mile further south.

This is under an overpass. In the dark, this is pitch dark. For some reason the story about the trolls and the tolls comes to mind here. I’m leery of bike riders shooting through taking the corner wide.
I love this bridge across the creek. Before they put it in I had to hop across rocks in the creek. SuperPizzaBoy and I have a geocache near here. Not many people bother to look for it. Too bad for them. Its on several people’s favorites list.
SPB and I have seen several good size snakes near here. Were they poisonous? You go see and then we’ll both know.

I love fountains and water features.
Another water feature.

Underneath one of the overpasses a geocaching friend has a cache. I had looked for it but it is kind of hard in the dark of the early morning especially in snake country. Plus it is under the overpass. The GPS doesn’t work! That means I have to look!

I found it tonight! Here is a picture.

The cacher’s name is Jeff. His geocaching name is “Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Heaven.” Jeff is Captain Crash and his wife is the Beauty Queen. They sign their caches and logs “CCATBQFH.”

Before he got married Jeff was JPENN. He and SuperPizzaBoy are friends. SPB calls Jeff his “Arch Nemesis” and is plotting his revenge.

It is a long story involving a “Fear Factor Cache” that had snakes, tarantula’s, hissing cockroaches (I’m not kidding) that Jeff talked SPB into opening. SPB screamed and ran a quarter mile down a road (again I’m not kidding, SPB had an audience and he played it for all it was worth). So they bonded.

Jeff is president of TAG, the Tulsa Area Geocachers. They meet once a month. They love SPB. With soccer and scouts we don’t make many meetings but SPB gets a warm welcome when we show up, “Hey, its Pizza Boy!”

They get him.

They have no idea how that makes me feel.

TAG is having their Fall Fest in a few weeks at Western Hills State Park. We’ll be there.

To finish up, I come across the tracks shown below. They are pretty sizeable. Is there a Den Mom or somebody out there that knows what made the tracks? They don’t match anything in SPB’s Cub Scout Book.