In running heaven...

Lush scenery panned out around the trail-racers as they snaked through beautiful Ashley Resivoir on a slightly warm Thursday night for their weekly trail race.

Baby fish flitted about in the lakes that surrounded the first bit of the race as wispy clouds cast their ghostly images upon the water’s shimmering surface.

The crunch of gravel under the feet of many a running shoe, the lapping of the serine water against the quiet shore, the whistling of the spring trees as they whispered out their eerie songs. The sight of a forest of trees so straight and so tall that one might think that they weren’t natural.

It is runs like these that make you forget any troubles in you life or any problems at all. In fact, it is runs like these that blissfully take you away from reality, away from this world and to another so fantastic it takes your breath away.

They take you to a place so beautiful that even a master photographer couldn’t capture its beauty upon film. And above all else, they take you to running heaven; a place where you can run forever through the most gorgeous places without the worry of injury or fatigue.

But for us mortals, these great trail runs are here as a grand substitute, and should never be overlooked in the stack of colorful papers every road runner has stored away in his or her desk. For there is something magical about these courses that no soul should ever miss out on.