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Health & Fitness

Vultures Over the Breakneck

You never know what you will find when you go for a run.

Joan and I have put in many miles this pring on The Portage path that runs between Crain Avenue in Kent and Peck Road in Ravenna.  We have been training for this Sunday's Cleveland Marathon and so have put dozens of miles in, running several times a week since the snow melted off the trail.  Every time we run, we learn something new about our bodies, the place we live and the creatures we share it with.

People access the trail in many places, from trail head parking lots, from their neighborhoods, and from roads that intersect it.  The users range from kids on bikes exploring nature, couples out on evening strolls, scout troops on hikes, serious and not so serious cyclists, and of course crazy runners like us. The diversity of cultures, ages, and incomes is most fascinating and rewarding to those of us who have long dreamed of the day when these paths would be opened.

The trail also serves as a magnifcent greenway, a wildlife corridor that connects habitat of all species of wildlife.  We have encountered birds of countless species, rabbits, snakes, deer, and evidence of more than a few teenage wild-life encounters.  Thankfully, trespassing by motorized vehicles is pretty rare, and I am sure that we are not the only ones that inform such folks that this trail is for ped-powered use.

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This spring Kent Parks and Recreation added some maps and interpretive displays that help people to understand more fully the nature of the place that the path intersects. We can learn about the canal, the railroad, the Standing Rock, the natural features and the people that have lived, worked and played here for hundreds of years.  While it seems most of us now use this area for recreation (if running hundreds of miles can be considered anything but work?), we ought to be careful not to forget that it was and is a connection to a working landscape. Witnessing a CSX train barreling down the tracks is a pretty good reminder of that!

As interesting as The Portage path is, it can be boring to run on the same trail time after time. We have other roads and trails we run on as we build loops of 8, 12, 16 and 20 miles. Nevertheless, we often return, as we did for our last taper run this week, to our familiar back yard trail.  We had decided to run to the bridge over the Breakneck Creek and back to Crain Avenue.  Imagine our surprise as we saw several very large birds, wings out-streched, settling on the railings of the bridge.  "Turkey vultures!"  I said to Joan, "surveying the creek."  We walked as close as we could, and we counted 14 on the bridge, the ground and surrounding trees.  We never figured out what the significance of this place was to them ... we can only guess it had something to do with food. Perhaps we will never know.

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Chances are though, they didn't know that they were guarding the city boundary, or witnessing the middle of our last run before the big race.  What I do know is that this special trail belongs as much to them as it does to the rest of us, and that it was worth running there to be surprised by a world we too often take for granted. 

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