Salem Lake

I hinted a while back that I needed to post about Salem Lake, near Winston Salem, North Carolina.  It was at this lake that I did many of my training runs for the Chickamauga Marathon, which I ran last November.

What can I say?  I pretty much fell in love with the 7-mile dirt and crushed-gravel path which surrounds the lake.  I would leave work around 4:30 or 5, change clothes, and then head over to the lake, which was about a 10 minute drive from the office.

The trail has a few hills, but for the most part is flat.  The hardest part is by the dam, where you go from 10 - 15 feet above lake level to about 10 - 15 below lake level and then back up to 15 or so feet above lake level again!  And with the direction I ran (counter-clockwise) this was always at the end of the run.

The lake trail is also connected to a green-way, which if you ran from the parking lot at the head of the green-way to the lake and back is 9 miles, if I recall correctly.  I ran this a couple of times by itself, and I also ran it a couple of times including the loop around the lake.  Yes, it was dark by the time I finished, and part of that run goes through some, well, less-desirable areas of Winston Salem.  Let's just say I had my phone with me, just in case.

This is what the actual path looks like.  What looks like tire tracks actually are...cyclists use the path too, and they tend to "keep to the right" as you would expect on a highway.

It got to the point where I would recognize several of the people on bikes.  Several of the joggers and walkers, too.  It really is a very popular place for the fitness-oriented folks in the area.

Every so often there are park benches.  I'm not quite sure that they get used--I personally never saw anyone sitting any of the times that I was there running.  One bench in particular, though, caught my attention.  It had a small plaque attached, which had the following inscription:

Brenton Hiroshi Stovall
June 7, 1988 - May 3, 2007
His beat goes on...

Obviously, this was to memorialize a young man who died.  I did some Googling to see what I could find out about him, and discovered that he died in a car wreck while running an errand.  I'm not sure how long these links will last, but I'll include some links here to some news stories:

• Winston-Salem Journal
• A neighbor's personal blog
  (scroll to the entry at "Friday, 11 May 2007")

Very sad, indeed!

Overall, I attribute my personal success in the Chickamauga Marathon last November to my training here at Salem Lake.  If I'm ever back in the area, I'm brining my running shoes (even though I'm not actively training for anything at the moment).