A 3.75-Mile Trek to...?

I've mentioned my problems with new routes before--and needless to say, most of those close to me know that I couldn't find my way out of a one-way straight on a cloudless day.

It all begin with what seemed like a good plan, as so many ultimately terrible ideas do. My beloved and I would head out to the Blue Hills, to one of my favored running routes, the 4+ mile Ponkapoag. Though Jared isn't running for another couple weeks while he rests and heals up from his recent triathlon, he would come along, with the dog, and the two of them would hike an alternate trail while I ran.

We split ways at the parking lot, in a haze of early mugginess--Jared heading out of the parking lot to the right for a "blue" trail, me heading out to left, toward the "closed" bridge that bridged the gap over the interstate to my much run trail.

Lugging my suddenly 12-pound Nalgene of water, I bolted off toward the bridge, switching my load from hand to hand, while using the other to mop away the heat-induced rivulets of sweat snaking down my facial angles. I hopped the concrete pile-on the construction fools had placed, jogging sedately past the "No pedestrians" sign that had been erected. At the second fence, however, the place where I had squeezed myself through only a couple weeks earlier, I met with a sinister surprise. Where earlier there had been construction equipment and tools laying scattered on the paved bridge under construction was...well, not exactly a bridge, but perhaps a bridge in the making--support beams crisscrossing and obvious work under way, though abandoned for the weekend. A pair of skinny two-by-fours snaked from my end of the bridge to the other, providing the only route across to Ponkapoag.

Though I considered tight-roping my way across for a millisecond, in the end, practicality won it. After all, I could run back the lot, figure out where this blue trail was, and catch up to my beloved and dog. Maybe not a lot of miles, but at least some company, right? Wrong. After making my sweat-soaked way back to the parking lot while juggling my 15-lb. Nalgene, I decided to ditch the water under the car. I tripped (literally, not figuratively--the trail was boulder-strewn and horrendously steep, so running was out) a tenth of a mile or so up a trail labeled as blue, before realizing that I was about to find myself in the middle of the woods, lost, and nowhere that Jared would have a clue to come looking for me. I was, quite simply, asking to be eaten by wild ferrets.

Did I mention this happened after a ran a quarter mile down the wrong "blue trail"? Twice? I next spotted a sweet little roadside trail, and thinking I could follow it out and back for a few miles, I attacked it with renewed vigor. When the trail ended less than a half mile later, I trudged back to the parking lot yet again, where I met with my frenemy, the repeat-offender park map.

Hot, sticky, and increasingly grumpy, I ultimately decided to just run the one-mile loop around Houghton's Pond, where we were parked.

This run by the numbers is wholly depressing:
Miles run whilst knowing where I was going: 1.75 (the pond, and the run to the non-existant bridge)
Miles run (or walked, trudged, etc, but overall generally lamented): 2
Pace: somewhere north 10:00/minute miles

Here's a map of my route, should any of you brave souls feel up to repeating it: