Monday, July 13, 2015

Activities Near Uniontown, PA

Yesterday I had to go to a wedding shower in Uniontown, PA, which is a 3-hr drive from my house.  It seemed like a waste of a weekend day to spend 9am - 12pm and 3-6pm driving on either side of the shower, so I decided to look for interesting activities to do near Uniontown.

Before the shower, I went to Laurel Caverns, which is the largest natural cave in Pennsylvania.  I took the 1-hr guided tour, which went through many of the main caverns.  Some of the connecting passageways were quite narrow and/or low.  The cave does not have a lot of stalactites or stalagmites, which the guide explained was because of the type of rock involved.  It was an interesting experience.

After the shower, I went to Ohiopyle State Park to do some walking and running.  This park is a trailhead for the Laurel Highlands Trail, which is a pretty well-known, cross-country, long hiking trail.  I had been thinking about doing some hiking on this trail.  However, I only had about two hours to spend, and I didn't think that would get me too far out-and-back, and probably wouldn't burn that many calories.

Instead, I decided to walk and hike on the easy Great Allegheny Passage, which is a walking/biking trail that runs from Pittsburgh, PA, to Cumberland, MD.  The section in the park runs along the Youghiogheny River.  It's a very nice trail, with a wide, non-paved, but nicely-maintained surface.  It's similar to the C&O Canal Trail in Maryland, but actually even wider. 

I walked on the trail for about 30 min, then ran for about 1 hr (turning around halfway), and then walked again for about 30 min.  The walking segments totaled about 47 min and 3.1 mi, which is an average speed of about 4 mph.  The run totaled 5.25 mi in 1:00:20, which was an average speed of 5.22 mph - pretty good!  I had a hard time keeping the run "easy" with my heart rate, because it was so nice and cool and the path was so wide, it was easy to start running faster.  Toward the end of the run, it started to sprinkle a bit.  There was so much canopy that I didn't feel it much, but by about 1/3 of the way into my second walking segment, it started coming down harder.  Fortunately I was already pretty soaked and it wasn't too cold, so it wasn't a big deal.

This morning, I did P90X3 The Challenge, preceded by Cold Start.  My numbers were 25 push-ups and 5 pull-ups.  I hit all my push-ups, so with the burnout at the end, it means I did 224 push-ups!  I didn't quite make 5 pull-ups each move, so I had more like 38 + 8 burnout pull-ups.  Not bad!  But for all that, I burned about 85 calories.  Sigh.

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