Miller Trek Trail Run in Georgia

I was bummed about not being able to run on the AT, but little did I know the Miller Trek Trail would give me just as good of a kick in the pants. I learned, once again, that my hill training is lax. Wait. Did I say hill training? No, I meant mountain training. What I did today was run up and down a mountain 3 times. I climbed so high that I found the source of the gushing creek down at the bottom of the trail.
.1 into my run, I nearly busted ass on a super slippery bridge. It was a good save, thank goodness, because it would have been a bad fall. After that, I walked slowly across every other bridge.
I'm glad I didn't know this trail went all the way to the top of the mountain, or I probably wouldn't have chosen it for my 18-mile Boston Marathon training run. That's right. I ran 16 miles on a trail in the mountains for my road marathon training. LOL. Goes to show how much I care about the Boston Marathon. Not too much. I'm doing it just to do it, but, honestly, it's not my thing. I don't like crowds, people cheering for me or running road marathons, so, yeah, don't ask. I don't know. I qualified. I felt it was something I had to experience, but I might be a poor sport and black out my name. I can't stand people calling out my name. Will I be slapping hands? I bet not. BUT, I do expect to PR because nothing could be as bad as how I felt at Outer Banks Marathon. If I can't run faster than I did there when I felt like death, then that means I just gave up mentally. I think I can run a 3:22, so that's my first goal.
Anyway, back to the Miller Trek Trail.
I pulled into the "Trail Parking" area, got out of the van and then realized there was no trail at the trailhead. Hmmm, so, remembering what I read on some website, I ran up the road a little bit and found the trail beginning under a huge wooden archway. The trail was a creek for the first .3, and immediately began climbing. The trail, literally, did not stop climbing until 2.5 miles later. The trail was great. No mud, a bit rocky, not many blow downs and well marked, despite the blaze color changing from orange to lime green once I entered the Natl Forest. It's a well-maintained trail, but not heavily used at all. It's kind of a hidden gem around here.
The trail wound up to the ridge and continued to follow it until reaching its high point about 50 ft below the summit. Then came the long descent. At one point, I came across a gushing spring right next to the trail. If you know me, you know I'm a spring fanatic. I love finding a spring. I love spring water right out of the source. In NH, I used to carry a 3 gallon bottle in my backpack out into the woods to a spring and pack it back out. It was about 2 miles. So, I dumped what was in my bottle, filled it with spring water and then took a picture of the spring. So exciting... to me. I filled up again on the 3rd loop.
The trail descended pretty easily, but it was rocky and narrow enough that I couldn't put on the high gears. It didn't matter anyway. I was out there to enjoy myself and that's what I was doing. Marathon training be damned.
The trail looped back to where it began, and I went up and down two more times. I felt really good. I love that kind of run, and I'm really looking forward to doing more mountain running when we move to NH next month. I've learned I need to run more steep hills.
This run was great. I loved it.