Running around Geneva Lake
Despite recently reading about the 21-mile path that goes around all of Geneva Lake (in Wisconsin) on Valerie’s blog (and having heard of it before!), I somehow forgot about it until Rachel mentioned it as a possible “meet-halfway-for-a-crazy-long-run” point. Yes, please! Sign me up! There are so many lakes around where I live, and it bums me out that there are rarely paths to run around them. That is not the case at Geneva Lake! There is a requirement that the 20 feet of land directly from the shoreline be public domain, around the ENTIRE lake.
Ha ha. There are NOT any requirements on what to do with the landscaping though, so you encounter ALL sorts of terrain – pavers, dirt, crushed rock, loose rock, grass (so much grass), places that seemed like all roots, sidewalk, wood, road, brick… you name it, I think we ran on it. I had my GoPro on, and it’s really interesting to flip through the photos and see how often the terrain changed*.
And that terrain is at all sort of, um, angles. Ha ha. So many stairs. So many downward slopes. So many hills. So much necessary careful walking.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I expected this to be a normal pace long run, not a trail run pace. But it was as difficult as a trail run. It IS a trail run. And it’s definitely on the muchos enjoyable scale of a trail run, too!
It was such a treat (and a tease, really) to run next to the water (and not be in it)!
And beautiful mansions line most of the trail! Can you imagine looking out your window and seeing a stranger go through your yard? I suppose the homeowners are used to it, but I couldn’t get over the fact that we were running so close to people’s homes! It felt a bit odd to run through someone’s “backyard.”
I mean, look how close you’d get to some!
Ha ha. But we said hi to everyone we saw, whether they were on the path or in their yard. Many people commented on how beautiful and interesting the path is. And a few asked us if we were going all the way around. Yep yep!
Our plan was to run from Lake Geneva, west to Williams Bay, then stop in Fontana at a gas station for water… then to continue all the way around to the other side.
The plan worked well other than me running out of water with a mile left (and Rachel offered me hers, so no biggie D). There are not many drinking fountains or places right off the path to purchase water. I actually think this description of the path difficulty, path etiquette, where to use bathrooms, and what you’ll see, is fantastic.
Quite a bit of the path is shaded, and we had a nice wind, so it was a great morning to run… until it got closer and closer to noon and the sun got higher and higher!
And unless you’re constantly checking a map, it’s kind of hard to tell where you are around the lake because of the bays and shape of it. As we got closer to the end, I was so eager to see the ferris wheel that our cars were parked by!
Ha ha, not that I was super eager for it to end, but with our added gas station excursion we put in over 22 miles! I was all talky talky for the first 18 miles, then hit the stage of the long run where your brain feels like mush, and you just need to focus on continued movement, and in the case of this run, not tripping. That is my rare quiet stage. Hee hee.
I am so happy Rachel recommended we run this trail and that we got to do it together!
We had been sort of planning to get together on her birthday weekend, and I think this was the perfect way to celebrate with doing something that we love to do together – explore new trails (and underestimate our running pace ha ha ha)!
(and explore new bathrooms)
Happy Birthday, Rachel! Until our next run (in a week!!!)!
Let me know if you ever run this trail! I want to do it again, especially now that I know what to expect! And maybe go the other direction the next time. I bet it would feel like a completely different trail!
*And how many frickin’ photos I ruined with my hand being in it. Ha.
Themocracy
never ran it before but it looks like a nice break from regular trails!
Did you see Kathy Brock (Ch 7 news) she has a home up there I think.
I don’t think I saw that person! I don’t watch the news so I wouldn’t have recognized her. Darn!
Wow, that looks like a great place to run. I have only been there once and that was for a conference. I actually brought our two jet ski’s and a friend and I took them out during an open afternoon. It is a beautiful location and the homes are beautiful.
Crazy how close to homes you get on the path.
Great miles and what a wonderful way to celebrate Rachel’s birthday weekend!
I would LOVE to go out on the water there! Especially yesterday. I was so tempted to jump in! 🙂
How cool! Is that in Wisconsin?
It is! Thanks for asking, I should put that in the post 🙂
That loop would be perfect for a marathon training long run! Hmm, maybe I’ll come visit you/Geneva Lake before my marathon… The path I run a lot comes close to some back yards which I always think is pretty weird, too, but it’s not as close as some of them that you ran through!
I think it is perfect for that as long as you are not pace training! This isn’t the place to go for that 🙂 My overall pace was three minutes per mile slower than I thought it would be! 🙂
What a very cool path! I think that it can be really nice to run a trail/path that forces you to pay attention to details other than pace (so boring! Ha!). It also makes me want to go explore some new areas to run around where I live!
Oh yeah, totally! That is the kind of path I prefer. Until the end when I am like “These uneven pavers are hurting the soles of my feet wah wah wah!” ha ha. Let me know where you go explore!
I have never heard of this either, but would LOVE to do it as my last long training run in this cycle… which would be October 26th. BOOK IT! 🙂
You should do it! As long as you aren’t training for a specific pace (cause the varying terrain slows you down so dang much)! It would be a good place to celebrate a last long run.
My training runs are done at a slower pace, so that’s not an issue. Plus there’s a Sprecher brew pub in Lake Geneva, so I’d be assured of post-run beer!
I’ve driven past there tons of time (on my way to Milwaukee in college)and never knew that path existed! How cool! I love trail runs, waterfront paths, and mansions. I might just venture up there one of these days. I could not make it all the way around though. Great job on accomplishing that!
Yeah, they don’t really say much about it, and I felt like it was difficult to find much info online! A hidden gem, for sure! I hope you get to run part of it! 🙂
That looks like fun! I’d love to check that out someday if my knee cooperates!
Sounds like fun! I’ve heard about the trail but have never run or walked it.
That looks like a beautiful trail! I love that it has to stay accessible to the public all the way around the lake, though it does seem awkward to run in people’s backyards!
What an incredible run! I’d be freaking out with all those terrain changes. Fun shots from the GoPro.
Wow! I’d say such fun but, uh, I don’t like run that far. Womp womp. But new trails and running with friends is the jam! We ran at the lake this weekend, and I was quite disappointed that the bike path didn’t go all around the lake – more like a third. Mark and I had to run out and back and out and back and accidentally miss the turn off to hit our 8 miles (which should have been 10).
Ugh, that is a bummer! At least it went part way…?
Thanks for the shout out Kim 🙂 And congrats to you and Rachel for tackling the whole thing- so impressive! I just took a full lake tour on their boats and the other half of the lake (which I hadn’t seen before) looks like the terrain was much better than the side we hiked. Some of the paths were super narrow, tall and almost nonexistent like you said! But I bet the miles flew by when you have that gorgeous scenery to look at- I think they do races along that path but wonder how fast people can really go on it…
Yeah, I was wondering how races would go. You’d have to let people off every 30 second or something. Too crowded (since it’s so narrow)!
YAY! It was such a fun day. Thanks for doing crazy things with me!
The Go Pro really captured all the different terrain well. It was like a trail adventure run!
I still and wondering what the story is on that small section on the south side of the lake where we weren’t within 20 feet of the water! Cheaters? 🙂
Thank YOU for inviting me! I love our crazy adventures! 🙂
I am so happy to have that camera so it can do all the work for me, cause I know I would have wanted to stop and take a zillion pics. How much longer would we have been out there, then? Ha!
I was wondering, too! I looked on google maps and that part of the trail is shown as dashed, so it’s known that it’s not complete. Ugh. I didn’t dig it 😉
That sounds like SO MUCH FUN to me! Oh my goodness. I have family in Wisconsin… I may need to go visit them. LOL
Whoa, this looks like such a beautiful run! Although, I noticed how sunny it is in the pictures, and reading your recap of the last few miles made me remember how hard Midwest summer running is. Still, it looks like you had some great scenery, and it definitely beats stopping for traffic!
I think if I lived in a mansion on a lake, I’d constantly people-watch, but maybe they are just like, “Whatevs. No biggie.”
Ha ha! Yep! I prefer running in the dark cause the sun is my kryptonite 😉 I can deal with humidity and heat but the sun beating down is what gets me 🙂