Laura and I were looking for a long run with a combination of trail and hilly roads and not too far of a drive. We honed in on Circum Barkhamsted. We also noticed there was no ladies names on the board, so we wanted to change that. We both wore UltrAspire hydration packs with 2L of water (plus energy food) each thinking with the cooler temps that would be fine. I also carried of small flask of UnTapped MapleAid in front. We decided to park at the dam and run up East Hartland Road as recommended by Chris Deming. It was a Friday at 9am though, and traffic was terrible. East Hartland Road has no shoulder and is very curvy. We endured 1.75 miles of crossing fingers that someone did not run us over to get to the Tunxis Trail. We were very happy to get in the woods. This happiness lasted about 30 seconds when we realized we were on a connector trail leading to the Blue Blazes. The actual trail was better marked but no one had been out to clean up from the winter storms yet and it had just rained a ton the day before. We encountered a lot of blowdown and very wet sections the entire way. After about 9 1/4 miles in the woods we dumped out on to Route 20 which had a long steep downhill where we could actually get into a rhythm. This road and the rest of the course had much less traffic and a nice, wide shoulder. We stopped a few times to take photos as we had planned to be gentle on ourselves and did not have any female time to beat. Route 20 had some pretty spectacular winding uphills. The rest of the way on Route 181 was long and slightly downhill. The very last bit as we turned onto Savill Dam Road had no shoulder once again but it was very short before we got to the dam which gave us safe passage back to our car. We could have used a bit more water and we were tired when finished, but not smashed, which was what we had hoped for.