The Thursday running group headed over to Baxter Woods yesterday to...well, run. It was a welcome break from the Back Cove which, as lovely as it is, was starting to get monotonous. That's what I thought, anyway, before the reality of running in the woods really set in.

Baxter Woods, off Stevens Ave., is a great place to walk (yourself or your dog) and it has within it's forested confines a looped trail that measures 1,000 yards (so I'm told). The entire loop is also on a slope, so either direction you go, one side will be up hill and one side will be down. And when I say hill, I mean HILL. An I-want-to-collapse-and-die kind of hill.

Those in the slower pace group (i.e., me) ran 800 of the 1,000 yards, then walked the final 200. Some did two laps, some three. A handful of us hearty folks stuck it out and did four.

The view wasn't too shabby and there's a distinctive coolness in the woods. There's also the distinctive presence of mosquitoes, who were no doubt overjoyed to see a herd of sweaty, barelegged runners traipsing through.

A tiny bite here, a tiny bite there. At least it was a distraction from the throbbing in my quads.

When we finally walked - I mean ran - out of there, I had keep pausing to either scratch something or rub off a clump of bug guts. You know, when you hit the mosquitoe just right and it's belly full of blood smears across your leg and you go "ewww" and look for a place to wipe it, but you're in Baxter Woods and it's not like you have a tissue with you so you resort to wiping it on your shorts, which is nearly just as gross. It happens. I'm just saying. Talk about running ugly.

It was a good change of pace - but don't attempt it without the bug spray.