Camp Chase Trail Clean-Up

Posting a little late on this, but a couple weeks ago the Columbus Westside Running Club (CWRC) organized a trail clean-up day. Every 4th Saturday the club works on a different section of the Camp Chase Trail. The trail is fairly new, but it borders on railroad tracks and the backs of businesses that don't all keep their properties clean. Parts of the trail have been used by people who litter - a lot!

The idea is to get this trail looking clean and beautiful in order to increase recreational usage of the trail. It's a great place for cycling, running, walking, etc. But it does need some help to beautify it.

Group shot of participants after our two hours of trail clean-up

The day I went out for my first trail clean-up was about the coldest one we had in February, which had gotten unseasonably warm weather. On this day we were quite bundled up and there were even snow flurries while we worked, so it was cold.

CWRC has some partners for these clean-ups. Our club's new sponsor, Kroger at Consumer Square, provided water, Gatorade, bananas, granola bars and hand sanitizer, like they are providing for our group runs. Yay, Kroger! Other partners included , Summer Jam West, Friends of the Hilltop, Friends of Camp Chase Trail, Abundant Life Tabernacle and KEEP COLUMBUS BEAUTIFUL. Truly a community effort!

I'm ready to get dirty
Supplies from Kroger
We all got to wear these fabulous vests; I thought we looked like inmates

We all put on our protective gloves and reflective vests, grabbed a bucket, a "grabber" and some bags. I set out on my own and made it my job to pick up small objects. I found probably 200 cigarette butts (yuck), a syringe, scrap metal, broken glass in green, amber, clear and eventually blue, and other miscellaneous garbage. It takes a while to pick up the broken glass shards from the grass and dirt. It also takes awhile to pick up the multitude of cigarette butts from the places where people obviously take smoke breaks. I didn't even fill a bag, but I spent my time cleaning up all that little stuff.

Part of the trail where we worked, looking east
Mural on the back of the Abundant Life Tabernacle

Others in the group stuffed bags full of trash, found tires, and other large objects. In total, the group picked up 95 bags worth of trash, filling one and a half dumpsters. And that was just in a small section of the trail about a quarter of a mile long.

It felt good to get out and do something for the community and the local trail. I hope these efforts pay off and we see more people using the trail come spring. Would you like to help? Then "like" the CWRC Facebook page and you'll see the event notices.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2019 Hong Kong Marathon Race Report

Image
I registered for the Hong Kong Marathon  on a whim. I was already going to Asia to attend my friend Christine’s wedding in Thailand and then run the Tokyo Marathon the following weekend. My friend Dave posted on Facebook about the Hong Kong Marathon, which was a week before the wedding. I entered the lottery not expecting to be selected, but I was. It was going to be a two-country-marathon adventure.  It’s the year of the pig (or boar) and we got this medallion in our race packet.  I was woefully under-prepared for the Hong Kong Marathon. My training suffered through the winter, but knowing I had a 6-hour time limit for the marathon, I wasn’t terribly worried - until I got sick. At the end of January I caught a severe cold that I’m still not fully over, three weeks later. I was weak, slept little, and worked out zero times in all of February. But the Asia trip was coming anyway, and being a realist, I gave myself permission to DNS (did not start) or DNF (did n...
Read more

2017 Hefei International Marathon Race Report

Image
Most of my regular followers will know that I was selected as part of a team of five to represent Columbus, Ohio at the marathon of our sister city Hefei, China. I blogged about the announcement here and here , and about my team's fundraiser here . On November 8, 2017, we set off to the Far East, arriving in Hefei, China late evening on November 9th. We spent five days in Hefei, after which everyone went separate directions. My travels took me to Bangkok, Thailand, and then back to China to spend time in and around Beijing. But this post is about Hefei and the marathon I ran there. Post marathon with Courtney, Bernard, me, Echo and Lily in back The Hefei International Marathon is a large event, with tens of thousands of participants across all race distances (marathon, half marathon, 5K and 10K). The marathon had the smallest race field of all events, but included some very competitive elite runners. The Lead-Up Through the sister city marathon exchange, our team o...
Read more

2018 Running Recap

Image
I haven't blogged all year. In fact, I didn't even finish my 2017 race reports. What happened? I still ran. In fact, I ran several races, and did meet some of my annual running goals. But I also focused on other areas of my life that needed attention. I dropped the ball on some things, and I missed some of my other running goals. Right now I'm not going to write new running goals, because I'm not ready. I will, however, state one broad goal, and that is this: I will post a running-related story once per month in 2019. So, here's the 2018 recap: My 2018 Goals I will lead the 11:00 pace group for CWRC. CWRC is the Columbus Westside Running Club , which I joined after moving to Columbus, and this goal was about the winter/spring training program leading up to spring races. I started this, but I didn't finish. Very early on it became clear to me that I was not in the game mentally and not prepared to lead others on a weekly basis. A January training run ...
Read more