Feb 27

Feb 27 Ultrarunning through a reclaimed strip mine - AEP Recreation Land, Ohio

About a one and a half hour drive east of Columbus, Ohio lies the AEP Recreation Land. As their website says, this land is “all free for the public to enjoy on 58,800-acres of land in southeastern Ohio. We turned this former mining territory into a vibrant recreation area with over 63 million trees, 350 lakes and ponds stocked for fishing, 293 campsites.” In addition, the 1400-mile Buckeye Trail also runs through this region.

My friend Brian and I were looking around for a convenient trail to get in a 50k (30 miles) training run. We’ve both run in a lot of the state parks and lands in Ohio, but neither of us had been to the AEP Recreation Land. I asked my neighbor about it and he was familiar with it since he goes fishing with his son occasionally, but I had never heard of it. The land is dotted with many lakes, some of them even stocked with fish.

What makes this area unique is that it is made up of nearly 100% reclaimed land from a coal strip mine that operated from 1947 until 2001. They planted over 65 million trees as part of the rehabilitation of the area, and the result is a nature preserve with plenty of areas to explore.

We mapped out a run made up of the Buckeye Trail along with some roads in the area. It is very remote from the perspective that there are no services and cell phones don’t always work. However, there are several campgrounds, some with water. It's critical that you plan for water on your run, which we didn’t do very well. We under assumed how much water we’d need, over assumed the speed that we’d be running, and didn’t account for not finding water at all the campgrounds. We were never in danger, but definitely found ourselves thirsty when we finally found a pump handle to get water.

The trails dip into and out of the wooded landscape and pass by many lakes. In some areas, you can see the steep cuts in the rock left by the mining equipment. There is also quite a bit of scrub brush since the trail isn’t heavily used, so it can be overgrown in some places.

If you are bored of your runs in the urban areas of Ohio, I encourage you to check out the AEP Recreation land for your next ultrarunning destination!