Figg Lane Loop
I love travel. That being said, the amount of time, money, and energy that I invest in traveling belies the fact that I love Kentucky. The more I travel, the more I feel compelled to witness Kentucky’s under-sung beauty with evangelistic zeal. My drive to become a runner was predicated on that zeal and I probably would have never bothered if the backdrops for my fledgling career were things like suburbs, stoplights, and ‘CentrePit’.
Fortunately for me, that was not the case. I began on the country roads and in the hills in nearby Jessamine County. When I moved into downtown Lexington a couple of years ago, I found myself oppressed by the sprawl and monotony, the hard surfaces, and bad air.
Because I think the best things in life should be shared, I have decided to write route reviews on a regular basis. My target audience is the aspiring competitor who needs a weekly change of scenery to stay inspired. My criteria for the routes are as follows:
Directions to start:
From downtown Lexington, drive south on KY 68/Harrodsburg Rd/S. Broadway for 17 miles. Turn left on Main Street in Wilmore and park.
Safety:
This route is mostly on country roads that experience little traffic. Much of the route is narrow and there are a couple of blind curves that should be handled with caution. Be prepared to confront barking dogs; while I have never been bitten I have had them come into the road toward me. Arm yourself with pepper spray if you desire.
Review:
This is the first of my route reviews for those uninspired runners who are coming to grips with the fact that the honeymoon is over. Rekindling any love affair requires work and, as such, Figg Lane is hard but extremely rewarding in both scenery and challenge. The route winds up and down some really dramatic topography with some truly unique geological features that are typical of the Jessamine Creek Gorge area in southwestern Jessamine County. We aren’t talking horse-country hills here, people!
From downtown Wilmore, runners proceed down East Main St, keeping right after crossing the railroad tracks. Turn left onto Campground Rd. After you crest the hill and run along the outskirts of the neighborhood, the scenery becomes very rural. Keep straight down the one-lane road and stay light on your feet because you’re going to have to cross the creek! Don’t worry, it’s usually pretty shallow and your feet shouldn’t be too wet for the rest of the run. You’ll come to an intersection about half a mile down the road, take a right onto Glass Mill Rd and enjoy the scenery during slow descent. On your way down you might hear something that sounds like monkeys going nuts, it probably is; the Jessamine County Primate Rescue is nearby. At the bottom of the hill, you’ll see a picturesque house on the right. Cross the stone bridge and look for the narrow road straight ahead labeled “Figg Ln”.
An aside about Figg Lane: only 1.7 miles of this 8-mile route are spent on Figg Lane. That this route is known simply as Figg Lane is due to the one defining feature of this run that supplants the memory of the rest. The roughly 200ft in elevation that you spent without a second thought over the last couple of miles is repaid mercilessly over the next 600 meters. This is the kind of hill that spends you no matter what kind of shape you’re in and, what’s worse, it’s smack in the middle of the route so you’ll spend a lot of the remaining miles recovering from it. Here’s a look at just the hill climb:
The 4 miles remaining of the route has plenty of rolling hills but the worst is over. In a couple of miles, Figg Ln terminates at Handy’s Bend. Turn right and right again when Handy’s Bend ends at High Bridge Road. Continue carefully down this busy road back into Wilmore.