A L Burruss / Life University Running Trail

A L Burruss / Life University Trail Map

Are you ready for some hills?!?! Well it’s about time I posted a “Difficult” run and this one will get your legs burning. There are plenty of trails in both the A L Burruss and the Life College locations and a nice trail to link them. The A L Burruss section is relatively flat with some small hills. Once you cross over to Life College though, you will hit some gnarly hills – I swear one of these was more than a 45 degree incline – brutal!

I started in the A L Burruss parking lot and it made a nice loop throughout both sections. As I got out of my car there were several people just sitting there in their cars – I thought maybe it was a drug deal going on or something. Nobody hassled me, but it was very suspicious looking and made me nervous to have people just sitting there in cars as I head off to the woods for my trail run.  When I got home I looked it up and found out that the area is a gay cruising spot. I think in the future, I will be parking on the Life campus and running through A L Burruss section.  I will feel much more comfortable with my car there.

There are many branches to the trail and there are a couple areas to note:

• On Life Campus, one of the trails will take you to their great track – this is a rubberized track that is open to the public (at least it seemed to be when I was there).
• When running from A L Burruss to Life College, once you get to the campus, the trail seems to stop.  Just run around the field and you will see the trail pick up after a road/parking lot.  Just look for it, you’ll find it.
• There is a section of old houses and an old mill off one of the trails – each house has a plaque describing the original location and function of each building.  Stop and check them out.
• You will see several exercise stations throughout the Life College trails if you’re interested in circuit training.
• Make sure to run all of the side trails at the A L Burruss section – these are narrow, single person trails that are very scenic and a nice diversion from the main run.  I saw some groundskeepers driving their truck on the main run and was glad to escape back into the woods.

I would definitely run here again, however – I would only save this for a strength training day due to the massive hills and the excellent circuit training section of the course.

Again, I can not find any official maps for either of these sections, but if you have one or know where to find one, please reply to this post and I’ll add them.