Moffat Tunnel

Saturday, June 10th

Molly and I met Jennifer and Conrad in Rollinsville and we did a run on the Moffat Tunnel road. We drove about 3 miles up Tolland Road, and there is a little picnic area. From there we ran for about 50 minutes, just past some type of dam/water control to where we were stopped by a train. We wanted to run for 55 minutes up, and then back down, so on the way down we actually ran past the cars (very hard to do mentally) to make the run a little farther.

It's an awesome area. The Moffat Tunnel was first used by trains in 1928, and here is some history. This page says that it's the 6th longest tunnel in the world, but that's not right. Here is some info on the world's longest tunnels, and it looks like the Moffat Tunnel isn't even listed among the world's longest railway tunnels, but it is the 3rd longest in the US.

I was a little apprehensive about running on a dirt road. I usually feel better on a trail where the motion isn't so repetitive. I actually felt pretty good, although I was the slowest of the 4. It didn't really feel like we were gaining that much elevation on the way up, but on the way down there were some steep sections. I felt pretty good the whole time, and I felt like I was able to maintain my form the entire way. At the end of the run I didn't feel as tired as previous long runs. Today (Monday morning - 48 hours post-run) I feel OK. Some soreness on the top of my feet, and my legs are a little tired, but that's to be expected. We also went camping on Saturday night, so I'm sure sleeping on the hard ground didn't help us recover.

Totals:
~ 10 miles
~ 1:45 minutes

Update: From Doug

I imagine the “6^th biggest tunnel in the world” line was originally supplemented by the qualifier “at the time it was built,” but that the qualifier was inadvertently lost. But it looks from that site like even that claim was wrong, as it was actually the 7^th biggest at the time it was built. Looking at the list for railway tunnels, it looks like the following tunnels are longer and were built prior to the Moffat.

1922, 19,824 m (Simplon II in It/Swit.)

1906, 19,803 m (Simplon I in It/Swit.)

1882, 15,003 m (St. Gotthard, Swit.)

1913, 14,612 m (Lotschberg, Swit.)

1871, 13,636 m (Frejus, Fra-It.)

1884, 10,589 m (Arlberg, Austria)

1928, 9,996 m (Moffat)

Maybe they consider the 2 Simplon tunnels to be one and the same.