Review
The main trail is so key to running any distance at Phipps Park that I nearly forgot to put it in this guide in the first place. I have run this exact 1.3- mile-long connector trail so many times that I know every single twist and turn better than the layout of my bedroom. For nearly any loop that you run at Phipps Park, you will have to run down the Main Trail to access it.
The Main Trail starts out unassuming, just staying in a grass field from the Parking lot until it reaches the Soccer Fields. It stays boring as it follows the edge of the Soccer Fields on its dirt roads until you reach the trail entrance to the right of the powerlines. There, you truly enter the woods for the first time in your run, and never really leave after that. Once you are in the wilderness part of the loop, you stay on a dusty clay trail that cuts through the woods adjacent to Miller Landing Road. From there, you will advance until you reach the Port-a-pottys (Scenic, I know) at Gate A, and you will shortly come across the One-mile mark. Then, you just stay on the wide gravel trail until you reach another park entrance at Gate B, and you have navigated the entire Main Trail.
There is nothing much to the actual essence of the Main Trail. It is just a moderately scenic way of getting from where you park to where all the other trails are. However, it is necessary for all of your runs at Phipps Park. It takes you from the tennis center to the wilderness, and it does so very well. The trails that it follows are easy to spot and overall, decently shaded and hilly. But what the Main Trail does exceptionally well is just avoid having flaws. There is nothing really wrong with it.
Sure, if you run the Main Trail 60 times in a row you will probably get very, very bored, but the purpose of the Main Trail is not to be a loop that you repeat. It is just to get you from the parking lot to Gate B, where you can then access all of Phipps Park. And for this purpose, the Main Trail is nearly perfect.
Rating: Out of 10