A Three Hour Tour

Woohoo! What a morning! Just a fantastic run for some reason, and I loved every minute of it. It went by so fast, too. I got into some incredible terrain, otherwise I would have had an unbelievable distance this morning.

I started going east, over to Tom Campbell hill and down toward the zoo. Then across the river there, and along it past Fort Calgary toward downtown. It seemed like hundreds of homeless camped out everywhere. Piles of blankets here and there under bushes and trees, a lot of them just getting up for the day. Rough life.

Then past Chinatown, where the elderly residents were out in full force on the promenade for the morning walk. After I passed the 10th Street bridge, foot traffic pretty much disappeared. At Crowchild, I crossed to the other side of the river.

From there to the foot bridge to Edworthy Park is goose country. And there seems to be a wide range of gastrointestinal distress among these birds. Lots of sidestepping and dodging. Nony calls it agility training. (ewwww!)

Now, I was planning to keep on the trail and maybe get as far as Shouldice Park, but for some reason I crossed to Edworthy with the idea that I'd take the path back east along the tracks toward Crowchild, but for some reason, I took the right branch of the path, and suddenly I'm deep in the spruce forest and climbing stairs and paths like crazy.

This was an amazing trail. Beautiful forest on a steep slope, and the path has been reinforced to keep it from sliding down the slope. There are railings all along, and stairways everywhere, and the trail twists and turns constantly. After a few minutes of this, you get glimpes through the trees of the other side of the river, and you are high up - according to my GPS, I climbed about 70 metres over a distance of about 120 metres. After almost a kilometre, you drop that much again. And another half kilometre you climb that much again. And another kilometre, you drop the 70 metres for the last time, and you're at Crowchild again. It was an absolutely incredible discovery.

From there back to 14th where I crossed the river again, and went all the way to the zoo, where I retraced my path up Tom Campbell hill and back home.

And the whole time, I felt wonderful. The pain in my knee and feet was there as usual, but for some reason it never got very troubling. Everything felt fabulous, the weather was perfect and just a wonderful morning.

Today's run:
Distance: 26.6 km. Time: 2:42:01. Speed: 9.9 kph.
Rest distance: 1.63 km. Rest time: 18:00.
Total distance: 28.26 km. Total time: 3:00:01.

Weather: Cloudy and 4C when I started, and climbing to 7C by the time I got home again. Shorts and tee, with my old Marvin the Martian tee as a second layer. Perhaps a bit too cold to dress so light, but only my hands really felt cold, and only for the first half hour or so.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention last week, on the way back toward downtown, I met Mayor Bronco Dave on the paths. For what that's worth...