The Sun Is Back!

Absolutely beautiful morning out there. It was a little cloudy to start, but the sun came out after a couple of hours, and it's just glorious.

The river sure is impressive. Half of Prince's Island is under water, and most of the paths under the bridges are as well. Occasionally I had to dodge and weave traffic to get across them. Running along the river, there were places were I'd look at the water level, then at the level of Memorial Drive, and wonder if the berm which I was running on top of would hold. There are parts of Sunnyside where I bet homeowners are a little nervous.

I was planning to run along the river to 17th Avenue, and cross there and come back through Pearce Estate Park and past the fish hatchery, but no go. I had to cross Memorial at the zoo and run through the north parking lot down to Nose Creek. I couldn't go down the path along the creek to the Bow and underthe train bridge because the water was within a half metre of the bridge, so the path under was maybe under two metres of water. So I took the service road to the weir, which runs up over a bit of a hill.

I expected the noise at the weir to be deafening with all that water going over, but the actual drop in the water level was maybe metre, so not much drop and not much noise. And seven or eight hundred metres past the weir was a dead end. The water didn't look deep, but a lot of the path was under it, and there was lot of debris.

So I backtracked to the zoo and crossed to 12th Street on that bridge. The path under it was under almost two metres as well, so I had to stay on the road. And then on the other side, that path was under at least a half metre from the bridge to the confluence of the Elbow, so I just kept going past until I got to 8th Avenue, and took that to the Elbow where I zigged over to 9th and over that bridge by Fort Calgary.

Once past the fort, I turned back toward the river and headed toward the promenade. That lovely stream that separates Prince's Island from downtown, that they spent buckets of cash and almost two years building, is now a raging torrent. The earth damn at the west end is completely washed out, but the two foot bridges by Eau Claire are OK. But like I said, half the island is under water.

Running along toward Crowchild after crossing under the C-Train bridge, I suddenly realized that that big island just west of the 14th Street bridge is gone, though there are a couple of trees still standing out in the middle of the river. There was also an island just west of Crowchild that has disappeared. And looking across the river to Lawrey Gardens, I wondered if the path was still above water.

Once I got farther down, CP Rail had a work crew out dumping chunks of concrete alone the bank beside the tracks below Spruce Cliff, where significant erosion was happening. I was going to cross at Edworthy and run back that side, but there were spots that seemed awful low, so I just turned around at the Edworthy bridge and headed back on the north side.

At Crowchild I crossed, figuring that the path east would be OK, and it was except for one point where the water was lapping at the edge of the path - the edge farthest from the bank. So it was slow down and tiptoe through about two centimetres of water at it's shallowest. After that, it was all the way to Centre Street bridge, up Nony's Awful Little Hill, and to 4th Street and home.

Today's run:
Distance: 31.98 km. Time: 3:18:10. Average speed: 9.7 kph.
Rest distance: 2.02 km. Rest time: 22:00.
Total distance: 34.00 km. Total time: 3:40:10.

Weather: Partly cloudy and 7C to start, mostly sunny and 14C by the end. Wonderful sunny day. And about time too. This rain has been too much.

And let's do a countdown - 21 days to the Burnco Marathon