Another Three Hour Tour

I was a little later getting out of the house this morning for this one. I totally forgot about the time change, so I had lost an hour by the time the alarm went off.

But I was out the door at a respectable time, and I headed off toward the river. The GPS managed to grab satellites almost right off the start, but then it lost them after five minutes. And it took another twenty for it to get back in touch with them.So my distance measurement is off a little.

I headed west along the river again. The luxury of that open bathroom by Edworthy is just too good to pass up. This time, after I crossed the James Hextall bridge into Bowness, I veered to the right and followed Bow Cresent. This is the route the Calgary marathon follows, and it's probably the worst surface to run on. Packed clay and oiled gravel, with enough larger stones to keep you watchful. They hurt to step on them, unless you're running in trail shoes, maybe.

The other hazard is the usual spring thing. The geese with gasto-intestinal issues are back, leaving evidence of such all over the place. In a couple of weeks, the paths might be pretty gross. Heck, they already are! And the geese are a little agressive, too.

I hit my turn around time just as I was about to go under the railroad bridge over the river, just past the end of Bow Cresent. And then it was a matter of retracing my steps. At the turn around, the GPS said I'd gone almost exactly 12 km, and by the time I got home, I'd gone 29.0 km. And on the way back I went straight along Memorial Drive to the stairs up to the Prince's Island foot bridge, instead of crossing over at the C-Train bridge and then back across at Prince's Island, which is what I would have done if I'd actually truely retraced my steps. So that says my one way distance was closer to 17 km instead of 12 km. Which would make a round trip of 34 km, with sounds a little high. But I have no doubt I was at least 30 km total. In looking at the data, I have none for the period between ten and twenty minutes into the run because of the lost of the satellite links.

So I'll go with 30 km then. But here are the stats as reported by the GPS:

Today's run:
Distance: 25.93 km. Time: 2:40:29. Average speed: 9.8 kph.
Rest distance: 3.07 km. Rest time: 17:00
Total distance: 29.00 km. Total time: 2:57:29

Weather: Fog and -1C to start, changing to cloudy and 5C by the end. It didn't warm up like I thought it would, and I was a little underdressed.