Springtime in Calgary

Another spring weekend, another spring storm. About the same amount of fresh snow on the ground as last weekend, too. By the time I got out there, the side streets weren't too bad. There'd been enough traffic to pack a couple of tracks down, but not enough to polish it up.

When I switched over to the path down Nony's Awful Little Hill, I was back to prancing through foot deep snow again, until the top of the Centre Street bridge, where the sidewalk plows had left a veneer of soon-to-be-slush snow.

Most annoying was the GPS just wasn't catching a signal at all for the first ten minutes. So I have an accurate time record, but the distance measure is way off. So I'll use last week's distance for the calculations.

Once on the promenade, the north wind made itself noticeable. Not too bad this morning, though. It seemed a lot warmer than the -5C being advertized on the weather websites. That was also about the time my left shin tightened up considerably.

The first walk break wasn't too bad, but from there it began to hurt enough that I was wondering if I was going to be walking back home. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it. By the time I got near the bus terminal, I was half hobbling.

OK, make it to Crowchild and head back, was what seemed to make sense. By the time I was near The Pumphouse, it was finally loosening up, and once across the river under Crowchild, all was right again, though I could still feel some pull.

After that, it was back to normal. I think it was warmer this week than last, where it was freshly plowed, any packed snow was immediately slippery. And mostly what was on the pavement was melting, so a bit splashy in places.

At Point MacKay I was back to normal, and was running at a nice fast pace. I rounded Angel's Cafe, and headed back downtown. The wind was now at my back, but I was feeling the heat, too. It was much warmer now, and the sun was trying to shine a little.

Most of the way to past 14th Street was head down and go. But just as I was coming up to 14th, I also caught up with the Wave Runner so finally got to say hello. Always meet lots of runners, but never meet another blogger. Cool!

After chatting for a bit, I resumed my pace and quickly found myself at The Stairs. Ow. Actually the first three or four flights were OK, but I quickly ran out of steam, somehow just making it to the top without stopping. A short walk break and the rest of the run was over quick.

Distance: 16.42 Time: 1:30:01
Average speed: 5:44 min/km. (10.94 kph)
Rest distance: 1.05 km. Rest time: 10:00.
Total distance: 17.47 km. Total time: 1:40:01.

Shoes: Asics GT-2130.
Today's earworm: Sugarfoot Rag, Junior Brown.

Weather: Cloudy and -5C all the way.