About 17 km

My other blog at Complete Running is having some temporary difficulties while we change over hosts, so I'll just keep you up to date over here, if you can find me.

Earlier this week Coach Dianne kindly agreed to have her boys amuse my Little Runner while I got in a long run. She lives near beautiful Fish Creek Park, in which Dawn and I raced last weekend. Last weekend was a XC race, so we were not on the paved paths and didn't run much flat at all. Today I was looking for a long stretch of flat, paved, non-challenging footing and found
just what I needed along the Fish Creek valley.

As I was getting ready, Derek, another of my coaches and Dianne's husband, kindly offered to lend me one of his new pairs of tights for my run. I laughed and joshed back "Why, so if I get knocked unconscious the search party will be able to spot me easily from the HELICOPTER?!!"

Once I got into the valley I went west, thinking I would go that direction about 50-55 minutes, then double back. Due to the massive flooding of the valley last June, however, one of the bridges I needed was washed out, and the area was closed to the public, so I only made it 45 minutes west before doubling back. I was feeling strangely good by the time I got back to the
climb up to Dianne's, so tacked on another 16 minutes out east (due to how my walk/run timers were set to beep) before doubling back again. A cold wind picked up on the last 10 minutes of easterly running and my knees didn't like that at all. Good thing I was close to the start. After all that flat I actually enjoyed the climb out of the valley back to Dianne's house. Derek
said later "See? You could have used those extra leggings!"

Dianne generously fed me gobs of peanut butter melting on a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel and a glass of milk. I chatted with her and Derek about kids and spinning drills, and headed back home.

I'm pretty sure this is the route I took today.

The "plan" I'm very loosely following to build up to the Police Half at the end of April called for 16 km today and I was going to be really happy if I got 14 or 15. If this truly was about 17 km in 2:05 hours then I was going nicely under my randomly-chosen goal pace of max. 8 min/km, at 7.35 min/km. Good enough for my first real long run in a few months.