Views from the Run

I’ve taken some photos recently while running and I haven’t written a blog post in a while, so here are some photos from my phone.

The first was taken last Thursday evening at Columbia Lake and the last 3 were taken yesterday along the Grand River.

 

The group run that didn’t happen

This morning I got up shortly before 7, had some coffee, ate some toast with peanut butter and banana, and got ready to meet up with the folks from meetup.com at the Saturday Trail Run that I had organized.

The first challenge of the day was actually getting out of the little lane beside the house. Luckily, Ryan got the car out for me while I finished up getting my stuff together. I hopped in the car and headed toward the trail. The roads were mediocre at best. I arrived just 2 minutes after the time I said I would be there, so I didn’t do too badly time wise, but I was disappointed to see that the parking lot where we were to meet was completely inaccessible.

I drove past the lot and looked for a place to park nearby, but did not have any luck. I drove around to another street and parked near Chicopee. After parking, I ran back to the meet up location to see if anyone else had shown up, but there were no signs of other runners. I trudged through the snow and discovered that there was no way we could run on this trail today. I waited a few minutes to be sure nobody was coming and then headed back out to do a short run on my own.

I discovered later that another runner had been driving around the area looking for me (and others), but unfortunately, we did not cross paths.

My tracks in the deep snow

Not the deepest spot, but still shows the type of ground cover today :)

The trail under the bridge was full of large chunks of ice from the river.

I ran back to where the car was parked and then found some short trails that had been travelled by somebody, so I could actually get through them. I ran around this area briefly and then crossed the road to have some fun running through some deep snow in a playground.

I took some photos while out on my own to share.

Snow covered trees next to where I parked.

I could get through this trail :)

And it connected to this one.

Hi

Total distance covered today was only 5 km, but with the amount of snow, I’d say it counts for more. I could’ve definitely used some snowshoes today.

A photo update

***
It is now February 8th and I wrote a good chunk of the below last week. Instead of changing it, I thought I’d just add this wee blurb to the top so you know why the actual post starts out with info that is no longer true since I posted something yesterday.

Today is essentially a snow day due to the piles and piles of snow we received overnight and are still getting now as I type. I am working from home today, but there are some system issues due to the number of people on VPN. I doubt I’ll run later, but it could be kinda fun in the snow… who knows. I am planning on a trail run tomorrow morning with some people through meetup.com. It could be interesting with all of the snow.

Instead of this post being an update all the way up to now, I think I’ll do it in chunks. Today will be December only. Next time, I will include January and the first weekend of February.

I will try to update the blog on a much more regular basis going forward. Life got crazy and the blogging got pushed aside. Life isn’t exactly “normal” now, but I will blog. :)
*** 

I realize that it’s been quite a while since I last published a blog post. So… instead of trying to think of a bunch of things to write about, I will post a bunch of photos that I took on the runs between my last blog post and now. I will include short blurbs about the runs along with the pictures so that you know what they are about and when they were taking. This should bring you up to speed on my running. I will try to be better at posting from here on in.

December 1st: The Santa Pur-Suit:
As you may recall, I ran in the santa suit with Jordan previously, to promote the event. On actual race day, I got to see my friend Paul and also my mom, who both ran the race as well.

 

December 8th: Saturday morning run with Ron (Runners’ Choice)
I met up with Ron and some other runners in Cambridge. After the group was finished their run, I went back out for another out and back and took some photos on the way.

 

December 15th: Kissing Bridge Trailway, West Montrose. This is a very well marked flat rail trail.

     

I was going to keep going with December, but there are a bunch more photos that I want to share and this post is already crammed full of photos, so I will stop here and start at December 16th in the next post.

I hope you’ve enjoyed some views from the run, even though they are old.

Grand River Trail: Freeport to Blair

Last Sunday, I took some photos during my run along the Grand River with full intentions of creating a blog post later that night or at least the next day. This didn’t happen, of course, as it is now a week later and I am finally posting. Better late than never, right?

Let’s see if I can remember any of this run… it was a point to point run starting at the bottom of Kitchener, and ending up in Cambridge.

There were many people out and about on the trail that day; I saw cyclists, walkers, and runners (although not many runners). The nice weather and the fact that the new pedestrian bridge had just opened up 2 days prior were probably big factors in the numbers that were out. I’m sure in a month or 2, I’ll see a lot less people out there.

All in all, it was an enjoyable run with good weather and nice scenery. I will leave you with some photos.

I had to take a photo of the giant house that is being build backing onto the trail. It’s huge!

These next 2 photos are of the new pedestrian bridge that connects sections of trail on either side of the river.

Not too long after crossing the pedestrian bridge, I had another bridge to cross, but it was over something much less scenic: the 401.

On the other side of the highway, I found a new section of trail that I had never run on before. These last few photos were taken there. As you can see, I took a wee break to enjoy the view.

Today…

Today I decided to ride my bike out to the Walter Bean Grand River Trail to take my new trail shoes out for a spin. I put on my running clothes and shoes, my Garmin, attached my running hat and hand-held bottle to my bike lock and locked it to my frame, put on my helmet and headed out the door.

When I arrived at the trail, I leaned my bike up against a signpost and grabbed my keys to unlock my lock from the bike so that I could secure my bike to the post. When looking at my keys… crap… I hadn’t brought my lock key with me. It was at home on my work keys. So, I decided to be creative and just make it *look* like I had locked my bike up by looping the coil-y cable lock around the post. Hmm.. this post was too big.. I needed to find something smaller. I looked around. Aha! I saw a much smaller sign post up in the grass a bit. I walked my bike over to it and swiftly wound the lock around and looped the hand-held water bottle portion through (I couldn’t get it off the lock, so I thought I would use it to my advantage and figured I’d just use my bike water bottle for the run). While doing this, I apparently made some hornets very angry and one stung my arm! Ouch! I hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings other than just looking for something to attach my bike to that I completely missed the fact that there were hornets going in and out of this post. Well.. the bike was here now, so I might as well leave it. I backed away slowly to not anger any more insects and headed off down the trail, leaving my water bottles behind as I was not going to chance getting stung again, just to grab a bottle.

While I was running, I had a constant pain in my arm where the sting happened. Dang hornet. At least I had comfort in knowing that they were protecting my bike for me as it was not properly secured.

I was starting to enjoy my run, when I turned around a corner and was startled to see a mountain bike coming straight toward me. I jumped off the side of the trail and he apologized. No collisions – all is good.

The remainder of my run was quite uneventful and I enjoyed the new shoes, but as I was coming back toward my starting point, I was wondering how I would manage to get my bike back off the post o’ hornets. The answer: very carefully. I took my time, walked up to it slowly, studied the loops of the lock to see the simplest way to unwind it. I moved one section and backed away. One hornet came out of the post and checked out the scene. After it went back in, I approached to complete the task. I flipped the lock around and pulled my bike back as quick as I could, hoping it had come loose from the post. It had! Success! I examined my bike helmet and bike for any hornets and headed for home. I’d had enough adventure for one day.