Saturday, June 03, 2006

Wet and wild run

It was time for my long run and I made plans with Jelly to meet. She was planning a 10K run, and I wanted to do a 20K. I would run about 7K, meet up with her, do 10K, then finish off 3K by myself. Easy, right?

Not so.

Well, I was late getting out of my place, so that was bad thing number one. Second, it started to rain. Not a lot of it, in fact, it stopped after a few minutes.


I was running late to meet her at her place (picture here) so I cut a few corners -- and a few Ks -- from my intended route. We started running east on Gerrard and it was a great run. Ran by my old university, my old apartment, the old Chinatown (yes, a lot of old stuff) and the old, rundown neighborhood around Carlaw, an area that I think is a few years yet from being invaded by land-hungry prospective home seekers.

By the way, my Garmin lost signal after 4K, so it was useless for the next 8 or so Km.

We turned onto the Lakeshore, where I took this picture of the route. You can see it's pretty gloomy, but it's nice to get a cool day once in awhile.

We split at Queens Quay and York, and I went home, dropped off my hydration pack and windbreaker, then set out to finish my 20K run. I had a feeling that if I did 6K, that it would make up the distance I lost at the beginning of the run.

Then it rained. Not cats and dogs, but of smaller domestic variety. Fact was, I was getting soaked. But it was fun! I splashed into some puddles, avoiding others. There was also a 10K walk/run on the waterfront, so it was fun to look at the last walkers come into the last K. The Running Room volunteers found it amusing perhaps that i was running with shades on a cloudy day and without a hat. If you're wondering, the shades are more stable than my glasses and R. took my hat a week ago and I forgot to retrive it from her.

Anyways, a soaked 6K later, i was at home. I ran the last 6K as a tempo run.. very powerful finish to a long run.

I did a gmap of the Intended route and the Actual route and guess what? I almost ran exactly 20K. Amazing.

We went to St. Lawrence, where Jelly, R. (who ran 5K by herself) and I had yummy pasta. Then Jelly and I split a veal and eggplant sandwich. As I said, and Jelly agreed, it was the "best meal ever."

Weekly total: 66K
Year to date: 910.5K

6 comments:

jellypepper said...

Thanks for the motivation today! And a memorable meal. We'll have to do it again. And bring Frankie.
Here's my post: http://jellypepper.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Saw you at the tail end of your run on Queen's Quay between Robertson and Spadina...I was taking a walking break on the south side while you were still running on the north side. 21K...you're insane!! Frank

yumke said...

Yes, I am insane.. and paid for it the last two days by my strange combo of cold/allergies.

Speaking of seeing you, were you running on Sherbourne, southbound, on the east side just after 6:20?

Cause I was on the other side. Aforementioned sickness prevented me from shouting out.

Anonymous said...

You saw me tonight? Tuesday? Well if so then it could very well of been me as I was just heading out around that time and was going southbound on Sherbourne...dressed in black. I see you, you don't see me, now you see me and I don't see you. Freaky...now we're even :) -Frank

yumke said...

Yup, that was you tonight, in black. We're even. How far did you run tonight?

Anonymous said...

Set out to do 4 miles then took a detour with hopes of adding another mile...I got home and mapped it out and I fell a bit short. Ended up being a 4.6 mile run. Fine by me. Looking forward to running in Vancouver later this week! -FP