Day 6: Free Park-ing

Date: January 27th 2011, 8pm
Distance: 3 miles
Weather: Clear Skies and a Shooting Star

You may have noticed that my map images are getting better. I decided to go with Google Earth because you can use a lot of angles and even see some 3-D elements (if you look closely, you can see a 3-D Temple in the top middle of this image). Anyways, back to the run.

I decided to run around Rock Canyon Park. The first bit was uphill and I was feeling really crampy (not crappy... crampy. I felt crappy on day 2). Stomach, lungs, muscles... everything. I was also a bit under dressed (it was COLD) and this parked car was shining its brights in my eyes for a while, so I was uncomfortable overall. It got better once I got to the park and some flatter ground.

They fenced off part of the paved trail that went around the park because there were some construction vehicles there. I had to run up this steep grass hill to get to the top level trail. Fun.

As I went around the park, there was this stretch that went behind a water tower. There were no lights back there, a gravel road and what looked like some broken down garages and shacks. In other words, the most likely place for bad guys to jump out and get you. I played it cool, but I picked up the pace.

On my way back around, the trail was covered in snow, so I ran on what I 'thought' was the trail. When the snow receded, I found that I was on grass instead of pavement. I ended up having to run though the trees, dodging picnic tables and swingsets in order to get back on the path. On my way back down the hill I thought I saw two runners that looked like Gary and Emma, but I was sadly disappointed.

All in all, it was a short and interesting run. Maybe one day I will do a bunch of laps up there one day.