Thursday morning
8.4 mi / 13.5 km
21 F / - 6 C
slight windchill, not sure how much
I had to go in early to get an abdominal ultrasound. My father had an abdominal aorta aneurysm in 2011, and they want to make sure it's not something that's been passed on to his sons. Most likely, my dad got it because he used to smoke, but doesn't hurt to make sure. I had woken up around midnight to guzzle some water before my fasting officially began, then had trouble getting back to sleep, so went to work, then finally got back to sleep for an hour or so before it was time to head out.
The appointment was at 6:45, by 7am we were finished. I had brought along my running clothes so that I could check out a route I had been thinking about for quite some time. First I had a muffin and a Starbucks cappuccino in the lobby to break my fast, while reading the sports page of the newspaper there, and then changed clothes in one of the specialty clinic's roomy shitters. After stowing away my street clothes in the car, round 7:30, I ran out of the parking lot, up a wide boulevard with one of those sandpaper-like bike/walking/running paths. The sun was up over the horizon, and traffic was starting to pick up. I had forgotten my Garmin but at least I remembered my sunglasses. I was running east right into the rising sun, up a gradual incline about 2 miles long.
On the path there were lots of ice patches that nearly did in my feet within the first mile or so. Ouch! Then after another mile I turned onto a nice, smooth, dry asphalt path towards Phalen Lake, the place where I sprained my MCL last October. I was planing on running up the western shore of Phalen Lake, but when I got close to the lake I saw a sign for the one of those bike/walking/running paths built on top of an old disused railroad line. This path seemed to parallel the lake's eastern shore, built up high on the old railroad embankment, so I headed up that for something different, a better view, and a little extra mileage. This path ended up diverting quite a bit away from the lake, however, heading straight north, so I ended up running about a mile and a half more than I was planning to. Since I had forgotten my Garmin, I was wondering if perhaps I was going to total close to 9 or 10 miles, and was marveling at the possibility that my first 10-miler might be totally unplanned, until I got home and checked Google Maps, and saw that that day had not yet arrived, I was a good mile and half short. Oh well.
Further up the path I hit another converted railroad line that runs perpendicular to the path I was on. This is the bike path I was intending to connect with after running up the western shore of Phalen Lake. Now I was connecting with it a little less than a mile east of that spot. Turning right it goes all the way over to the St. Croix River, 14-15 miles to the east, which is the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin, connecting to a town called Stillwater. I turned left on it, heading west by southwest, through another pretty, thin strip of trees with people's backyards, a golf course, and a cemetery close by and the bustle of rush hour traffic often within earshot. Some of the path became medium grade chipseal, which slowed me down, and there were a few longish ice patches as well, which weren't quite long enough to cause serious discomfort, but close, as by this time my feet were fairly numb anyway. Other than that, it was a nice, easy run, with 3-4 stretching breaks mixed in. The path eventually curves back around, under a major freeway, thru a kind of warehouse-y area, and ends in the neighborhood behind the specialty clinic. On the final hill just before returning to the clinic, I felt a slight twinge in my left ITB, so I walked up the rest of the hill, and then ran down it into the parking lot.
It was nice to run a totally new route for a change, have a little adventure. This will probably be my last sub-freezing run of the season, unless I get up early for Saturday's run too. It's nice to run so early in the morning, but I'm already getting the drowsies now, so I guess I better stick to my late afternoon schedule for running and lifting. Seems to fit best with my biorhythms.
