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How was your run Sir? … A little wet!

February 19th, 2007

That’s what the door man said to me as I came in from the rain. It’s pretty rainy here tonight in Victoria, BC. But, in just my few hours here, rainy hours at that, I can honestly say this is a beautiful little city. The city is “very European” in the sense that it has that capital city feel, beautiful architecture, and of course the wonderful friendly nature of Canadians.

Running in a completely foreign city, at night, in the rain is a bit of an adventure. I’m not normally timid or worried about street crime. I’ve gone running through the streets of Manhattan at 5am, so I’m used to the urban jungle… but there is a bit of adventure in heading off down a street you’ve never seen before… what will you discover?

Thank goodness for my Garmin Forerunner GPS/Running computer. It certainly makes this process of running in an unknown land a little easier. Sure, I admit I’m a gadget geek, and so mostly I like it because it’s a cool toy. And of course, I could have gone for a run without it, and I would have gotten back home safely, just as wet, and just as “worked out” (or worked over). But it’s nice to know that you don’t really need to know where you are about to run, and you can still be confident that you will know how far and how fast you’ve run. And… bonus feature, if you get lost, you can switch to “map mode” and have a general idea of how to get back to where you came from.

I used this feature tonight… not because I was lost per se, but because I didn’t want to just run along some route for 4.25 miles and then turn around and head back the exact same direction. Knowing that I could see my little “bread crumbs” on the map view, gave me the freedom to be a little more adventurous and keep heading out down the road through a residential neighborhood and eventually back toward town and our hotel.

Although it was twilight and eventually dark, I did get a nice run along the coastline through a couple parks, into a pleasant tree lined neighborhood, before returning to the city center. My run through city center was mostly uneventful, but certainly random… I was guided by traffic lights when I ran with the green light even if it meant turning further away from my hotel. I eventually ended up at the gates of China town and “Government St.” which I knew to run in front of the Capital building and our hotel.

Other than the one drunken homeless person who started yelling “There’s ANOTHER runner! Why so many runners?!” I wasn’t noticed by any locals. I guess that’s a good thing… blending in is always a safe strategy when it comes to foreign urban surroundings.

Now I’m off to the pool. I may just get my 2 hours of training in today after all.

Entry Filed under: Fitness, Triathlon, Weightloss, Swimming, Ironman, Running, Marathons, Flexibility, travel, training while traveling, exercise