I went for a 35km run in the Kananaskis foothills today. It was a learning experience. Which is annoying because I have to learn things that I already learned before.
Apparently I’ve forgotten some basic running rules.
1) Use Body Glide. Chafing hurts.
It started out nice and cloudy and then got surprisingly sunny. And hot. The wind the weather report threatened me with, wasn’t providing near enough coolness.
2) Sunscreen is a good idea when you are at a higher altitude.
I was on a new route that I had never taken before. It worked out rather well. There are three types of roads out there. Major ones that try and get from point A to point B in the most direct route. Minor ones that are probably laid out in a grid and don’t care about what’s in the way. Medium roads that were probably first designed by settlers who had to take horses everywhere.
3) Medium roads will actually try and go around hills. This is a good thing.
I listened to an iPod most of the way. An audio story would have been nice, but then you might miss part of the story if a motorcycle roars by. However, music isn’t always appropriate.
4) “Eye of the Tiger” while on a hill will not end well. Ignore the music and slow down.
A lot of the route was possibly on the Cowboy Trail. Well, I think I saw a sign marking it as such, but Wikipedia seems to disagree with me. In any case, Highway 762 was actually part of Google Street View. Surprising! It is not a major road or in a urban centre. So before the run, I could take a look as to what the route looked like.
5) In Google Street View, roads look a lot leveller than they are when you are on foot.
It wasn’t horribly hilly, and the road skirted around a number of them. But it certainly wasn’t completely flat.