The Perfect Route
On a whim a couple of weeks ago, I decided to ratchet up my running distance. I’m doing ten mile runs now at around eight and a half minute pace. This isn’t bad, though I recently heard my cousin Tim threw down a half marathon (the Gary Bjorklund) in 90 minutes, which raises the bar. Anyhow, the first time I got back from this run, nearly dead, I drank a lot of water. But that’s not the point of the story. I then went to the basement and mapped the run out on Gmap-Pedometer.com. This yielded the picture below.
Now, I continued running this route for the past few weeks, but only recently noticed something incredibly useful. The distance from my house to a nearby intersection (at top left) is exactly 1 mile. Why is this useful? Because of the way the country roads are set up (on the right side of the run map). Between each road, it’s one mile. So, on that big country mile square, there are mile markers built in at the corners, and at the midpoints on each side of the square. Now, I haven’t started carrying a watch or anything (I don’t own a suitable digital running watch), but if I did, this simple fact would make mile clocking incredibly easy. As an added bonus, the hills on this course above have a great swing to them, giving the run an interval feel. That is, for every couple of miles, there is a 100-150m vertical change, giving ye olde leg strength a workout, in addition to endurance training. The biggest downside to this route is the location of the only public bathroom along it, which intimately factors into a tale for another day.
Comments
Dan McKeown
My God, I have never felt fatter than after reading this journal…
Alexander Micek +1
We’re not here to make Dan feel husky, so let’s improve his morale by saying nice things about him. I’ll go first. Dan is tall and has Italian leather shoes.
Mykala
I love Dan Mckeown and would like him to someday be my husband.
Richard Roche
i bet he has many leather bound books, and his apartment smells of rich mahogany
Nils
I’m not going to say anything about Dan. He knows he’s got it going on. I will say that while the said route provides opportunities for timing/measuring, I believe the perfect running route would be on a winding trail in some scenic area that is hard to find and largely unknown. Like a trail by a lake, through a forest, or something. I can’t stand to run in Woodbury which is probably why I began biking to Afton and back. Plus with biking, you really feel like you went somewhere and covered a big distance. And to give Alex an update, I plan on adding my 4th lake to the list of “biked Madison lakes” tomorrow during my day off work.