Running Adventures in GP

So, before you read this, bear in mind that I have been living in Northern Alberta coming up 3 weeks. I haven't made any friends yet and I spent a LOT of time alone. When you spend a lot of time alone, you begin to come up with strange ideas to keep yourself amused. This is the result of my attempt at amusement during my run yesterday...(Alan I know you will be able to appreciate this hehe)

Run with ME!

Today I am heading out to do a 90min run. I decided to bring along the camera to take pictures of where I am and you can have a virtual run with me.

This is me, ready to run. I am channeling Natasha in the this picture. Natasha is D's 12yr old niece. She is 12 going on 22 and makes this face in all of her 900 facebook self portraits :-)

This is the road up from our house that leads to Crystal Lake. The "Lake" is more of a bird sanctuary...which really means a big birdy toilet. No swimming in this lake.

This is another shot of the lake, and a shot of the path that goes around the perimeter. It is about a 5km loop, but after a few hundred metres of slipping and sliding on the ice, I decided to get back on the road.

A closed road is a great find 

up here! Freedom from cars and the terrain is more runable than the path right now. I ran into a bit of mud, but not too bad.

The closed road eventually ran out and I ran through a new community to another highway, which led me to a secondary road that I was able to follow for quite a while. It doesn't take long to get "away from it all" up here. 

As you can see by the pictures, I am already out in the country. The smell of horse poop in the air was not all that unpleasant for some reason...could be my country roots? 

I reached the end of the secondary road and made my turnaround. I was now going into a bit of a headwind and things got a little chilly. 

Here I am running back towards the city- the black building in the distance is GP's one and only "skyscraper". That is the term that people here sarcastically use to refer to it. It is at the heart of virtually all the directions I have received..lol.

Once I got back to the city I decided to take a different route and ended up getting "lost" in a maze of suburbia like neighborhoods. I didn't have my bearings and ended up running the wrong direction and having to loop back. It felt like I was running uphill most of the time.

Finally I reached the sign that marks our community "Crystal Lake Estates". I could have turned right here and been home sooner, but I turned left and took the long way...because I knew that route better.

I was happy to get home. 19km and 1hr42 later I was spent. Time to rehydrate and hurry off to the pool!

I actually made it to the pool with only 

30mins left for lane swimming. I put in my 30mins and was actually relieved to get booted out- I was spent!

I stuck around to watch Maesa in her last swimming lesson, and it made my day when she spotted me and got really excited and said to the teacher "there's my Auntie Amber, she came to watch me! There she is, that's my Auntie Amber!!"

Hope you enjoyed the run with me!

TFTD Run 19km 1hr42
Swim 1500m 30mins