58:19

Friday was a scheduled off day. Saturday was my longest run so far of the year. I ran 58 minutes and 19 seconds.

I'm staying in Salt Lake City for the weekend for a meeting. I found the website www.run.com which has running routes "worldwide". In Salt Lake City, one of the recommended runs was to run up City Creek Road.

City Creek Road goes north out of the city from a park called Memory Grove Park. Memory Grove Park is right beside the state capitol building. I didn't think I could set the GPS in my rental car to just the road, so instead I set it for Memory Grove Park. That was a small mistake. The GPS took me to the capitol side of the park (which was a nice tour of Salt Lake City). The park is a deep canyon, City Creek Canyon. From where I parked, it didn't look like I could get directly across the canyon. There was a road that went north from where I parked across from the capitol, but it didn't look like it would take me to where I wanted to go. This road was one-way, so I couldn't drive down it either.

So, I got back in the car to try again. This time, I tried "City Creek Road" on the GPS, and it gave me a route. I parked at the corner of B and 11th Avenue, right at the foot of City Creek Road. The road is one-way, with a wide bike and pedestrian lane. After maybe a kilometer, the road makes a big U and heads back on the other side of the canyon---it was the same road that I parked at on the other side of the park. So I could have run from my original parking place, but I think it's a bit longer from that side of the park.

At the curve of the U is a road that goes off to the north. There is a gate across the road and signs about the road being impassable (to cars), so I didn't immediately recognize that it was where I wanted to go. I ran up and down this little stretch before deciding that it was what I wanted. When I got closer, I could see that bikes and pedestrians can enter. In fact, I could have driven that far and parked right there too.

After that (before that, too), the run was beautiful. The sun was just rising, so I was in shadow in the valley but the west wall of the valley (and the south one after a curve) was in the sun. The route was uphill, but it seemed gentle. At least, my legs felt great running uphill.

I turned around after 32 minutes. The run back downhill took just over 26 minutes. It was faster even though it was the second half because it was all downhill, and also because I didn't include the extra trip up and down the short access road to the trail.

I don't regret parking a little farther away, either. On the way back down to my car I had a beautiful view from above the state capitol building looking down on the city.

I had left my hotel at about 6 AM (the sun was just barely up, not like Denmark at this time of year), and was back around 7:30 (with the extra driving).

It was a great run. It made me glad I've chosen this sport: it was so nice to land in a strange city and find a beautiful place like this to run for an hour.

I plan to run 30 minutes Sunday (today) and 50 minutes on Monday. Both days, I will just go back to the same place. Tuesday will be an off day because I fly back on Monday afternoon and won't get home until Tuesday afternoon.