There's Something Green in that Sea of Red*

I had a Chicken vs Egg question at the start of my run Tuesday night: Do I eat cake because I run, or do I run because I eat cake? (And yes, I may have been eating this while running with a big piece of undigested cake sitting in my stomach. It's called grocery shopping when you're hungry!).

Or maybe it's like they teach in high school science: correlation does not equal causation.
[I have deleted all snarly comments I initially made here as this is a blog about running slowly...not about politics!]

Regardless the philosophical answer, I ate cake and I went for a run in the same day. I could tell you from past - and likely future - experience that this is not a good idea!

My initial plan was 1k warm-up, 5k tempo, 1k cool down. I couldn't shake the stitch in my side for the entire warm-up, so I knew things wouldn't go well. 500m into my "tempo", I realized I was being stupid as I struggled to fight the pain of the stitch in order to keep my theoretical tempo pace.
So I slowed down and went by effort, not numbers.

At the 2k mark, things got super interesting super fast. I discovered a newly opened pathway near my house! It's a gorgeous river pathway that was closed all last summer. I don't know when it opened, but I got to explore it today.

I did the full loop, curious to see what the distance would be (good for future reference, after all!). The way back took me past the Saddledome. At 7pm. With the Flames having a home game tonight in the playoffs. Yes, I did think it through before I looped around through the grounds. In all honesty, I was curious not just to measure the distance of the loop, but also to see the tailgate parties going on.

In my bright green racing cap - yes, I'm sure you all know the one by now! - I ran past all the people walking to the game. I ran past the vendors, and the music, and the food carts. And then I passed through that centre point and things started to get a bit more complicated, as I was moving decidedly against the foot traffic.

I felt like a small green fish swimming against a sea of slow-moving salmon. But eventually I swam away from the crowd altogether and back to my little fish-nest.

Total distance: 7.2km


*For my non-Calgary friends who don't get this reference, the "Sea of Red" or "Red Mile" is the nickname when the Calgary Flames (hockey team) are playing in the playoffs and everyone dresses up in hockey jerseys (or Where's Waldo costumes) in support on game nights.