Yesterday, since the weather was so nice (albeit a bit cold), I decided to go outdoors for my workouts this weekend. I set out to run this route, 2 miles starting from Running Room and going through the Glebe to the highway. I altered it a bit, though so that I went all the way to the end of 5th Avenue and onto the path along the Rideau Canal. I was quite cold for the first bit, but warmed up nicely after about 10 minutes. (It probably didn't help that I was wearing shorts.) It was clearly harder than running on the treadmill, because I can't tell how fast I'm going and probably tend to run faster than indoors, but it was really nice being out among so many other runners.
I enjoyed it so much that I decided to go out and do it this morning. This time, I mapped out my own route, doing an out-and-back through downtown that went around the National War Memorial and past the Canadian Parliament buildings. This turned out to be a more difficult route than yesterday, because of the rather steep hill at the start, and the longish uphill past the Parliament buildings on the way back. Even worse was that I hit the uphill right at the start of my second 3-minute run section. But, when you look across the street and see this statue:
it's easy to find some extra motivation.
I don't know how long I'll be able to keep running outside, since I don't plan on doing much when the snow and -30 days arrive, but it's such a nice change from the monotony of the treadmill that I'm going to try and keep doing these weekend runs whenever I can.
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