My 10K Walk Huge Photo Dump!

   My plan had been to run 5K today but I spent the day yesterday doing yardwork and it felt like every bone in my body ached today. The thought of jarring those same bones around by running was pretty intolerable.
   What I thought I could manage, however, was a long walk. As a bit of a trade-off, I figured that a 10K walk might take the the place if a 5K run, workout-wise. And it does, right...?

   So, because I was walking, I thought I would take some pics along the way. Anything that looked pic-worthy was fodder for my phone camera so there are a lot of pics, couple with my sometimes-whimsical commentary! On the plus side, you don't have to sit there and listen to me ramble on! So here we go!

My street. I love the trees!

Commissioners Road. Busy street but still lots of greenery.

Commissioners and Oxford. A busy intersection and I am on the wrong side of the street!

The McCormick Home, one of the best places for seniors in London. How
convenient, I won't even have to leave my neighbourhood!

Where the rich people live---I'm not even sure I'm allowed to be in the general area...

The Oxford Street extension bridge. It's all downhill, that's why I want to run it so bad!

This pic is a little out of order, it's the pond just before the bridge.

View of the Thames River, from the bridge. All sorts of
visions of my phone falling over the railing!

Had to make a choice here! Which path do you think I picked?! 

Sad part of the walk. A couple of months ago, a 19-year-old girl was killed
here in an early-morning accident. I drive by this every day.....

The VERY nondescript  entrance to the London Hunt and Country Club,
home of several high-profile gold tournaments. You need to be
very careful how you pronounce it....

The track at St. Thomas Aquinas high school. I kind of lust after it.

This was about halfway and I'd forgotten fuel. Thank goodness for the corner drugstore!

Used to live here!

Construction work. Because this is summer. In London.

Riverside Drive, one of the most scenic roadways in London.

Hmmmm...I wonder what goes on in there?

I started singing "Follow The Yellow Mark Road". In my head, though.

But don't follow it TOO closely or you'll get smucked by a car.

I love junk pics. Should have done this one in black and white

Obviously some lazy bastards around.

I don't remember being here! (but maybe that's because of the alcohol...)

The bridge into Byron, where I live. Byron used to be a small village
but then it got annexed by London. Great place to live!

Another view of the river, from the Byron bridge.

The sign, announcing I'm home! Well, apart from the kilometer and a half I still had to walk...

Did I mention it was summer? In London?

   So there you have it, thank you for viewing my huge dump! (giggle)
   Hopefully, the next time around, I'll actually have some running to tell you about!

So did you pick the correct path I took in Pic #9?
Leave your choice in a comment and I'll let you know!

Another "I'm Back" Post!

   Hi, it's been awhile since I've posted! Generally this means I have nothing to post about but this time around, it's more indicative of not having to have been able to access my own freakin' blog!
   I went to sign in a couple of weeks ago and got this message saying that I did not have permission to access that service and that I needed to contact my domain administrator (whoever that is). Multiple attempts at Googling my problem solved nothing and, to make a longer story shorter, what I eventually found out was that being signed in to my new work gmail account prevented me from signing in to Blogger at the same time. So I signed out of gmail and here I am!
   Okay, regardless of all that, it's not like I had a ton of running stuff to talk about anyway, the training's been extremely sporadic. I do however have a race re-cap!
   On July 11, I ran in the Summer Night 5K here in London. This is part of the London Honda Road Race series and is the fourth in a series of six this running season. The 5K was the only distance offered and there were a lot of people running.

Before the start

   The race was an out and back affair, beginning at the Barking Frog, a bar in downtown London. It was a beautiful evening for a race and the crowd was festive, right from the beginning.
   Doralyn and two of our boys, Callum and Quinlan, accompanied me downtown, saw me off and then did a little window shopping while I was running.

The crowd, milling around,
waiting for the start.

   The first half of the race was a gentle downhill which was kind of nice but meant, at the same time, the end of the race would be a not-so-gentle uphill and it was hard trying to forget that. Once again, I had started at the back of the pack but found that I was slowly passing people. Nevertheless, by the time we had reached the 2K mark we were already being greeted by runners coming back! Hey, no big deal except that they were kind of serious and there weren't too many acknowledging smiles as we were congratulating them!

   One of the runners passing me the other way was an old friend from the early seventies. Said hi to her as we passed but then I eventually ended up catching up to her after I made the turn. We chatted as we ran and then both of us ended up taking a walking break. I had sort of planned on a walking break about there but the chatting part of it kind of prolonged the walking and I actually ended up losing a little time. Nice chatting though!

   Pretty close to the end of the race, I notice another friend from both public and high school who was there volunteering. I called out to her, told her who I was, and kept on running. I had never seen her at any other race and wondered why exactly she was there. At the end of the race, it kind of dawned on me. The race was being run as part of a fundraiser for the Bereaved Families of Ontario and I remember running into this woman a few years ago in a grocery store who, as we were catching up, broke down into tears as she recounted her young son's drowning. Hence her involvement with the race. It was then I wished I'd stopped and had a few words, this will probably bother me for awhile.

Happy man at the finish line! They should hire my wife, she takes the best pics!

   Finally the race was over and I was pretty happy about that. Came in with a time of 37:41 which was right around anything I'd been doing in training. Should I have slowed down to chat? Yeah, sure, why not?!