Today I only ran 40% of the miles that Clay, David, Kyra and Sarah are probably still running.

I am in the Phoenix area for my sons wedding, but I had time to get up and go for a run. This is my second trip to the Phoenix area and I am impressed with their network of multi use paths. There are creeks (or flood control channels) going through town and they have built parks and pathways along most of them.

I started at my hotel, the La Quinta Inn, right next door to the Peoria Sports Complex. This is where the Mariners do their spring training. I ran about a mile down the road to get to the nearest river crossing. The entrance to the bike paths, from this bridge was not paved, but I found my way down to the bike path and started off in the North East direction. The first few miles were difficult. I was fighting that occasional dizziness that I get. I am thinking, by the way, that these occasional morning run difficulties depend on how poorly I ate the night before.  (Last night we took a bunch of people out to dinner at Red Robin – so a huge burger was not good morning running fuel.)

A few miles in I came to a fork in the rivers with paths going both ways upstream. I headed up the northern one. This path was along Skunk Creek. About 5 miles in there was a park where I could refill my water and use the restroom. About 6.6 miles into my run, this pathway ended. I debated continuing along the street path, but opted to head back to the fork in the path I had run through earlier. Whilst thinking about it, I took out my phone and took a couple pics:

I intentionally shot this with my shadow in the pic. Then I decided to take one with me in the picture, but I forgot I had the zoom on:

So I had to shoot one more:

I headed back to the fork and took the other path. I headed that way a few miles until it was time to head back to the hotel. As you can see from the chart below. After a few miles I felt better and things picked up. By the end it was starting to get pretty warm, but with some mental focus I was able to maintain and finish fairly strong.