Saturday, 7 November 2009

Josie's 16 mile canal run

Myself and Josie went out for a nice run in finally some nice weather today. Josie wanted to do a 16 miler which took in the Leeds and Liverpool canal.
So to help her out I went onto the WALKJOGRUN site where you can design routes. I started from where she lives in Menston and did the loop around back up through Spring Woods from Esholt and then towards Menston. This worked out about ten miles so I added a three mile out and back to add another six. We both arranged to run from our places which about 3.5miles both ways.
Amazingly she arrived at our starting point at Tong just as I arrived so we got straight into it. I started my GPS at this point because the watch wasn't picking up a signal earlier on.
Within a short while we were on the canal and running in the direction of Leeds. On the way out I pointed out to Josie our turn off point near Thackley railway tunnels.
Despite the heavy recent heavy rain it wasn't all that bad underfoot - which didn't stop me slipping over just as a running mate of mine passed me while on the floor! We reached our turn around point at the main road flyover between Rodley and Horsforth in good time.
We then made our way back towards the gap in the fence that leads towards part of the St Beds 5km series route around Esholt works. Then it was up Gill Lane and back up through Spring Woods for the long climb. We had been running out for a long time now and Josie was easing up a bit on the tricky climb. At the top she was soon upping her pace again through Guiseley. I stayed with her until Harry Ramsdens not far from Menston and then I turned back towards home which was another 5.5 miles at my pace to give my total of about 19 miles. Josie had another mile or two so she would have done nearly 17 miles? She looked very good all the way so her endurance is improving.
I will include a Garmin map of the route. Note that my Garmin signal was off until I turned off onto the canal.

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