Compensating for Wind

(This is coming a bit late since our home internet mysteriously vanished on Sunday morning - just getting caught up.  Things may be a bit out of whack until Wednesday when a tech can come out to our house)

This week, JS and I switched our long run to Sunday to help me avoid an extra trip into the city over the weekend.  When I woke up the wind was howling around my house and the rain was smashing against the window. Hubby half woke up and mumbled "Sounds like a fun day for your run" before curling up in a ball and going back to sleep.

Ah well - I have a rain jacket now.

The plan was to meet at Edworthy Park for 16k and wrap it up with coffee at Angels.  A nice little change in scenery if nothing else.

Instead of heading toward Eau Claire - we started into the wind.  The rain, thankfully, had paused by that point.  Our destination?  Bowness Park. 

By the time we were 3k in, we were already talking about how much distance could be cut off to compensate for the effort against the wind.   It was like running while pushing against an invisible wall. Our guess was at least 2k.  It didn't help that my legs were already feeling like cement.  At least it wasn't cold out.

As we left Shouldice and crossed the bridge to Bow Crescent, we started to see signs of a race.   By the time we passed the 6k marker for the race, curiosity had won and we had to walk and look up the info.  Run Bowness was on - starting at 10.   At the rate we were going - we might even encounter them on the return trip.

It totally slipped my mind to even snap any pictures until we were at Bowness Park.   We tried to capture how high the river was in this one...you can't really see, but it is HIGH.  We wondered how far we would even be able to go.

As we turned, this message awaited us under the same bridge.  Another bad omen?

and, just like that,  not a kilometre later...WASHED OUT.  The path was under water.  There was also someone honking their horn repeatedly in there somewhere.  It sounded like a distress honk, but we had no way of getting to something we couldn't see.  Hopefully they got help if that was what they needed.

We backtracked to a different path, but the same fate awaited.

Then we decided to take a side trail to see how far we could go on that...
...not far apparently.

It was with that that we decided to turn around and head back, making up distance wherever we could.  But then there was another warning sign...we were beginning to think we were trapped in a fantasy novel!

It was time to just wrap this run up.  Then the rain started.  So we donned our rain jackets and plowed forth to the finish.   As we were coming out of Shouldice Park - there were a ton of evil geese with their babies.   Good thing I stood far back, because as I took this one - the momma hissed at me!!! (I hate geese almost as much as I hate blackbirds)
 

All in all - an uneventful, eventful run that was cut short.  Turns out the compensation for wind was 3k  :D  And warning to Calgary runners - Bowness Park is impassable.  The river is just too high.