Salt Lakes City Exploring

On a morning when you don't have to be anywhere tell 4 pm and it's 52 degrees outside there is no choice, but to go exploring at least a little. I have never gone running in Salt Lake City, so I looked at google maps, asked the lady at the front desk of the Red Lion I'm staying at to come up with a plan. I even ran into a fellow Ironman ( who looked a lot more Iron then I currently look) that confirmed I had a good idea for a 10 mile run.

10 miles is not that far and under similar conditions I had just done this a week earlier, but there are a few differences that I was not aware of at the time. Salt Lake City is at close to 5000 feet. I live at 1100 feet and did my 10 mile run at sea level. The second thing I had not considered was that it is very mountainous in Utah. With that said I headed out feeling ready to go exploring, 3 gels, two water flasks and my audio book ready to face the day. I initially went east to a road called state and north towards the capital with the intention to pick up a trail on 2nd street and run along it for roughly 3 miles. If I had just looked outside my window I would have seen that this was a downtown area and the trail I was headed towards lead at a steady incline up into mountains.

The city part is important to realize, because I had to stop at many traffic lights and wait for the walk symbol to clear me to proceed. This makes the early warmup period of your run very difficult to accomplish. There is beautiful architecture though to keep you distracted. Along the path to the capital on State street you get a great view of the mormon temple. I don't know much about it, but it looked like the equivalent of the vatican of the mormon faith when I ran by it. As you can see in the picture above, once I go to the path there was wonderful park areas, ponds, and wonderful recreational locations. This was really exciting to see, it would be wonderful to run along that kind of scenery for 4 more miles. This unfortunately was not what the run looked like.;

The above picture is more of what it looked like. I love running along a good dirt path as much as the next guy, but this was high difficulty. I found myself actually power walking portions due to the grade of the path. I have the itch to workout and all, but not to conquer steep hills at 5000 feet for 10 miles. My first thought was that if I have to run up it, then I also will get to run down it and thus all things equal out. My knowledge of how it actually works told me that I was really over simplifying the situation. I did this for about three quarters of a mile and had to find the adjoining road to make it easier.

The path was called freedom trail and next to it was a road that I believe was not used by cars, but more by park workers and those tending the grounds. I had finally found my path to go what I hoped would be 9 miles since it had already been so difficult I was going to decrease it a little. I looked at my watch and at 3 miles from the hotel I had just ran over a miles at a continual uphill grade, with some parts being very steep. It was very nice being amongst trees, on a well kept road, and temperatures that were perfect, but I also need to go fly airplanes this afternoon. When my watch told me 3.5 miles I decided to turnaround and call it a day. At home I could come home exhausted and veg, but not here.

The freedom trail seemed like if I had been better mentally prepared for it, that I would have had a great time. I will have to bid for another overnight here to give it a second try. On the way back (which was much easier going down hill the entire time) I decided to take a closer peak at the mormon temple. I even took a little run through the square and it being a Saturday in spring saw probably 10 different weddings going on at the temple. I got weird looks from the families all dressed up in tuxes and even considered acting like a dumb tourist running right into the temple grounds, but opted to head back to the Red Lion.

The run was 7 miles, I had to stop way too often for lights and would only recommend this run if you are able to spend a lot of time on the freedom trail portion of the path. At the hotel I finished with sets of 20 lunges and squats with my body weight as well as some core work. I'm off to San Diego, Las Vegas and Phoenix now with some days off at home to hit my more familiar runs. All in all it was a great first outing exploring Salt Lakes City running on a spring morning.