Paris of the Prairies

It was cold, snowing and icy out, but my run group strode confidently along tree-lined University Drive toward Saskatchewan Crescent. On the ground ahead were numerous snow-covered sheets of ice.

Since arriving in Saskatchewan I've had a few people ask me if I owned a pair of spikes--in my immensely ignorant knowledge base, I had no idea why the hell anyone would attach spikes to their shoes while running, but then I ran here.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is a city of less than 300,000 people. It is situated in the center of the province; and until recently, was considered the sunniest city in Canada (anyone who has *ever* driven west on College Drive at 6pm knows the unspeakable joy of being painfully blinded and unable to see ahead sans sunglasses).  Despite the sunshine, temperatures routinely descend to -30C in the winter (in fact, the windchill reached below -50 less than a few months ago).

It is here, in a city known for its sunlight, cold winters and bridges, that I'm training for my first marathon: the Queen City Marathon, to be held in Regina, SK on September 7th 2014.

Saskatoon is also called the Paris of the Prairies.  It's a beautiful city in a lot of ways, and quite an excellent city in which to run.  Not only do you get moderately warm summers (ie it's never too hot to run), but the frigid winter provides a unique running challenge for the dedicated runner.

At just under 500 meters (or 1640 ft), the air is noticeably thinner than at sea level (thus, providing a nice bit of altitude training for folks like myself). But it's the lack of chaos and constant traffic that make this a great city to train in.

On our run along University Drive, there are no cars operating, and this allows us to run in the street.

We cut left towards the river and then head for the Meewasin Trail, which runs along the river on both sides.  Once on the trail, it becomes apparent that the patches and sheets of black ice concealed under a blanket of fresh snow will be a cause for concern throughout today's run.

I relax, however, because something tells me that this is not my day to be horribly injured on a running trail.  For three others, however, it was.  

My running group was comprised of a dozen or so runners from the Saskatoon Road Runners Association who hold a weekly long run on Saturday mornings at 8:30am.  Today's long run, my first with the group, would be 16 kilometers (10 miles).  Since I had no idea how long the run would be, I ran the distance without refueling  during the run.  Yes, that happened, and I don't run more than 10k without refueling.

The SRRA runners were training for the Saskatchewan Half Marathon (run along with a full marathon, 10k and 5k) on May 25th.  I registered for the 5k race last December.  And so each Saturday they perform a long run at about a 5:30-5:45 per kilometer pace.

When we hit the home stretch and emerged from the trail to enter Spadina Crescent, snow started to fall heavier. Our meet-up place (the same each week) was Brainsport on Broadway Avenue.  As we neared the store, we passed another run group on the Broadway Bridge.  That felt kind of nice.

In future posts I'll talk more about the Meewasin trails, running in Saskatoon, and matter of running-related topics.