A Rainy Run in Kyoto

OHAYO GOZAIMASU KYOTO!

I love this place. It's full of shrines, temples, history, alleyways, shops, hidden cafes, restaurants, and so, so much more that I don't even have words GAH!

We only had a small taste of the culture and history here yesterday, which will continue in force today despite the rain.

I started today with a run, with the ultimate goal to explore the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. I haven't run in about a month.

I didn't even get close to the Botanical Gardens. :)

I was huffing and puffing by the time I made it to the first major intersection, and by the time I got to Kamo River, I was soaked by the rain, and blisters were already forming on my toes. I'm a horrible excuse for a runner.

However, I got to run along this for a while:

It's even more beautiful in real life. I think I'm in love.

My stats:
2.13 miles
33 minutes
9.37 km/min pace

A Kangaroo-filled Run

Last week, Steven and I traveled to the heart of the Australian Outback: Uluru, The Olgas and King's Canyon (If you have no idea what these places are, think big red rocks and scrubby desert...and emus).

Our start off point was Alice Springs, a small town of around 20,000 people. The town exists basically to feed and house the tourist traffic that eventually trickles down to the big attractions of Uluru and King's Canyon about 4-6 hours down the highway.

As our B'nB hosts explained, Alice Springs is an overlooked attraction in and of itself! It's flanked by the MacDonnell Ranges, valleys and wildlife, and even pockets of rainforest in the middle of the outback. There are plenty of trails and walks around Alice Springs.

Our host recommended a short loop around the Telegraph Station park lands, which is both historic and incredibly Australian. The Telegraph Station is quite significant, as before it was constructed, the only way to communicate between Darwin up to the north and the rest of Australia down in the south was by messenger. HUMAN messenger! It would take weeks! The telegraph stations made communication happen within a day. However, the telegraph signal would die out over a couple hundred kilometers, so there are these historic telegraph stations basically spanning the entire outback.

Can you imagine being posted to a telegraph station in outback Australia? Desolate, isolated, oh, and kangaroo-filled!

I saw sooo many kangaroos on this run.

However, I felt like such a blundering monster through these beautiful, quiet morning trails, sliding up and down the rocky paths with my heavy footfalls, my liter of water sloshing around in my bottle, my heavy panting, etc. etc. I know I scared away so many more kangaroos than I saw because I saw one hopping away on the rocks with her joey in her mouth.

My stats:

Oh, and those "rivers" on the map above are actually all dry. They only fill up with sufficient rainfall, which may happen in 3 months, or 3 years. The desert is an amazing place!

Running along Perth's Swan River and Heirisson Island

Today was a beautiful day in Perth.

Steven and I did our tourist thing, which I will post more about later, and then went home around 3 for a break. I took that break to get my run in along Perth's beautiful Swan River, where we are told there are heaps of dolphins (but we've not spotted any yet!).

The riverside esplanade is a busy, paved bike, walk and run path that basically follows the river all along its shoreline. I ran towards Heirisson Island because I read in one of our tour books that there is a colony of wild grey kangaroos living there.

Yes.... KANGAROOS in the city!

It was easy enough to find it, but when I got there, I was stopped by this fence:

As I was moving along at a pretty good clip, I didn't want any kangaroos to come at me with both feet and knock me over. That would majorly ruin my perception of cute little kangaroos hopping around harmlessly. Plus, it would MAJORLY ruin my run. Anyway, so I didn't enter the kangaroo gated areas and took my run back to the riverside.

The Swan River path is basically a flat, straight line. No hills, no detours, no woody trails.

In short, absolutely NOTHING like the hilly, bushy terrain of North Sydney that I'm used to.

My splits were surprisingly fast:

I usually cover the same distance, up and down hills, in 45 or 50 minutes in North Sydney. While it was amazing to see the speed I could get on a flat road, I also got kind of bored of the scenery after the first 10 minutes. I haven't realized how lucky I was in Sydney to have the challenge of hills and the changes in landscape (residential roads to bush). I guess I've been spoiled by the trails.

Anyway, there are still plenty of areas in Perth I'd love to run. For instance, the biggest city park (bigger than Central Park in New York) is King's Park on the west side of the Central Business District. I'm sure it's a great running zone, so hopefully I'll be able to see it soon.