Karinsmiles

I’ll come back and put some words in but I wanted to get the photos up from my long canal run.

Bill between Hermiston and Ratho

Same run, same place

Almond Aqueduct

Almond Aqueduct

View from the aqueduct

From the time the big freeze got serious, I kept watching the canal, wondering if there was enough ice to run on it. The last time the canal froze hard enough to take pedestrians was about 20 years ago and for a couple of days we had skaters passing by our garden, but since then the temperature hasn’t dropped low enough or for long enough to create stable ice.
Saturday morning looked like the conditions were finally right. There were obvious adult footprints along the ice from the day before and tracks of long skate blades, so somebody else had braved it and survived. My eighteen year old son and I put on our boots, walked through the back garden and stepped onto the canal. It was initially a bit scary, but we got more confident as we walked along to the aqueduct, and I stopped hugging the edge and ventured into the middle.

middle of canal

Water of Leith aqueduct

We then negotiated the steps down to the Water of Leith walkway, pretty well on our backsides – Gordon had an elegant and effective sideways technique, mine was rather less dignified but still safer than trying to walk down – and from there I took these photos.

Icicle from the railway viaduct

Icicles from the runoff from the aqueduct

After we climbed back into the garden, I was desperate to get out and run along the canal, and I had the most fabulous run. I went along to the railway bridge at Kingsknowe in one direction and to Harrison Park in the other, coming off onto the towpath only at the bridges because the ice is much thinner there and not covered with an insulating snow layer.

Whether it was sensible to go on the canal is of course another matter and it’s certainly provoked lively debate among my colleagues. There were thousands of people out playing on ice all over the country this weekend without incident but of course a few people lost their lives doing exactly the same thing. I like to think I have a sense of adventure but I don’t consider myself foolhardy. Carpe diem I say!

When I ran into work on Tuesday 5th January there was a little bit of ice along the edges of the river but two days later the temperature had dropped a bit more and ice formed in the still pools above the weirs. I had to interrupt my run to take some photos and I arrived at work with a huge grin on my face.

Ice above the weir at Belford Bridge

Weir at Dean Village

Ice sculptures below the weir

The last week of the year brought more snow and lower temperatures to the east of Scotland, leaving Edinburgh pavements covered with a sheet of ice. It was difficult to walk on it let alone run on it and the canal towpath fared no better, so my last few runs of the Marcothon were little more than 3 miles each :

It started to snow while I was at work and, like kids in a classroom, we all lined up along the windows and watched it fall. The consensus was that it would be the usual ephemeral rubbish, pretty to watch but disappearing almost as soon as it touched the ground. In fact there wasn’t much snow lying in Stockbridge where I work when I left for the day, but there was a significant amount more round my home, which is a little bit higher up.

More fell over the next few days, enough to make it a hazard on the pavements, but running on the trails was still fine, in fact it’s mostly been fun. The snow was quite powdery but it packed down quite quickly with traffic from bikes, dog-walkers and other runners, enough to avoid the hard work and wet feet that comes with running in deep snow.

There’s just enough grip for me to feel confident but not enough for any real traction, so my feet land sure-footedly but then slide back a little bit preventing any push off for the next step. Since all of the trails are covered with this surface, your legs get very accustomed to it and it feels very odd when you hit one of the odd places without snow (one of my favourite paths goes through an old railway tunnel – I did consider running up there and then doing reps through the tunnel, but that would be speed-work, which I’ve so far managed to avoid this month).

It’s been very pretty as well, because the sub-zero temperatures have prevented the snow melting off the trees and hedges. One odd aspect has been that it’s seemed almost like daylight running along the canal in the dark. The snow relects any light there is from the nearby roads and houses and I’ve been able to run without a headtorch. On one night I even saw two foxes crossing the ice.

What I haven’t been able to do so far is get up into the Pentlands. I had to contract my Sunday long run last week because I was suffering from a heavy cold which made my chest feel tight and I struggled to run 6 miles. However Bill went out for a 20-mile run. He survived the deep snow round Castlelaw without incident but unfortunately fell on the icy path above Bonaly. He dislocated a finger and since the thought of him ‘quickly popping it back in place’ makes me squeamish, it’s probably fortunate that I never managed to take a photo that showed the resulting bruising in all its navy blue glory.

There’s been bit of a thaw during the day today and yesterday but most of the snow is still there and hasn’t even turned slushy. Hopefully tomorrow I can get up into real snow and a proper winter run. I’ll be on my own though because Bill now has my cold and is pausing between coughs only long enough to blow his nose