Worst Route Ever

Time: 81:36
Distance: 19.41 km
Pace: 4:12/km
Map

When I'm in Syracuse I usually run along the Erie Canal or on the roads near Fleet Feet Syracuse. I wanted to save a little time and didn't want to drive anywhere to run this morning so I opted to find a route on my iPad. It looked like I could make a loop in some neighborhoods or on roads near the airport which wasn't too far from my hotel. Somehow the map in my head didn't correlate to the actual roads because I ended up making the absolutely worst running route ever.

It was cold, windy, dangerous and ugly. I found myself running on a three lane highway against traffic during the morning rush hour directly into a 20 mph wind. If the conditions weren't bad enough, I was running dangerously close to the traffic that was speeding by at over 60 mph. I wasn't going to turn around as I didn't want to deal with the traffic so I ventured on hoping to make a loop. The airport was a bigger obstacle than I initially thought and around the hour mark I was in a Holiday Inn Express asking how far it was back to Carrier Circle. It was a bit disheartening when the receptionist said 6 miles when I was already at 8 miles, the distance I wanted my entire run to be.

Fortunately, the wind was at my back the final 20-25 minutes and I was able to cut the pace down to finish under 3:44/km. My 13 km run turned into a 19 km run on roads that are definitely not runner friendly. Now I know to stick to the Erie Canal when visiting SYR.