Nick's Jog Blog: Of highways and wearing pants

Running on the shoulder of a busy highway is kind of like wearing pants.

Sometimes you are obliged to do it, even though the alternative seems so much better. I try to avoid both at any cost if possible. Instead of having “no pants Fridays” like a lot of workplaces do these days (or was that casual Fridays? I can’t remember, I only lasted til Friday at my last job for some reason) I have been unsuccessfully trying to incorporate no pants month into my apartment. Not only because my girlfriend is a smoke show, but because then it’d be like Friday every single day of the month!

This morning I nearly had to bite the bullet and just do it (run on the highway that is, I haven’t worn pants since I got home). Last night I decided I would make todays run from Goderich to Clinton, and snagged a lift as Michelle drove to work this morning. Along the highway, the two towns are about 19kms away. That’s a decent run in itself, but choosing the direct route I was not only afraid of getting hit by a truck full of pigs or cement or something I was also afraid of falling asleep due to monotony (which is not a good thing to do in zero degree temperatures on the side of a boring highway).

I’ve always had a hate-hate relationship with highways, ever since spending days and days on the never-ending Hume Highway (the dirty dirty Hume if you will). Sometimes there’s great views, or a reason to run along a highway from time to time for sure, but with a countless line of cars whizzing by your ear as you try and have a nice run is a buzzkill, and I try to avoid them at all costs. I’d rather be out in the bush, or along the beach, or rural roads, with as little distraction as possible-running is meant to be fun after all. I’m a fan of the saying “it’s my way or the highway”, not because I’m some stubborn bad-ass or anything (well I’m that too), just because highways suck!

I found an alternative, if only I was willing to up my run distance from 19km to 28km. Deal! Instead of following the direct and busy highway heading southeast the whole time, I could stay on the back roads. In these rural farmland parts of south western Ontario, the vast majority of roads are in a grid, either heading north-south, or east-west (more or less). The roads intersect each other at exactly every 1.25 miles. When referring to where someone lives, let’s say, Billy, it’s normal for you to hear “Billy’s house is on the next mile-and-a-quarter”. Or “go for two mile-and-a-quarters and turn left and you’ll get to Billys”. Normal that is, unless Billy doesn’t actually live there…then you’ve been led on a wild goose chase and your friends are jerks for giving you false information. It works out nicely doing the maths, because 1.25 miles is bang on 2kms, so doing a loop of a country block will net you an 8km run. Going an extra mile-and-a-quarter up before looping, will be a 12km run. Nice for maths, but not nice for mental stimulation.

Anyway, the main highway from Goderich to Clinton is one of those few roads that buck the trend and slices its own unique diagonal path right through the boring grid of rural roads. This meant that if I was to avoid the highway, yet travel in its south-easterly direction, my path would be south for 1.25 miles, then east for 1.25 miles, then south for 1.25 miles, then east for 1.25 miles, etc etc. all the way home, which in itself is a little bit boring…but at least I was less likely to end up as roadkill, and if I was it would be from a tractor or Combine, rather than a truck, which would be a cooler engraving on my epitaph.

While in the freezing cold at 8am this morning, I might have temporarily thought differently, but now, sitting in the comfort of my pantless home, it was definitely worth adding 9km to my morning run.