Ottawa trails and tales

Another busy week and we find ourselves in downtown Ottawa for the weekend and most of the week. I'm on holiday until Thursday when I'll be attending a science conference for a few days across the river in Hull. Meanwhile, we're staying with my oldest son who is renting a house very close to the downtown core, in fact it's only about a 15 minute walk (or an 8minute jog) to the Parliament Hill.
Ottawa is Canada's capital city and has a ton of greenspace, bike paths and trails for biking, running and walking enthusiasts. I'm always trying to explore new areas every time I come here and should have brought my bike to use on the off days or just to be able to search out new places. When we're across the river, I'm planning to do some trails in the Gatineau Park area.
Here we are in a park just a few minutes away from Chris's on a walk right past the Russian Embassy. I was wondering about all the iron gates around the place when I'd run by it earlier in the day. We're playing a Swedish game called Kubb where you're basically throwing sticks and trying to knock down other sticks. It's more complicated than that but at our level, that's the basic strategy.

The other main reason for this trip, besides being a holiday was to deliver my youngest son to Carleton university. It will be a great new adventure and learning/growing experience for him that we're sure he's going to enjoy. The move into his room was very painless, with lots of help from orientation people all dressed up in pirate costumes which is the theme for Frosh week.
He has a nice room on the 4th floor and didn't take too long to get all setup.
The good bye's were hard but with his big brother close by, he'll be fine.
Since we're staying around for the week, we hope to get a 1st week report on Frosh week on Friday night, which will should be interesting.

Running? Yeah, still pounding away but only got 52 miles in last week in 5 days of running with
two zeroes due to a regular rest day and the 11 hour driving day to Ottawa. At least there was a good long run of 20 miles last week and a 1/2 decent cutdown run midweek where I dropped the pace over the run to near marathon pace. It's now looking like I'm going to have to re-assess my goals for the SJ and MDI marathons which are coming up fast. Just not enough quality miles in the log to justify any attempt for a fast marathon, which was my initial goal.

Time to go. Have a great week all!