Nov 26th Deer Lake To Humber Village 36km

Nov 27th Humber Village  To 10km South Of George’s Lake  50.4km

Total For 26 Road Days = 1,126.3km

Both Nights Commuted Back To Pasadena As I Am The Guest Of  The Cochrane Family. I Commute Back To Finish Location To Continue.

Had a comfortable night in the truckers lounge last night. No truckers showed up. I guess they slept in their cabs. Was messing around on the computer till about 3am and then decided to take a chance on the ‘ do not sleep sign ‘ So I just rolled up on the coach and had  about 4 hours sleep.

I made my own breakfast this morning. I love the instant oatmeal they have here. Maple syrup, cinnamon etc, just add boiling water. We don’t have the instant type in Ireland, just microwaveable oatmeal. I would never order it in a restaurant as you just get one sparrow  portion size. This morning I put 4 sachets in my bowl along with banana. Hey its cheaper when you are in a truck stop convenience store.

Out on the road it was pretty windy. A little cold but nice.

My destination tonight is Pasadena only 23 km away. Too short really and I don’t really want to start running half days. I like to get in around a marathon for a day. I have run a few days in the 30′s when that’s were the services were. Have never been presented with a low 20′s till today.

I am staying with the Cochrane family. Stewart, his wife Bernie and their daughter Katheryn. When I met Stewart on the road yesterday I mentioned this  and asked that if I ran on for a few more km after Pascedena would he pick me up on the road and return me the next day. 

” No problem Tony, anything you need just tell us! ”

At the bottom of  a long steep hill 4 tree surgeons were having their morning break in their pickup on the hard shoulder. A boisterous one asked me where I was going. Mischievously I said, ” Dublin ”

Then he asked.. ” Where have you come from ? ”

So I said… ” Dublin…. But the long way… Around the world ”

” Have you nothing better to do? ” He asked.

I pushed on up the hill. Halfway up I saw another pickup from the same company with what looked like the lads foreman. For a joke I was tempted to say to the foreman..

” Have your lads nothing better to do than drink coffee and eat sandwiches! ”

But I didn’t.

Just over the top of that hill a Mountie cop came along. I was running in the hard shoulder on the left facing the oncoming traffic. The Mountie pulled up about 20 meters ahead of me on the right.

I thought to myself, here we go again someone is after phoning them to say I was running on the highway with a baby!

I  straightened up, untangled the Irish tricolour flag from the handlebars and got my best running style going. I didn’t look over at the Mountie but out of the corner of my eye I noticed that as soon as I got dead level with him on the opposite side of the road that he just made a 180 uturn and drove off.

A few km later I saw a sign for Subway restaurant on exit 12 to Pascedena. Subway is my favourite fast food restaurant. Thinking it was just off the highway I exited and ran about another 3 km there and back to the highway. I was a bit annoyed with myself as this extra distance doesn’t count and because of this I didn’t reach my planned stop of Steady Brook before Stewart came to pick me up in his car. I marked and photographed the finishing spot for a convenient and easy to find location for tomorrow.

On the way back to Pasadena, Stewart told me he was born in Scotland and his family moved to Newfoundland when he was 8 years old. He works as a geologist here. 

His young daughter Katheryn had answered my appeal on the Running Room forum looking for contacts here in Newfoundland.  She has been incredibly enthusiastic and helpful and has even arranged for her running club Corner Brook  AC to run with me for a while tomorrow

I am delighted about this as it will be a first for the World Jog. I was supposed to have groups run with me on other occasions but for one reason or another it never materialised.
Corner Brook is only a few kilometers away and is Newfoundland’s second city ( after St. John’s ) with a population of 35,000.

Back in the Cochrane house Stewart is giving me a hard time about the stench from my clothes… It’s a week since they were washed! I am not sure if he is teasing me or being honest!

We have a delicious dinner of a lovely big juicy steak  mash, veg and some of Katheryn’s delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Stewart tells me about a problem Newfoundland and Labrador are having with Quebec over a major power plant called Churchill Falls.

A few people have said this to me that it seems like Newfoundland and Labrador have been screwed by Quebec which supplied the cash and built the eco-friendly wind-powered electricity generating plant which is so huge that it provides power to the whole east coast of  North America and is New York’s main source of power. Quebec takes 95% of the profits for doing nothing now. Ok they did initially put up the money but the feeling here is that re-negotiation is long overdue.

It has just been announced that Newfoundland and Labrador are fighting back by building their own 6 billion dollar plant in Muscat. They will not take any business from Churchill Falls as apparently there is enough business for both of them.

I  ran the 6 km from my previous nights finishing point to meet the runners of  Corner Brook AC. I had a half loaded Nirvana, it was a joy to run so lightly.

I met about 8 members of Katheryn’s club in the parking lot of Tim Horton’s.

A lovely bunch of runners who  donated 65 dollars to the World Jog charity, AWARE.

We ran together for about 12k. The lads  were eager to push the buggy and I had no objections! The pace was a bit nifty but I just hung in there.

It started to drizzle rain. Later on I heard it was snowing in Ireland. I have just been managing to stay ahead of it here.

When it was time for the runners to depart one of them called Andrew had a strange request. He got me to autograph his Ipod with an indelible black marker he had brought!

Then I realized I forgot my water bottle but was saved by having my 1 lt thermos. So I made some tea  and tucked into the huge lunchpack that Bernie had prepared.

There was some beautiful scenery but absolutely no services in the further 32km I ran bringing my total for today to 50.4km.

Katheryn finished work in her running shoe job for Arthur James Clothing at 4pm and came out to pick me up. She reckoned I could get a discount on some running shoes. Problem was that by the time we would get there they would be closed.

So Katheryn phoned them and fair play to the two young lads there they stayed open an extra half hour to accommodate me. I bought two pairs at about 30% off. I don’t want to name shoe manafacturer as I have had no success in finding a shoe sponsor yet.

Back in the house I did a one hour telephone interview with a journalist for the Irish Times. He said it will be a big piece for the Saturday or Monday sports supplement around Christmas time.

Speaking of Christmas I expect to be somewhere in Maine, USA for the day. Unless I get an invite it will be a normal running day for me.

The World Jog is going to plan, I don’tlike the word schedule as it sounds too restrictive. My plan was always for about 1,100- 1,150km per month. Because my target finish date is 29th October I am counting each month to finish on the 29th and start on the 30th. I started on 25th but as I did not count the Dublin marathon and then I lost 5 days transit from my finishing point in Ireland to my starting point in North America. So, I am taking the liberty of adding the 4 extra  days to this first month of the run.

I always reckoned I would hit Nova Scotia in the beginning of December. I had the 2nd in my mind. It looks like I will be taking the ferry there on Wednesday night.

I met members of Corner Brook AC outside Tim Horton's

A nice change to run free without pushing!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 28th, 2010 at 12:55 am and is filed under jogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.