While my life is nowhere near as busy1 as Ray Maker’s of DC Rainmaker Blog fame I happened to be out of town last week and managed to get a runaround in his style done.
I spent Tuesday to Thursday of last week in Düsseldorf for a conference on quality assurance. I arrived late on Monday evening and had a bit of time to spare on Tuesday morning. Thus I decided to get my legs moving and explore the city and its surrounding with my running shoes.Having only little experience with running in foreign cities I asked the very friendly receptionist for running routes. On hindsight I should have just checked Strava for popular segments around downtown Düsseldorf. I guess I would have found pretty much the same route she recommended.
Off I go
So out of the hotel I went and right across the river Rhine. The weather was overcast (whereas we had blue sky on Wednesday and Thursday, both of which I spent indoors …) so all the photo opportunities presented themselves rather gray.
On the other side of the river I turned upstream towards the Rheinknie-Bridge on a nice and flat path for cyclists and pedestrians. Not much traffic on a Tuesday morning except for the occasional runner exchanging nods as a greeting.
After a brief stop to capture these ancient lawn-mowers I crossed the river again, making my way towards the city. Since I didn’t know how many traffic lights my path would cross if I’d go right into downtown, I decided to stay at the river and head back towards the hotel.
I found myself back at the bridge where I initially started the run and was still missing a good 3km for my planned 13km run. Therefore I took the opportunity to run around the nearby “Rheinpark”, not knowing that
- The path around the park is exactly 3km long (perfect!)
- The path around the park is a local Strava Segment (sorry, guys!)
Trusting my instinct to find the way back to the hotel I wrapped up my morning run with 13.3km in 1h12’. Here's the route:
- at least travel-wise ↩