Run 2:11:00 [3] 26.0 km (5:02 / km)
A good honest Thursday morning effort and the longest midweek run I've done since last winter. Started from near work and headed out through Essendon (past my grandmother's place) as far as Avondale Heights before returning along the Maribyrnong, more or less. The main geographical feature of the run was the crossing of Steele Creek between Essendon and Avondale Heights, which seemed a much bigger hill when I was a kid than it does now - I think I just wasn't used to roads that went across steep valleys in straight lines. (It's probably 300 metres at 12%, or thereabouts). The run, on the whole, was pretty solid. Some left hip soreness in the middle but that had more or less gone by the end. Tired somewhat in the last half-hour.
Often from this starting point I would have headed out through Royal Park instead, but this morning might not have been a great time to be running around that vicinity as there was a breakout from the juvenile detention centre overnight. Turned out it wouldn't have been an issue as the escapees were (allegedly) otherwise engaged holding up a supermarket in Dandenong. They're at least a bit less incompetent than the would-be muggers in Sydney who failed to notice that the scene of their attempted mugging was right outside the Sydney ninja warrior academy. (I'm always partial to a good incompetent-criminal story, although I'm sure Constable Frogga's got some better ones that didn't make the press).
(And, as it turned out, avoiding the scene of a past crime took me straight past the venue of a future one - this afternoon's police shooting).