Day 138 September 21, 2011 Sunshine Village, Banff to BC Border 62km

The morning began in the Safeway parking lot with the smell of freshly cooked bacon. Today was Russ’s last day and he had gotten up early and cooked a delicious breakfast of a gourmet omelet with ground beef, green peppers and cheese, along with a side of bacon.

It was incredibly cold again this morning, and I had multiple layers, gloves and my toque on to try and stay warm. It took a good three hours though before it warmed enough to start shedding some layers.

During the run today Duncan, one of the RCMP officers who escorted us through Medicine Hat pulled up behind us to say hi. Apparently he works all over Alberta and today they were having a big traffic blitz in the park with about 8 cars. Sure enough I spent most of the day being lapped by multiple police cars and seeing a number of cars pulled over and not only being ticketed but a number also being searched.

At one point during the day I was getting a little annoyed with myself because I was running downhill and yet I found it really hard to keep up a decent pace. I stopped for a break on the side of the road and Russ wandered out over to me with something to drink. As I was talking to him he informed me that I was in fact running uphill, not downhill and on closer inspection (placing the water bottle on the ground to see which way it rolled) he appeared to be right. Just to be sure though I asked the RCMP officer that stopped to see if we were all right. That made me feel a lot better about my pace, I was running up Magnetic Hill.

Russ wasn’t able to make it all the way to the BC border because he had to get back to work and so we were still about 10km from the border when his dad showed up to collect him. We took pictures in our Flames and Canucks jerseys and then he was on his way.

10km later after cresting a hill and listening to the opening of U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name the sign for BC came into view. One of the most beautiful sights I’ve had on this trip and just like that I was done with Alberta and into my 10^th and final province. Awesome!

After a short celebration and the remainder of today’s run we all drove back to Lake Louise to stay at the Lake Louise Inn, which a friend of ours had organized for us to stay in.

A quick dip in the pool, hot tub and steam room and a delicious pasta dinner and I now find myself in a very comfortable bed updating my blog.

Tomorrow I enter my final time zone and will hopefully make it to Golden.