New Race and an Hour at Point Pleasant Park

So I haven't mentioned this, but I do some racing in my spare time. As much as I'd like to say I've done a bike race (other than an AlleyCat), it's hard to find any road races that are going on at any particular point in the year. I looked into it a couple weeks ago, and essentially, I've missed the road racing season. Drag.

But I've chosen my next race: the Harvest Marathon in Wolfville NS. I'll just be doing the half (21 km). I was on the fence about whether or not I'd start training for it this week or next. Luckily, some friends got me out of the house and we went over to Point Pleasant Park for a fun run.

PPP is a pretty nice little spot to get away from city streets, and get some fresh air. The jog itself however was a little slow. Only did about 4km, and the effort put into the run was probably a 3/10. Not a bad place to start I don't think though.

One feature of PPP is BlackRock Beach. If you value your life, do not swim at BlackRock Beach.

Unfortunately, the Halifax Harbor is world renown for it's unsanitary condition. This means the beach isn't open at any point. Halifax tried to address this issue last summer by making a sewage treatment plan. Things looked pretty good for a while. The beach opened for a couple weeks, and even the mayor jumped in for a swim. Later that night, it rained big-time. The storm-drains --all of which only empty in the Halifax Harbor through the new plant-- overloaded the sewage plant and the next day, after a week of being open, BlackRock was closed again. It hasn't opened since, as the plant is still fried from last year.

Now if I ran a site like www.fail.com, and gave out awards for ultimate failures for 2008, this one would definitely be in my top 5. I guess the plant itself consists of 3 or 4 big vats, none of which have lids. Also all the storm drains, which by my rationale should just empty in the harbor, in reality all connect to the plant. So I guess the boneheads that built the plant thought 3 or 4 large vats would serve over 200 000 people plus be able to absorb all the run-off from storm drains. The real footnote here is that it rains here every 3 or 4 days. So yeah. Only one word...

FAIL.