Oops..

OK... so apparently my calculations from the last route weren't very accurate. It seems now to be 4.2 miles or 6.7 kilometers. In fact, if it were the 3.8 miles I thought it was, that would be 6.11 kilometers rather than 4.8. I probably should have noticed that, but was so deep in a pit of despair that it eluded me.

On the negative side, I still can't actually run that route. One of the things that I found on veloroutes.com that was really interesting was that it actually will give you a "profile" of the elevation of your routes, which is pretty nice.
This, for example, is the profile for this route. I think the grade might be somewhat exaggerated, but you can probably guess what the hard part is. It's really really tough to run that continuously. But it also gives a nice way to visualize what part of the route is actually useful from the perspective of steady-state endurance. That's actually the first part along Voelkel St., which turns out to be a relatively low grade way of getting farther West. Maybe I should just run little laps on that leg. :)

I'm about done with the Long Now lectures that I've downloaded so far. The last one was by anthropologist Steven Lansing, and explored the complex adaptive systems dynamics of the Bali irrigation systems. It was a fascinating and somewhat demoralizing critique of the "5 year program" approach to resource management. Highly recommended! http://fora.tv/2006/02/13/J__Stephen_Lansing_A_Thousand_Years_in_Bali