September was a pretty busy month of work travel for me. I was up in Boston for training right after Labor Day, and last week I was in Salt Lake City presenting at a conference of government web folks.


Boston skyline at night

One of the best parts about travel is that I get the chance to run in a new place. I'd been to Boston before, but my trip there this year happened to coincide with some really lovely running weather.

On my first morning there, I planned a run that started along the Charles River and looped me past the memorial for the Boston Marathon bombing victims.



Running down Boylston Street felt like a special experience since I'm slow and may never actually get to do it during the race. As I approached the marathon finish line, I stopped at each of the memorials to take some time to reflect. It's still hard to believe what happened in Boston that day. How you can be at a race to cheer on friends, family or complete strangers and how such a hateful act could shatter that sense of excitement and anticipation in minutes.

It was a somber run, but I was glad I made the time to see the memorial.

My second run in Boston I followed the river the whole time. It was a perfect morning, and it was the first time I ran four miles with no walk breaks in a really long time. It was such a positive run and left me in a good mood the rest of the day.



Salt Lake City was a completely different running experience for me. The city is about 4,000 feet above sea level, and I have never run at any sort of altitude before. I set out to do three miles on my first morning in town, and boy was it tough.

It was about a mile from my hotel to Temple Square, and I used that as an opportunity to take some pictures and stop and catch my breath.



The giant temple looked really majestic in the early morning sunlight.



I did a loop around the complex and then ran back down Main Street to my hotel. It was the perfect way to explore part of the city since I knew I'd be spending a lot of my time in the hotel conference center.



Utah is now another state I can add to the list of places I've run.

I don't have any more trips planned for a bit, but I loved the ability to explore new places this month.