17 miles + pedicure = bad idea??

So...today I had my 17 miles on tap and after my rather successful 8.6 miler yesterday I was feeling pretty good about it. In an effort to keep things interesting I brought my camera along for the ride so I could share some of the things that I get to see along the way. Unfortunately when you are running 17 miles you really want to get that 3.5 hours of running over as quickly as possible so didn't take nearly as many pictures as I could have.
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I started a couple of blocks to my office, hit the Bow River pathway and turned towards Eau Claire. The bridge to Prince's Island Park is just visible through the trees. I turn and cross over the bridge to run a short path through the park.

Here's a view just before you exit the park and join up with the pathway again. Tons of condos in the distance.
I follow the pathway along the river and shortly arrive at the 10th Street pedestrian bridge. You walk underneath the C-Train tracks. I love how this bridge looks. You'll probably see a bunch of bridge pictures from me as I really love how some of these bridges look. That is the civil engineer coming out in me I guess!I cross the river along the 14th street bridge which you can see behind me in the distance here. At this point the bike and pedestrian paths split, and the pedestrian path is really narrow.
Continuing further west along the pathway. I kept playing leapfrog with this group of runners out with their dogs for quite awhile.
The pathway is now approaching Edworthy park. I ran here a bunch over the summer and this is where the Calgary Roadrunners come to run their speedwork until they get chased indoors to the Olympic Oval by lack of light and cold weather.

This is one of my least favourite parts along the route - the section between Edworthy and Shouldice. The pathway ends and you run along a poorly kept road for a short distance.After passing through Shouldice you cross the Bow River along the John Hextall bridge. This is one of my favourite parts of the run. Up until a few years ago this bridge was actually used for car traffic until they built a wider bridge that you can see in the left of the picture.

After crossing the bridge the bike path follows this pretty uneven road for a ways. This was tough on the ol' feet and legs and I started to wonder why I didn't turn back and follow the paved pathway along the north side of the river. I only had 1.5 miles to run down it, and at the time it didn't seem like that long of a distance. Until I ran it.

8.5 miles - time to turn around!

Coming back somewhere around Edworthy you can see the effects of the cooler temperatures already.

A first glimpse of downtown off in the distance. I'm getting closer to the end!!

Crowchild Bridge, with the pedestrian pathway below. Now I'm getting really close. I told you there were a lot of pictures of bridges!

From this point up until 17 miles the camera didn't come out until I was all done. My legs were really starting to feel the mileage. It was like they were on autopilot - they kept moving although I didn't feel like I had a lot of control over them. Mentally I felt strong, but I was worried about stopping to walk as I feared my legs wouldn't get moving again. I had a final loop I had to run through Prince's Island Park and that was the longest mile of my life....ever!

This run was tough on another level from some of my other recent runs. Mentally I was there the whole time, ready and raring to finish those 17 miles. On other runs that qualified as stonkers I just wasn't feeling it that day. But this was exhausting and my legs were pooped by the time I was done. To top it off I got some wicked blisters - a large one on the arch of my right foot and another big one on the inside of my left heel. The one thing I can think of is I may have attempted too new of a shoe on such a long run. I'll need to get some more short mileage on my Kayanos before breaking them out for my 20 mi run to see if the problem continues. So much for my pedicure...my feet are slightly less pretty now...