HDR Photo - Downtown Grand Rapids

I decided to take a bike ride and go downtown Grand Rapids and take some photos last night along Riverside park. I shot in raw format with Auto Bracketing with my Canon camera and used Photoshop CS 5 HDR processing. It was just before sunset around 8:45 pm last night, and after a rain, so colors are bit more vibrant after it rains. Here are pictures, you will have to click on the them as they don't look good in small format:

Reed's Lake Trail

Friday evening was a beautiful day in Grand Rapids, so I headed over to Reed's Lake in East Grand Rapids to run. The first time I ran this course the previous weekend I got a little lost and wasn't sure which road to take to make it all the way around back to my car. So I ended up going half way and returning the way I came. The roads can get tricky in between. So after consulting the trail map earlier this week, I was ready to do it again. The course all around is 4.3 miles. The trail actually consists of paved sidewalks, trails and roads. You pass by million dollar homes and many active people out and about. Here is just one of the amazing homes you pass by:
I just like to pretend I live in the neighborhood. Surely I would rather run outside here than on a boring treadmill for that long. The course proved to be a nice one with 2 big hills (had to stop and walk up one hill, quite steep as my heart rate was shooting through the roof). My time was 44:30 for 4.3 miles. Can't wait to do it again to improve on my time, but looks like we're going to have snow/rain this week. Bummer. Treadmill it is.

I am training for the Mighty Mac Bridge run on May 24th. It is a 5.3 run with a 5 degree incline the first half of the bridge. Here's what it may look like: