Run 405
Average pace: 5:25/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Distance: 10.01 km
Time: 54:21
Weather: Overcast, a little sun
Temp: 18-20ºC
Wind: light
BPM: 155
Stride: 180 strides/min
Weight: 155 pounds
Total distance to date: 3297
Device used: TomTom Runner Cardio
Today’s run promised to be exciting an ominous. The excitement would be from wearing new shoes, a shiny blue pair of Saucony Peregrine 5s. These are non-minimalist trail runners, though they have a fairly tiny drop of 4 mm (for non-runners this refers to the height difference between the heel and toes; minimalist shoes have a completely flat or 0 mm drop). The ominous part came from the weather forecast warning of possible downpours in the afternoon with pea-sized hail (!) being possible. I’ve run in hail before and am not a fan.
Luckily, despite some morning showers the worst that happened was a lot of cloud cover, with the sun poking through once in awhile. The temperature stayed low, ranging from 18-20ºC so it was pleasantly comfortable.
The new shoes presented two problems, one right away and the other about 3 km into the run. The first was the left foot started to hurt (not much, more just a “can feel it” sort of thing) as soon as I headed out. This evolved into it actually hurting proper around 5 km into the run itself. The second was the left shoelace (which I retied at home several times before heading out) coming untied less than 3 km in, a major fail and huge pet peeve of mine. Fortunately it remained tied for the rest of the run and the other shoe never came undone.
The laces are not braided so I either need to pay more attention when tying them before heading out or consider swapping in some braided laces or perhaps switch to some crazy space age technology to keep them from coming untied, like Krazy Glue.
The good news for the left foot being sore, such as it was, is that it didn’t keep getting worse, peaking almost immediately, and my overall pace was a virtual tie with my last 10K run (also when the weather was not that summer-like, oddly). My previous time of 54:19 minutes was exceeded by a mere two seconds today at 54:21 and the pace managed to get rounded up to 5:25/km, but realistically was unchanged from the earlier 10K’s 5:24/km.
Stamina-wise there were no issues, though the sore foot kept me from pushing. I suspect my time would have been better if my foot had been happier. It will be interesting to see if the new shoes break in or just break my foot. Outside of my left foot they otherwise felt comfortable and had solid traction, handy for dodging the occasional puddle from the morning shower.
I’m officially reserving judgment for now.
I am pleased that despite the foot I still equaled my previous effort, though. Excelsior!