Run 465: Tired? Faster!

Run 465
Average pace: 5:07/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 5:04 km
Time: 25:52
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 17ºC
Wind: moderate
BPM: 156
Stride: n/a
Weight: 155.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 3710 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

Tonight I felt a bit droopy heading out. In fact, I didn’t really want to run at all. But I did and a strange thing happened.

I felt pretty good. I felt rather zippy.

Without any issues nagging me, I maintained a solid pace and finished by tying my best 5K pace this year, 5:07/km. Oddly, the time of the run, 25:52 minutes, is not only a numerical palindrome, it exactly matches the time of my 5K on September 13, exactly one week ago. That is some spooky consistency.

I changed up the route once more tonight, wanting to again avoid having to double back. I ran past the river trail, turned north up Cariboo Road to the train crossing, then turned and came back (in large part due to the fact that there was an actual train crossing), headed to the start of the trail, then continued on across North Road and into Lower Hume Park. I hit the 5K mark just shy of the stairs leading into Hume Park (the upper part). This is cutting it close because stairs means no more trail and the running part gets a lot trickier.

The wind was a bit stronger than usual tonight, which was kind of nice, and the sun is now low enough that it only pokes through some of the lower tree branches. This is also nice because running while the sun is shining directly into your eyes is sub-optimal.

Overall this was a surprisingly good effort. The only down note was noticing how many trees have leaves that are starting to turn. We are on the cusp of fall (two days away), increasingly shorter days and the end of being able to run after work without developing some kind of amazing night vision (the sun set at 7:12 tonight, about fifteen minutes after I finished the run). I haven’t figured out how I will deal with this because my usual solution has been injury so I don’t run at all in the winter, but if I stay healthy I may just need a plan.

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