The soccer ball hazard run

Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sunny, hazy cloud
Temp: 20ºC
Wind: breezy
Calories burned: 701
Average pace: 5:27/km
Total distance to date: 816 km

It seemed like half the people at the park today had soccer balls and many of them went shooting off in random directions, like the Whitecaps desperately trying to tie yet another game. Fortunately I was never in any real danger of getting bopped — this time. The oddest use of a soccer ball was probably on the slide in the playground area. The slide is enclosed in a tube and a young father was tossing the ball up the tube so it could shoot out the top. His son would then attempt to catch it below. A couple of kids later tried a variation on this where one kid sat inside the top of the tube. This did not work so well. It worked even less well when the other boy, wearing a ribcage t-shirt, started tossing handfuls of gravel up the tube instead of the soccer ball.

Kids are weird.

Speaking of weird, I saw one of the weirder things at the park. A large group were apparently filing some thing that involved copious numbers of beachballs being jettisoned down the large hill at the west end of the park (this was also the site of last summer’s waterslide) while running down dressed as wizards or possibly monks. They had big beards so I’m thinking wizards. Or possibly Moses and his clones. Several people were also wearing clown wigs. One rode down in a toy car and later observed that the driver-side door had opened, as if it was some kind of rule violation. I never did get exactly what the whole thing was about. A jogger ahead of me came closest to getting caught as they all barreled down the hill.

As for the run itself, I had decided to take it slow and steady due to my right ankle feeling a little tender after the last run. The good news is the ankle came through fine. My left knee complained a little but it, too, is fine now. The baqd news is I had my worst 10K time since resuming them. I started out well and then had a 5-second drop off by the 3rd km. I had another 4-second drop off at the 6 km mark and these combined to give me a mediocre pace of 5:27/km. Still, it was sunny for most of the run and I had that mini-furnace thing going for a good portion of it, so the time isn’t awful. And Joan spotted me another bonus 500 km. Thanks, Joan!

Chart (blue indicates the run was done clockwise):

km Jun 26 Jun 23 Jun 21 Jun 18 Jun 16 Jun 13
1 km 4:59 4:59 5:00 4:53 5:05 5:02
2 km 5:05 5:05 5:04 5:01 5:09 5:07
3 km 5:10 5:09 5:07 5:04 5:13 5:10
4 km 5:13 5:12 5:11 5:09 5:16 5:14
5 km 5:15 5:15 5:14 5:13 5:19 5:18
6 km 5:19 5:15 5:15 5:20
7 km 5:21 5:17 5:18 5:21
8 km 5:23 5:19 5:21 5:22
9 km 5:25 5:20 5:23 5:24
10 km 5:27 5:21 5:24 5:25