It’s my first regular follow-up run in about a hundred years, woo (meaning a run two days after the previous). The well-timed is in reference to carefully watching the forecast and heading out early in the afternoon after morning showers ended. Not only did I get to skip the rain, the trail was in pretty decent shape, other than the occasional easily navigated puddle.
I flipped the course today, doing another short loop, but going counter-clockwise this time. I shaved five seconds off my pace, which is not bad. BPM was a bit higher, but fine at 150. I definitely felt I was pushing harder than on Monday.
Likely because of the earlier rain, the trail was largely empty, though more people appeared toward the end of the run.
I didn’t experience any issues at all and a single layer would likely have sufficed, but I wanted two in case the showers came back while I was out and aboot.
In all, a fine mid-week effort. Friday is currently looking wet, so we’ll see if I can squeeze in another run between showers.
The view further west of the dam, post-run.
Stats:
Run 1,013 Average pace: 5:42/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop) Start: 1:18 p.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:38 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 10°C Humidity: 81-80% Wind: light BPM: 150 Weight: 169.7 pounds Total distance to date: 6,890 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (160/241/401)
Yesterday the provincial government announced it would be switching to permanent Daylight Saving Time–henceforth to be known as Pacific Time and that moving clocks forward an hour this coming weekend will be the last time British Columbians will do so.
I am both surprised and happy about this. Surprised because the government had taken the position of waiting for the western states to switch first, so the whole Pacific coast could be in sync. After years of waiting and nothing happening, I just assumed this was another promise that would never be fulfilled.
But then the BC government decided, six years after a survey indicated overwhelming support for the time change, to lead by example and hope others would follow. We join the Yukon, which made the switch two years ago.
Unsurprisingly, some people are unhappy and pretty much any discussion of the change will have these people popping up grousing about how we should have switched to permanent standard time, not daylight time, because that means more light in the morning rather than the evening. I get it. But please, just let people be happy and enjoy the moment (I stopped reading any discussions related to this).
For me, it’s great. Changing the clocks twice a year has always been awkward and weird, with little benefit to modern living, so I’m glad to see we’re getting rid of it. I prefer more light in the latter part of the day, even as I understand the arguments for having more in the morning. I’m counting this as a rare win for common sense in a year and time (ho ho) that seems largely devoid of it.
I opted to revert to a 5K run after three days off, to allow myself to warm up a bit before trying 10K again, but I will do 10K again soon™.
In the meantime I ran a short loop at the lake and it was downright spring-like, with a temperature of 11C, little wind and lots of sun. My stats were decent, but not earth-shattering, as my running schedule has been a tad erratic lately. Besides, it’s probably better to not shatter the earth, anyway. Still, BPM of 148 and a pace of 5:47/km is perfectly fine.
I also experienced no issues, though midway through the run I felt a bit tired–perhaps related to my “non-restorative” sleep last night. In any case, I picked up in the last few km.
Overall, a decent start to the week. The weather forecast suggest The Rains are about to return, but hopefully I can find a few patches of dry(ish) conditions to run during the rest of the week.
Brunette River, post-run.
Stats:
Run 1,012 Average pace: 5:47/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop) Start: 12:41 p.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:06 Weather: Sunny Temp: 11°C Humidity: 64-61% Wind: light BPM: 148 Weight: 170.3 pounds Total distance to date: 6,885 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (155/233/388)
Where: Surrey Bend Regional Park (Surrey), Brydon Lagoon (Langley), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam) Weather: Sunny, 9-10°C
With Reifel still weeks/months/eons away from re-opening, we decided to revisit a few places we hadn’t been to in some time, with some very mixed results.
The weather was consistently sunny and mild all day, which was a nice way to wrap up February.
Surrey Bend Regional Park
A lone piling on the Fraser River (it’s watery!)
I remembered this place having nice views of the river, but not a lot of birds, at least not the kind willing to show themselves.
Both memories were accurate. We heard and fleetingly saw a few birds, but I did not catch any photos of them. The river scenery was indeed nice, but I think this particular park is best left to the dog walkers and families enjoying barbecues in the picnic area, as the birding is rather…minimalist.
The sign at the entrance includes the phrase that also doubles as the title of this post. There is no denying the Fraser River is watery. There was quite a bit of it.
Brydon Lagoon
Visible in the background: The lagoon and large NO FUN sign.
This was an unexpected jackpot, with not only virtually every waterfowl we normally see in the Lower Mainland represented, but also a decent supply of songbirds and a couple of raptors thrown in for good measure.
The waterfowl ranged from Buffleheads to Common Mergansers and Goldeneyes, to a plethora of Mallards and a pair of Canada Geese that were not afraid to let you know when you invaded their personal space via a sudden loud honk, followed by death stare.
A large gathering of gulls in the central area of the lagoon (which is not really a lagoon, it’s a small lake or perhaps a pond with grand ambitions) were occasionally spooked by the appearance of a juvenile bald eagle. But then the eagle would fly off and land in a tree nearby–only to then be harassed by the same seagulls. Such is the circle of life.
A single coot was on hand, but without others, there was no coot drama to be had.
Songbirds included a few we rarely see, like a Yellow-rumped Warbler (I did not get a shot), as well as roving gangs of American Bushtits. I managed a few decent shots, which always feels like a major triumph with these spazzy little things.
We walked up a trail away from the lagoon and pondered exploring on through Hi-Knoll Park, which we did on our last visit, but elected to head elsewhere after not seeing much else away from the lagoon. Overall, though, this seems like a good sport to return to.
Tlahutum Regional Park
Mountains looming over Tlahutum.
We rounded off the afternoon at Tlahutum, but after seeing copious birds on the last visit, they seemed fewer this time, and most were farther back in the main pond, boo.
Nic suggested we go down the other trail we usually don’t take and this yielded some nice views of the mountains, the moon and while we did see some mergansers and wigeons in the waterways, it was tricky to get good shots due to angle/foliage and such.
But we got in a lot of steps, which will help boost our stamina for future birding. Yeah, that’s it.
In all, the birding was bad-great-meh, which is actually a perfectly cromulent average.
The Shots
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto.
A big boat and a baby boat
A piling out by itself on the Fraser River
American Coot cooting along
Female Bufflehead at Brydon Lagoon
Grabbing souls through its eye
A Common Merganser up close for a change
American Bushtit sitting still for 0.0001 seconds
A shiny Male Mallard
So very shiny
A Common Goldeneye cruising the lagoon
Jet-propelled Female Mallard
Seagull invoking strange gull ritual
Juvenile Bald Eagle sizing up the smaller birds at Brydon Lagoon
Mmm, suet
Mountains over Tlahutum
A male Ring-necked Duck
A male Scaup charging at the camera
A female Scaup gently gliding along the water
Back to a male Scaup in profile
Coquitlam River as golden hour approaches
A male Northern Shoveller
A possibly mated or soon-to-be-mated pair of Northern Shovellers shovelling together
A Song Sparrow doing what they do
A western painted turtle, basking on the same log with some Common Mergansers (out of frame to the right)
A Spotted Towhee, looking both serious and cray-cray
Male Wood Duck. "I'm ready for my extreme close-up."
A Black-capped Chickadee nabs a sunflower seed, which would be like me running around clutching a watermelon in my teeth.
I have a new PC. It’s mere months old, and yet already Windows 11 is bugging out and acting weird. Some examples:
The context menu you get by right-clicking will randomly switch between the new Windows 11 style and the older version used in Windows 10.
Snipping Tool will sometimes fail to open, producing a dialog to find another app in the Microsoft Store (trying again usually works).
Other random applications will just stop working, needing to be ended via Task Manager. The main culprit remains File Explorer, which will occasionally stop responding, even when opening a window with as few as two files in it. Sometimes it eventually recovers, sometimes it just needs a full restart.
General snappiness is already eroding as Windows does whatever it does to make everything slower.
Even the usually sturdy PowerToys sometimes has its tools fail to work (like Preview) until you recite the proper incantation.
Anyway, rather than just complaining, this may finally inspire me to move the drives from the old PC into the new one, and get a proper dual boot system going again. That way I can install Windows XP, a stable operating system.
Just kidding.
(Although it wasn’t bad once you had all three service packs and patches installed.)
I’m going to install some Linux distro. My short list is:
Linux Mint (I’m most familiar with it)
Kubuntu (because I like KDE Plasma and this is one of the more mainstream distros to use it)
??? A lot of others could go here. My bootable USB stick is ready.
Yesterday, I was down one pound for the month, then overnight I miraculously gained 1.4 pounds, putting me 0.4 pounds over. Such are the vagaries of the body.
But despite a not-great month, my weight and related stats were basically unchanged.
Toward the end of the month I stopped logging my food in MyFitnessPal, ending a 4,767-day streak. I switched to Cronometer but only kept with it for four days.
I am currently not tracking my food at all, except in my head. I may go back to formally tracking it, in particular to see if I’m hitting some key goals–not weight loss specifically. One of the things Cronometer does is it clearly lists the nutrients from your food against your daily goal for each right by what you’ve had to eat for the day and this revealed a significant protein deficit. I was only getting about half of the protein I needed.
Since seeing this, I’ve begun to place priority on getting more protein, because right now there’s a good chance that when I’m losing weight, it’s probably pretty evenly split between fat and muscle.
After a few weeks I’ll probably track my food again part-time and see how things look.
And I promise, no donuts!
Stats:
January 1, 2026: 169.4 pounds
Current: 170.4 pounds Year to date: Up one pound
February 1: 170.4 pounds February 28: 170.8 pounds (up 0.4 pounds)
Body fat: February 1: 26% February 28: 26% (up 0.3%)
Skeletal muscle mass: February 1: 31.0 kg February 28: 30.0 kg (down 0.1 kg)
View from Cariboo Dam: The water is uncharacteristically ripply.
Today’s run was notable for two things:
It was windy as heck, which is quite unusual for Burnaby Lake
I did my first 10K in over two years!
After doing the 7.5K run on Monday, I knew it would feel like a regression to go back to a 5K, and I was curious to see how a 10K would feel. The weather looked decent–8C and dry–so I headed to the lake and like Monday, started at a slower pace, heading clockwise, with the idea of a 10K in mind.
I knew by the time I approached the 5K mark (oddly, my slowest lap) I would keep going, so then it was a question of 7.5K or 10K. That got answered when I hit 8K and knew I’d keep going. I even had enough pep to offset my slow pace at the halfway mark.
The last time I did a 10K was on November 6, 2023 (Run 826). Weirdly, there is only a one-second difference in the average pace then vs. today, so I’m apparently pretty consistent.
I had no difficulty doing 10 km today. At no point did I start wishing the run was over or shift to WHY IS THIS RUN STILL HAPPENING GOD I WANT TO LAY DOWN. In fact, my stats were perfectly cromulent, with a faster pace than the 7.5K run and an average BPM of 151.
In all, I’m very pleased knowing I can still pull off 10 km.
The other notable part of today’s run was the wind. Burnaby Lake is usually pretty calm. It’s often dead calm, as the water at Still Creek illustrates. But not today. At one point near the start of the run I had to tug my cap down to keep it from getting blown off my head. Even though I only wore two layers again, it was still sufficient, even with the wind.
Overall, I am happy with today’s result. We’ll see if the legs/knees are also happy in a few days.
Still Creek, post-run: Not still!
Stats:
Run 1,011 Average pace: 5:56/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 10:30 a.m. Distance: 10 km Time: 59:30 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 8-9°C Humidity: 85-81% Wind: light to strong BPM: 151 Weight: 169.8 pounds Total distance to date: 6,880 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (150/225/375)
I somehow forgot what you call a piece of land that extends into water–a peninsula (duh), but searching for the term brought me to this site and the map showing all the different types of terrain and water types is information-dense in a good way, and just plain cute.
Also, it reminded me what an isthmus is, other than a word your tongue wants to twist.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Blue sky! (It didn’t last)
My last run was only 2.5 km, so to address the OCD of having my total run distance end in a decimal, I either had to do another 2.5 km or up the proverbial ante and do 7.5 km, which I haven’t done since June 25, 2025.
I chose to do the 7.5K. It went fine!
To make sure I’d have enough stamina, I set off at a deliberately slower pace and finished with an average of 6.01/km–so close to coming under the six-minute mark! My BPM was a bit higher, but despite being milder (7-8C), it was also breezier, so 151 seemed acceptable.
I didn’t experience any issues, though a stitch in my side threatened but didn’t fully materialize after the 5K mark. As a minor boost to my ego, I even passed another runner around 7 km in (she was running very slowly).
The trail was a bit damp after yesterday’s showers, but the newly resurfaced section along the sports fields is still holding up. The section past this, before you get to the rowing pavilion parking lot, is pretty floody and required a few dextrous leaps past some large puddles. Hopefully they resurface this bit soon.
Overall, a fine start to the week, and it’s nice to know I can push past 5K without any trouble (though I suspect my legs will be a bit stiff tomorrow).
Still Creek, post-run. The sun was hitting the area in a weird, focused way.
Stats:
Run 1,010 Average pace: 6:01/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 10:26 a.m. Distance: 7.5 km Time: 45:12 Weather: Clouds and sun Temp: 7-8°C Humidity: 83-79% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 151 Weight: 170.9 pounds Total distance to date: 6,880 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 265, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 15 (140/217/357)
Stoney Creek, just a few steps north of the SkyTrain line:
A shopping cart under a bridge, with graffiti. I did a little post-processing to make it more dramatic. Yes, you read that right. A dramatic shopping cart.
