Run 535 Average pace: 5:26/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 12:59 pm
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 54:29
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 18-21ºC
Humidity: 62%
Wind: light
BPM: 161
Weight: 155.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4169 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
I was having trouble with the plumbing so stayed home from work today. By early afternoon things seemed better enough to prompt me to do my run then instead of waiting until after dinner.
I reluctantly shaved my chest after Saturday’s run in order to make it easier/less painful to protect my strangely sensitive nipples. I covered each with a Band Aid before heading out because even though there was no rain in the forecast and it was warmer, I wasn’t taking a chance.
It proved unnecessary because a) it didn’t rain and b) it was warmer. Plus now the skin under the Band Aids is red after I removed them. Oh well. Maybe I’ll look into official Nipple Guards® or something in the future.
The sky was clouded over, which is nice for a run when the same clouds don’t empty a bunch of cold water on you. Less than a km into the run the sun started poking out and while it never got hot, the jump in temperature from 18-21ºC was noticeable.
I felt decent for the first half of the run, even peppy, but started feeling a bit tired on the second half as the temperature climbed and the sun did its thing. Annoyingly, they were doing more work on the trail near the now-absent 5K marker, forcing me to run across the field, which is lumpier than I’d expect for a sports field. Maybe I’m just used to running on gravel.
Looking at my splits, I got off to a sluggish start at 5:28/km but dashed along at 5:17/km for both the fourth and fifth km. Interestingly, the same thing happened on Saturday, when I was running counter-clockwise. I have no real explanation for this.
And speaking of detours, the sewer construction around the condo expanded today to the point where my three-block walk to Hume Park turned into a maze-like journey that added more than a km to my walk to Burnaby Lake. Never live near construction if you can help it, kids!
The slower pace meant my BPM was also down, to 161. Overall, it was still easily my second-best 10K of the year and with no other issues, a solid effort. Even better, I didn’t finish covered in mud and blood. Never finish a run covered in mud and blood, kids!
Run 534 Average pace: 5:21/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 10:52 am
Distance: 10.04 km
Time: 53:50
Weather: Rain
Temp: 14ºC
Humidity: 86%
Wind: light
BPM: 169
Weight: 156.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4159 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
The weather finally changed yesterday and today it changed even more, with lower temperatures, actual rain and the blessed end of the smoke haze (again).
I was curious to see how it would go with the different conditions, and it turned out to be very different.
And also mildly horrifying. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
It was 14ºC and showering steadily when I headed out and stayed that way before, during and after the run. The only change was sometimes during the run it would start to rain a little harder, then ease up. It’s the first time in months that I’ve run in rain from end to end.
My hands actually felt a bit cold by the time I got to the lake. It was weird.
A large walking group was assembled near the dam, their umbrellas jostling against each other. Fortunately they had just ended their damp jaunt so they weren’t an obstacle. A second group later on were actually parked out of the way at a trail intersection, being talked to by their presumed leader (“Glad we all brought umbrellas today, lol!”)
What surprised me, though, were the number of joggers out. The spitfire was out, as were plenty of others. Naturally a pair of tall, thin, supersonic jets were speeding along the first boardwalk (after I’d already dodged an umbrella-carrying couple). Fortunately they were so thin I slipped by without too much trouble.
More than any other recent run I felt genuinely energized. I never pushed to run fast, I just naturally gravitated to doing so. If I was sweating at all it was impossible to tell as I started the run thoroughly drenched. By the halfway point I stopped trying to dodge all of the shallow puddles and instead embraced them. When I got home I had mud and muck above my knees. And everywhere below them.
The energy level wasn’t all in my head as my pace was a relatively blazing 5:21/km–that’s a full 19 seconds better than Monday’s 10K and only five seconds off Thursday’s 5K. Yes, that’s how much my performance is affected by warmer temperatures. Who knows how fast I’d be running at the Arctic Circle. My BPM was also way up, to 169, not surprising as I was moving a lot faster and over a longer distance, but I felt surprisingly good throughout.
It was only on my walk back after that I noticed something wrong.
I have over the last few years developed strangely and highly sensitive nipples. Why, I don’t know. It’s annoying. What I do know is that if I run in the cold or in the rain (even a summer rain will leave your skin feeling cold), the nipples will start to ache. When I get home after such runs I need to let my skin temperature get closer to normal before having a shower or bath to avoid turning the ache into a glowing pain.
As I walked along the now-raging river, I could feel the nipples doing their thing. I looked down at my chest, as I do from time to time, and noticed a strange streak of dark orange (the shirt I was wearing today was orange). It looked like the fabric was bleeding color. I lifted the shirt to see if my skin was now stained the same color, but it looked fine. I kept looking up and noticed something strange and mildly horrifying.
My nipple was bleeding.
Both of my nipples was bleeding. The stains I was seeing were trails of blood. I was simultaneously grossed out and embarrassed.
There wasn’t anything to do, so I kept walking and tried to cover up the twin tracks of nipple bleeding as I passed by others. When I got home I doffed the shirt and confirmed the obvious. It was like I was lactating blood.
Grossbuckets.
I rinsed the shirt in cold water and presumably because it was fresh, the blood washed out with little effort. I then hit the web to be my own doctor and found that “runner nipples” are such a common thing that some running stores sell nipple guards to prevent what had happened to me.
What had happened to me? When my shirt got thoroughly-soaked it started to cling to my skin but the motion of running meant that the fabric continued to saw back and forth across my chest. This chafing action can cause the skin at the top of the nipples to break. When it breaks, it bleeds. Making it stop during a run is pretty much impossible, so preventative measures to avoid chafing are advised:
wear band aids over the nipples
wear those weird nipple guards
apply petroleum jelly or some other lubricant (presumably one that won’t stain and ruin your shirt)
wear a waterproof out layer
I suppose you could also try running topless. In fact, just after I crossed Still Creek bridge I saw three guys who, judging from their stances, had just finished a run. They were young and chiselled and none of them had bleeding nipples so I hated them a little. Actually, my nipples weren’t bleeding at the time, but I hated them, anyway.
I’ll probably try band aids and see if they work. I’ll have to do some shaving as I have a hairy chest. Curse my hair and nipples, I say.
The trail itself was mostly fine for the first half of the run but a puddle-palooza in the second half. I did see one change–near the 5K marker they’ve piled on another layer of gravel, further elevating that stretch of the trail. The 5K marker was also missing, possibly buried under all the new gravel. I am assuming they’ll continue with the bonus layer of gravel along that entire stretch. No flooding so far!
Despite the bloody chest and incessant rain, it was nice to have real energy and not feel slowed down by the weather for a change, so overall, a good run.
Run 533 Average pace: 5:16/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:51 pm
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 26:36
Weather: Smoke haze
Temp: 22ºC
Humidity: 72%
Wind: light
BPM: 149
Weight: 156.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4149 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
It turned out the forecast was sort of right for today’s run. It was 22ºC and cloudy–but most of the cloud was actually the return of the smoke haze. Boo. It seems a little weaker this time, at least, so the air isn’t quite as stinky.
It was humid as all get-out, though, so no dry mouth but much wet everything else as I sweated like a well-oiled sweating machine.
I opted for a basic 5K tonight as I headed out later than planned and intended to find a comfortable pace. I somehow managed to fall into a cadence that felt nearly perfect, and felt very light on my feet as a result. I didn’t really push at all until the final km.
As a result, my pace was 5:16/km, only one second off my best for the year, and my BPM was a low 149. For much of the run I was even able to breathe through my nose. This doesn’t sound impressive to a non-runner, perhaps (“Duh, I breathe through my nose all the time!”) but try jogging hard for a few km with your mouth closed and see what happens.
No issues at all on the run and only a few people opted to hit the trail on this rather dreary-looking evening. The shadows are starting to get a little more ominous with the sun setting earlier.
Overall, a spiffy and pleasing effort, despite the grossbuckets conditions.
The bland cover of The Ways We End (at least of the ebook edition) is unfortunate because it may turn away potential readers and they would miss out on a terrific collection of stories by Ann Christy that depict apocalyptic scenarios that deviate from or subvert the usual zombies/nuclear war/alien invasion tropes. Even the author’s notes at the end of each story are a delight, conveying the infectious joy Christy had in both writing the stories and their reception.
All six stories are well worth reading and are best without spoilers, so here’s some quick takes, in order:
“A Cottage of Hunger” puts together a rules-following protagonist, her quite mad mother and a lost teenage girl in a world where the sun is permanently blotted out in the sky. It raises interesting questions on how far some people might go to preserve a sense of order, believing they are doing the right–the proper–thing.
“The Mergans” is a story set in the far future, where descendants of Earth have formed a galactic “Peace Force” that uses its military might to intervene in corrupted cultures of planets colonized from seed ships, mostly by blasting everything to smithereens. The particular culture in “The Mergans” is especially ghastly in its treatment of women, but its liberators may not be quite what they seem, either.
“The Mountains of Five” follows the journey of a 12-year old girl exiled from her village and forced to find her way through a dystopian landscape. I found this story particularly evocative, its spare prose perfectly capturing both the spirit of the titular girl, Five, and her dangerous journey. There is a twist ending of sorts, but the astute reader will likely see it coming. It doesn’t make the story any less effective, though.
“The Bridge.” As Christy notes, this is a quick little “spooky campfire” story and it works nicely for what it is, but it is the slightest of the stories collected here. Still, trolls.
“Rock or Shell” is a time travel story that hints at larger mysteries while never fully revealing them, leaving the reader with a sense that there is a lot more to this depiction of a mist-like realm where thought alone can send someone off into nothingness, erasing them from time and space. Dashes of humor lighten the constant undercurrent of tension.
“A Mother So Beautiful” is probably the darkest and most disturbing tale of the collection. It eschews the body horror of “The Mergans” in favor of telling the story of a sociopath whose mother attempts to stamp out aggression through genetics and achieves horrific success. Watching the world disintegrate from the eyes of a profoundly unstable person is something that will stay with you well after the story ends.
Overall, a fine collection of doom, where some hope or happy endings are (usually) at hand. Recommended.
Run 532 Average pace: 5:40/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 9:45 am
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 56:50
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 24-26ºC
Humidity: 55%
Wind: light
BPM: 160
Weight: 156.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 4144 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
It’s Labor Day so I went out and labored on a 10K run.
It was warmer than yesterday but my early start saved me from having to run in 30ºC+ temperatures. It was 24ºC at the start and 26ºC by the end of the run. It was also more humid so the sunny stretches found me sweating like some kind of machine designed for maximum sweating.
I didn’t experience any issues on this run, I was just generally a little slower, given the extra heat and humidity. My pace was 5:40/km, four seconds off Saturday, but consistent with the yuckier conditions.
The trail was fairly busy but unlike the last run there were no near-collisions. On the Cottonwood Trail I was humming along and doing fine in the shade of the canopy. The long version of “Disco Inferno” had just started playing (that song is long enough to last several km of running) when I felt a sudden catch in my throat. While grooving out I had swallowed a bug. Knowing a coughing fit was bound to ensue, I summoned up as much saliva as I could (sort of ew, sorry) and swallowed hard, twice. Better to just down the thing that try to spit it back out.
This did not work. Instead I started hacking fiercely and, strangely, I actually did manage to spit the bug out and was immediately fine after that.
I am uncertain if the bug survived. Sorry, bug!
The run went otherwise without incident, though the conditions were definitely eating away at my strength. I’ve been running just long enough in more seasonal temperatures that this Africa hot-stuff is throwing me off. It’s expected to last a few more days then the possibility of actual precipitation is in the forecast. I’m not running tomorrow and have a bike ride planned for Wednesday so my next run will likely be Thursday after work. The current forecast is calling for a pleasant high of 23ºC and cloudy skies. Good running weather!
Run 531 Average pace: 5:36/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 9:39 am
Distance: 10.04 km
Time: 56:14
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 20-25ºC
Humidity: 48%
Wind: light
BPM: 155
Weight: 156 pounds
Total distance to date: 4134 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
Given the forecast (Africa hot) I thought it might be prudent to start the run earlier in the morning and to run clockwise, as there is less canopy in the first half of the loop when running this way, meaning I would face it while it was a little cooler.
I was wise to follow this plan. It was already 20ºC when I started out and was up to 25ºC by the end of the run less than an hour later. You feel a five-degree change in temperature.
Fortunately, the humidity was low so it remained tolerable (though I did experience some dry mouth, something that hasn’t happened much this sticky, sweaty summer). I initially tried to moderate my pace after a week off from running 10Ks and indeed, I felt a stitch in my lower-left abdomen around the 8K mark. I eased up a bit and it went away fairly quickly.
I also had a weird déjà vu moment as I ran down the part of the Conifer Loop with the tree root that tripped me up last summer. At around 10:10 a.m. the sun was still low enough in the sky that it was slanting through the trees in such a way that it created a flickering effect in my peripheral vision. This, combined with the trail being cast in a dappled combination of bright and dark areas made it difficult to see what was actually coming up even right in front of me. It’s quite possible that if I was running on the same side of the trail as the tree root that I might have tripped on it again, even knowing where it was.
I did not run on the same side of the trail.
I ended up with a pace of 5:36/km, a little slower than my previous 10K, but consistent with the higher temperatures.
This is the Labour Day long weekend and it turns out that this year a lot of people wanted to spend the first morning of it at the lake, as the trail was replete with pedestrians, joggers and one horse.
But no cyclists, hooray!
However, the most annoying moment came when I approached the second boardwalk. The boardwalks only allow for two people to comfortably walk/jog beside each other and because they are elevated, it’s not possible to duck out of someone’s way. I got onto the boardwalk, which in the clockwise direction, has a corner right at the start, and was immediately confronted by a pair of joggers moving fairly swiftly. The one to my immediate left did nothing to make room for me. I had to nearly stop so I could shift and get out of the way to keep from falling off the boardwalk.
That jogger was:
selfish
careless
going to get attacked by a rabid goose, if there is such a thing as karma
Really, the pair should have been moving slower and running single file. It’s just common sense given the conditions imposed by the boardwalk. Anyway, it was weird to be annoyed by another jogger instead of a cyclist.
Despite the near-collision, it was still a good run overall and the new shoes were problem-free, so yay.
