Run 636 Average pace: 5:29/km Location: Brunette River trail Start: 6:18 pm Distance: 5.02 km Time: 27:32 Weather: High clouds, partly clear Temp: 17ºC Humidity: 69% Wind: light to nil BPM: 163 Weight: 166.6 pounds Total distance to date: 4765 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8 Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (125 km)
Three days after my first 10K run in over a year and a half and I set out on my first post-dinner 5K in awhile.
Although it was 17ºC it felt a bit cooler, another sign that fall is here. Running-wise, the temperature was fine, of course. The sun is also low enough now that even when it’s clear I don’t encounter it on the river trail past 6 p.m.
I started out unsure of how the run would go, then felt like I was hitting my stride later on before giving a good, final push in the final km.
While I encountered no issues (yay) the results–the first using my new Series 5 watch–were strangely all over the place (note that the GPS reading still comes from the phone, which remains my iPhone 8).
My overall pace was pretty good at 5:29/km and my BPM, while higher than the 10K, was still well under 170, coming in at 163. But the km to km pace was…weird.
First km: 5:25, about what I’d expect, coming in under the average, all fresh and zippy. Second km I drop to 5:32, which is not huge, but notable. Third km is 5:37, so another smaller drop–again, this is not unusual. But the fourth km my pace switches up to a blazing 5:11. I do not recall turning on the afterburners for the fourth km, so have no explanation for this, other than if I really was moving this fast, I must have felt pretty good while doing it.
The final km, where I deliberately started pushing harder, came in at…5:38, the slowest pace of all. Weirder still, at about 4.3 km in, I glanced at the watch and my current pace was 5:26–which in retrospect seems about right. Since I pushed after that, I am puzzled as to how that pace kept dropping all the way to 5:38.
In the end the overall pace was decent and seems about right, but the wildly shifting numbers are odd.
Overall, then, a good if somewhat baffling effort. There was still plenty of daylight left at the end of the run, though the stairs connecting Lower Hume Park to Hume Park were a bit gloomy. I suspect they will be gloomier still on Thursday when the sun will set within 15 minutes of the run being completed.
