A few things:
- Yes, I beat the rain again. Yay. It’s still not raining yet but if the forecast is accurate, it will start within the hour.
- I think something is up with either my Garmin watch or me. More below.
- I set a new 5K record on the Garmin watch. Yay. More below.
- Psychic music prediction: I was listening to a playlist on shuffle mode. It consists of 53 songs. It was wrapping up “Apparitions” by the Mathew Good Band and I predicted it would play “Sharp-dressed Man” by ZZ Top next–and it did!
I wore two layers, thinking it might be a bit of overkill for the run, but nice to have on the walk there and back. I was correct! And it wasn’t even overkill. There was very little sweating today and, despite minimal wind, it felt chilly in that, “Yep, it’s fall” sort of way.
Other than beating the rain, I had no specific plan going in, but I did have a concern. The HRV status tracked on my watch has plunged from Balanced to Low. In fact, it’s so low it’s almost as far to the left as it can get (which means no exercise/flabby, etc.). I missed two runs last week, but have remained fairly active and did a run Monday per usual, yet it seems to not be budging. Also, even stranger, the watch claims I had an average BPM of 68 on my 4 km walk to the lake before today’s run. This is basically impossible, unless my heart teleported out of my body for about a third of the walk. For reference, my heart rate is usually 110-115 on these walks.
For the run it was 145 BPM, which is low but not implausibly low (I’ve hit 147 on some recent runs), especially with favourable conditions. My performance rating 1 km in was also +7, which is very high, adding further confusion to my training status at the end being listed as “strained.”
In all, it’s disconcerting, but I think it’s more the watch–or Garmin–than me. In fact, this came up when I was checking stats on my phone:
Quite possibly unrelated, but still an interesting coincidence, if nothing else.
Back to today’s run: I decided, somewhat randomly, to start at the 10K marker and skip the side trails, as I would double back the same way post-run. I managed to improve on my pace each km and finished with an average of 5:32/km–and my best 5K since adopting my Garmin Forerunner 255 just under two years ago:
I believe the time is faster than what’s recorded in the stats below because it is capturing the exact 5 km, not the additional 0.04 km before I stop tracking the run. Or something like that. I don’t know how math works.
Right near the end of the run, I usually go straight off the bridge at Still Creek and do the small loop around, but today I had to cut left and stay on the main trail due to construction:
I’m not sure why they are digging up this strip of trail here, but you can see a new concrete culvert (?) in the shot below, which might be a clue. Alas, this does not seem to be part of a larger project to resurface the trail along the fields, though it badly needs the work.
Overall, I felt good, pushed but never felt I was pushing excessively, and put in a very solid mid-week performance, weird glitches and all.
Stats:
Run 978
Average pace: 5:32/km
Training status: Strained (?)
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:01 a.m.
Distance: 5.04 km
Time: 27:50
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 11-12°C
Humidity: 75-73%
Wind: light
BPM: 145
Weight: 165.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 6,720 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: ASICS Trabuco Terra 2 (315/674/989)
Music: Pop Stuff (playlist, on shuffle)
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