The unofficial first day of summer run with bonus odd ending

Average pace: 4:54/km

Location: Burnaby Lake, CW
Distance: 11.66 km
Weather: Mainly sunny, some cloud
Temp: 22ºC
Wind: light to none
Calories burned: 826
Total distance to date: 1523 km

Cool and damp. Sunny and warm. Cool and damp. Sunny and warm. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, MOTHER NATURE.

Today it was sunny and warm, with the temperature up to a relatively balmy 22ºC. I opted to run clockwise to get through the shade-free detour part of the route first. Once again, with the constant flipping between cooler and warmer days, the warmer ones are still harder to adjust to, but I finished with a decent pace of 4:54 so that’s not bad. I skipped all the optional loops as the second half of the run I was feeling tired and just wanted to drink any sort of cold liquid as soon as possible.

The left leg generally behaved itself, with the foot being a minor issue and the shin not hurting but after the run the entire lower left leg was a bit achy, mainly just the calf itself. Maybe this is from shifting my weight around because of the foot, as I’ve speculated before. It feels okay now, a few hours later.

I can’t break down my performance any further than the basic stats above because the Nike+ site is refusing to sync the data. Grr. I will update this post later when the sync works.

As for this being the unofficial first day of summer, see my previous post re: the Hume Park pool. Also if those wacky meteorologists are to be believed we are set for our first real stretch of sunny, warm weather. We shall see.

It may also be a full moon (edit: checked, negative) because just as I was about to exit the Brunette River trail onto East Columbia Street a guy on a bike motioned to me. I pulled out my earbuds and he proceeded to tell me this story about his youth, intermingled with current events in a random, stream-of-conscious sort of way. To the side of the trail there is a large clear space, sometimes occupied by park service vehicles but recently filled with a collection of boulders that are being stored for purposes unknown. They apparently sparked a recollection in this man of how he and some friends had moved the stones (other ones, I assume) to the river (he gestured behind him to the Brunette burbling away in the background) to create a pond for swimming. He further went on about how they would steal kegs of beer from the Labatt’s brewery over yonder because they’d just leave the back door of the place wide open. With kegs in hand and their little pool all that was left to do was ‘drink and bang girls’. It was great, he told me. I smiled politely.

He switched several times to the present and explained how a kid at the river had been hurt falling off a log so he took his axe and chopped some branches off the log or maybe he chopped the whole thing up. Anyway, all kids in the future would be safe. At this point I noticed that he still had the axe with him, attached to a strut on the bike. The entire handle was covered in duct tape because ‘it had broken’. He said he was a professional hatchet thrower and came down here to practice. Hopefully on non-human targets. He didn’t specify. He pointed to a still-fresh gash on his right leg as proof that he needed the practice. (My partner later confirmed that there is indeed a practice target for hatchet-throwing somewhere in the area.) The sight of the axe made me a little nervous. Was he going to demonstrate his technique or would he go on about the stones some more? Maybe the beer stealing? He asked if I’d been down to the river. I said no. He said it was a great place for kids (if they stay off the logs) and asked if I had any. I said no. He asked if I had any nephews or nieces and I said yes, but on the island. How many more questions was he going to ask?

By now I was starting to mull over excuses for leaving in a hurry. I didn’t have my phone so I couldn’t fake a call. I had just finished an 11.66 km run but what’s a few more hundred meters to get out of axe-throwing range? But then this man with the strange grin realized he had to get moving. He mounted the bike and started riding slowly in the same direction I was heading. I began walking behind, slowly. He picked up the pace and headed down the sidewalk, coming up to the crosswalk that I would normally take. Instead I waited for a break in traffic and scooted across the street ahead of the crosswalk. I watched the man and he wheeled past the pedestrian walk signal and kept going down the road. I would be heading into the park and a steep hill with concrete barrier and woods would separate us. I headed down into the park, he rode up the street and was gone from sight.

When I climbed up the wooden stairs to the upper half of the park he was waiting with the axe in his hands. Okay, it was actually just a bunch of kids playing in the pool. But he could have been there! I’m afraid of what my subconscious will do with this when I fall asleep tonight.

Anyway, it was a…different end to my usual run.

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