Run 492
Average pace: 5:34/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 6:39 pm
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 28:01
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 20ºC
Wind: strong with gusts
BPM: 164
Weight: 164.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 3850 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch, iPhone
Tree branches, to be exact. I’ll get to this shortly.
On Friday, May 12 I came down with a rather nasty cold. I have not run since then, a span of 11 days and a total of four runs missed. Sad trombone.
Today, mostly recovered if still a bit sniffly (or it could just be allergies) I headed out to renew my efforts. I was fully expecting to be slower and my pace of 5:34/km saw my expectation met. However, I was expecting something over 5:40 so I’m actually more pleased than anything. Despite the run feeling harder, my BPM was down.
And after a curiously, even strange, long weekend of sunny, warm weather, it continued today so it was very pleasant and mild.
Except for the wind.
A cold front is moving through to the Interior and is scouring the region with winds gusting up to 70 km/h. It was windy indeed on the run, though I only once caught a really good gust that threatened to whip my cap off. I screwed it down nice and snug and it stayed put.
What didn’t stay put were the million or so leaves, twigs, and branches strewn across the trail, so many that in several spots it was impossible to avoid stepping on them. I cleared a few before starting the run, the largest being a branch over 10 feet long and about as wide around as my upper arm. I may not have giant, bulging biceps but that’s still a branch big enough to ruin your day if it bopped you on the noggin. An entire tree came down near the western gate, landing alongside and partly on the trail. I wondered how safe it might be to run at all.
Fortunately, the ferocity of the wind eased up shortly after I started so I emerged without any wood-related injuries.
Here are a few of the smaller branches I saw on the trail. Multiply this by about a hundred or two and you have an idea of what the entire trail was like.
