Today’s run was ugly.
Last night’s predicted big snow followed by rain didn’t happen in that the snow petered out quickly. By this morning it was completely gone, so I didn’t need to be concerned about running in piles of slush. Instead I faced this:
That’s the southeast corner where I enter the park and start my run. A long stretch along the northern part of the trail was similarly flooded, forcing me to run alongside it on the grass (which really isn’t so bad). The navigable parts of the trail were rather muddy, as my socks and sneakers will attest.
It was a relatively balmy 4ºC when I started out so I opted to wear only two layers (jacket + long sleeve shirt) and that was fine. I also chose to skip wearing my gloves, which was not so fine. My hands were numb by the end and even for the first few minutes in the shower the tops of them had this weird temperature inversion thing going on where the hot water hitting them felt very much cold. If I turned my palms up the water felt hot, as it should.
I probably walked as much yesterday as I had run on Sunday, if not more, which in retrospect was probably dumb. I should have rested my legs. This meant my calves were sore to start today and my initial pace was pretty sluggish. I didn’t force it, though. By the final few km I had my second wind and my legs were sufficiently limber that my pace improved remarkably.
For a long stretch I had all of China Creek Park to myself, save for the crows worming in the field and a parks board tractor blowing leaves off the path (and helpfully stopping each time I jogged by). At the 15 minute mark the rain started and by 20 minutes in had become a downpour. It eased off for about ten minutes then for the last 3 laps or so turned to a downpour again. There were occasional strong gusts blowing from the south/southeast, too. With about ten minutes to go another jogger showed up but I only ever saw him do a few stretching exercises. He seemed to have disappeared by the time I was leaving.
Results:
Total distance: 7.89 km
Average time/km: 5:45/km (slightly better than my 40 minute pace)
Best time/km: 5.21/km (full km), 4:43/km (final .89 km)
You can see how my pace really picked up toward the end — 4:43 for nearly a full km is a remarkable time for me for the end of a run and I really didn’t feel I was pushing at all, just moving at a comfortable pace.
I expect I will do a bit better after a few days of rest.
