If you have a look at this post from July 13th of last year you will see me list off my 14 least-favorite running conditions. I figure it’s time to update the list, so here we go. Changes are noted accordingly.
As before, the list is presented from least worst to just plain bad. The four options outside the top 10 aren’t really bad at all.
14. Overcast and light breeze. This is actually ideal conditions. It is usually never too cold or warm when the weather is like this.
13. Moderate wind. Moderate wind is fine. I have a cap that stays in place now.
12. Warm sun. Warm is no big thing. I’m talking about 20ºC or thereabouts.
11. Light rain. The only issue with light rain is that sometimes my iPod gets wet straight through my shorts’ pocket. If rain looks likely I put it in a plastic baggie.
10. Snow. I’ve only run once in light snow and it was fun. I’m thinking a foot of snow would probably be less so.
9. Cold rain. Cold rain means cold hands and if you wear gloves they need to be waterproof. Cold rain is never fun.
8. Hard rain. Getting soaked to the skin is kind of refreshing. Unfortunately if it’s raining hard, it’s almost always cold, too. Not so refreshing.
7. Extreme cold. I’ve run in sub-freezing conditions and been fine. I’m thinking Arctic tundra-type cold here.
6. Heavy wind. The resistance means you work a lot harder to achieve the same result and my cap has to be on tight enough to cut off circulation so it doesn’t fly away.
5. Hot sun. My body feels like a furnace and I’m left parched as all get-out. Dry mouth and lips are yucky. I’ve improved my stamina to where it has to be close to 30ºC to really affect me, though.
4. Hard rain and heavy wind. Likeliest weather to make me wonder to myself, ‘What was I thinking?’ when on the run.
3. Hot sun and heavy wind. Heat dries you out, the wind makes it harder to run and dries you out even more. Bleah. This combination is, however, very rare.
2. Hail. Getting pelted by little ice rocks is unpleasant! I’ve been caught in hail twice now and did not like it either time. Hail has moved from #7 to #2 on the list as a result.
And the worst weather to run in is:
1. Dogs. See here. I’ve had a dog knock me down while running. The weather has never done this.
Location: Burnaby Lake, CW
Distance: 11.7 km
Weather: Sunny, hot
Temp: 27ºC
Wind: light to moderate
Calories burned: 826
Total distance to date: 1546 km
Another rather warm day today so I opted to take the detour route and get the fully-exposed-to-the-cruel-yet-welcome-sun part out of the way up front. This seemed to work reasonably well.
I started the run feeling itchy as all get-out after yesterday’s misadventure exploring trails that don’t actually exist. I estimate at least 20 bug bites to go along with a number of minor lacerations from unkind plants. I was hoping the run would be a suitable distraction from this and it was!
I am still unable to sync data through the Nike+ website but have dispatched an e-mail calling for help (update: all missing run data has now been synced. Thanks, Pete from Nike!).
A big help with today’s run was a moderate but merciful breeze. It’s amazing what a little wind can do to help out on a hot day. I did not feel creaky starting out and in fact clocked my first km at a zippy 4:32/km. The shin also felt fine during the run and after. With the wind at my back I managed to lop four seconds off my previous pace. My body may be starting to get slightly used to the warmer temperatures. Woot.
I wanted to get some photos of the detour on my run route so today Jeff and headed out on a partial walk around Burnaby Lake, covering the south shore. The total distance was around 7 km and despite the temperature peaking at 30ºC it didn’t feel too hot thanks to a moderate breeze.
We started by walking from Production Way SkyTrain station to Cariboo Dam then headed to Still Creek, the approximate midway point of the lake trail. Normally we’d head out of the park and up a street to the Burnaby Lake/Sperling SkyTrain station but I had seen an unofficial trail just a little ways up where the Cottonwood Trail starts that looked like it would be a good shortcut — you can see the pedestrian walkway that’s near the station just beyond it. So we took it.
The trail quickly petered away and changed from a discernible path to ‘I knew I should have brought my machete’. The brambles and thick vegetation his stumps and other hazards, though the frequent prickly bushes were hard to miss. When we finally emerged onto the train track (fortunately there was no train parked on that section) we were bleeding, had bug bites and multiple welts from the prickly things. I was itchy as all get-out initially but the itchiness mercifully faded after a little while.
We agreed to not take that ‘route’ again — the same decision everyone else had made based on how quickly the trail came to an end. I’m not sure it was any faster, either.
Here’s one of the photos I took before we lacerated our legs. This is part of the detour I am taking on my runs now and as you can see the name Freeway Trail is apt.
It’s fun for running because there is absolutely no shade.
I recently wandered over to the official R.E.M. website for some reason and discovered that Peter Buck is working on a solo album due this fall. I suppose if any member of the band was to make a solo album he would be the likeliest since Michael Stipe and Mike Mills seemed almost relieved to not be making music after R.E.M disbanded. But maybe that was more an R.E.M. thing.
Regardless, the studio version of the first track from Buck’s album has been unveiled and it’s called ’10 Million BC’. The song has been aptly described as swamp rock, with an earthy sound distinct from R.E.M. Interestingly, Buck provides the lead vocal and it, too, is distinct from R.E.M. The low-pitched growl is something of an acquired taste but it suits the song. I’m looking forward to the full album when it comes out.
UPDATE, November 12, 2023: Proving nothing is eternal, all three originally-linked videos of the song got zapped over time. I have replaced all of them with the videos from their respective YouTube channels, so hopefully they don't go poof any time soon.
Roy Orbison recorded the song “I Drove All Night” in 1987 and five years later it was released as a single — three years after Cyndi Lauper released a cover version of it. A country band named Pinmonkey also recorded a cover in 2002 and finally Celine Dion released her own take in 2003.
I remember the Lauper version and was unaware at the time that it was a cover of an Orbison song. I liked the song enough to actually buy it as a single from iTunes. Since then I’ve listened to each version to compare and contrast, and see how each artist has interpreted the song.
First, we have the original:
Roy Orbison (1992)
The clips of Jason Priestley and Jennifer Connelly were apparently shot for the video, despite looking like movie clips. The attempt to put Orbison in the video by using concert footage from shortly before his death and covering up the fact that he’s not singing the actual song in question by layering on obscuring video effects is both creepy and ineffective.
But to the song itself, it’s fine and stands up well. I’d rate it as a lesser effort than the best tracks from his late career but it’s smooth and his voice is in fine form.
Celine Dion (2003)
This version is a bit odd in that it both calls back to the Orbison version, particularly with the ‘Uh huh, yeah’ part of the chorus, then goes off in a completely different and predictably jet-sleek direction as a Euro-style disco number. Dion’s vocals are soaring, as expected, though she manages to pull back when the song requires it. The ending kind of flails about limply, and the video suggests that Dion isn’t exactly taking the song seriously, what with mugging at the camera and such. This version is better than I would have expected, but it’s polished to such a high sheen it feels a bit sterile.
Cyndi Lauper (1989)
This is easily the most rocking version of the song and the only one where the percussion really snaps. Lauper fully invests in the song, belts it out, brings a sultriness that Dion lacks and in the video dances like a spaz, just as you’d hope and expect. The video also features the most arresting visuals of the three, with images of cars projected onto Lauper’s nude body. It all works well. It’s a shame this was Lauper’s last big hit, she was and is very talented and deserved more success.
Pinmonkey’s cover is a slick countrified take that sounds exactly like what you’d expect from that description. I don’t know that it adds anything to the song but I suppose it doesn’t take anything away from it, either. It’s basically inoffensive.
In order, then:
Cyndi Lauper: fun, sultry, nutty.
Roy Orbison: sturdy, smooth, solid.
Celine Dion: slick, clinical.
Pinkmonkey: Yep, that would be country, all right.
Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.03 km
Weather: Sunny, hazy sun, hot
Temp: 26-28ºC
Wind: light to none
Calories burned: 782
Total distance to date: 1534 km
Today it was summer for real, no foolin’. Temperatures started at 26ºC and peaked by the end of the run at 28ºC. There was little wind to offset the heat, though the sun was blunted slightly by a thin haze across the sky.
I decided to go counter-clockwise and just suffer through the exposed detour route at the end. I also skipped all three optional loops.
And it was very warm. I was sweating a little just on the walk to the lake. Once there it didn’t take long to feel like the energy was being sucked out of me, packaged up and shipped off elsewhere. I had to pause twice to catch a few seconds of rest, one time in particular because I felt like I was pushing too hard (somehow) and overheating. I did manage to finish with a pace of 4:58, though, so it seems that I have made enough of an adjustment to keep my times under 5 minutes even when it is Africa hot (for the Vancouver area).
I felt creaky at the start, with my right ankle feeling a little sore (I twisted it in a less-than-optimal way the other day) but after about the first km the kinks were worked out and both legs weren’t causing any notable problems — stamina was definitely the main barrier today.
The title of this post refers to the first time on a run this year that I’ve encountered multiple men with their shirts off and save for one they all looked like prime candidates for a nice burn given the very white skin they had exposed.
I also had two people ask me questions during the run. This has never happened before. The first question was from a possible fellow runner, though neither of us were running at the time (this was during my second brief pause). We were around the midway point of the detour and he wanted to know if the trail picked up again and I assured him it did. He seemed satisfied. But he kept walking. I resumed my run and a short time later a woman asked if I had seen a man with a beard wearing shorts. I said no and continued on, though I honestly didn’t know if I had seen such a person or not. I don’t pay close attention to the other people on the trail unless they a) get in my way b) do something unusual/stupid or c) are dressed so outrageously that they leave an image seared into your brain. If I did indeed pass by man in shirts with beard, he fit into none of these categories.
Note that some of the stats/splits are missing for this run because I am not attempting to upload any more runs until the one from Wednesday is restored. I did get through to Nike support and after a bit of back and forth have supplied all the info they need to manually add the run (or so I hope). I am a bit concerned because I was asked for my Nike+ user name as part of the info, did so and then was asked to supply it again in a later tweet. Which I did, again. It hadn’t changed in the meantime!
Since it looks to be warm for the next little while I may look into taking some water with me on the next bunch o’ runs. That should help a decent bit, I’d reckon.
Yes, I wore shorts today. Outside, even. I was worrying they would start to moulder in the chest drawer.
Update on the Nike sync issue: Doing a Google search for the Nike sync issue gave me a link to my own blog post complaining about the issue. How circular! Today the iPod successfully synced to the Nike+ website. Yay. But Wednesday’s run still didn’t show up anyway. Boo. My second Twitter message ever has been sent to Nike Support (yes, tech support over Twitter) and I am awaiting a reply but it appears the solution will likely be for me to provide the basics of the run after which they will manually update it for me, hopefully with all of the data intact (splits, etc.) The new Nike+ site is definitely much improved over the old one but it seems they are still having the same old problems with the back end of it. Bleah.
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.
Prometheus is the sort-of prequel to Alien. I say sort of because the events don’t lead directly into Alien but rather lay some of the groundwork for the series. Sort of. Unfortunately that groundwork is a shambles, hobbled by a muddled script and characters that serve as little more than vessels for plot devices. The saving grace, as one might expect of a Ridley Scott film, are the visuals. They are arresting and spectacular but ultimately provide nothing more than a gloss to a rather poorly-made movie.
Starting from the premise of disparate ancient civilizations all producing the same star map, Prometheus goes on to have billionaire Peter Weyland in the year 2093 launch a ‘trillion dollar’ space expedition (so I guess he’s actually a trillionaire) to find the ‘engineers’ that apparently seeded life on Earth and inspired the star maps of all the different ancient civilizations. The expedition features the titular space ship and a crew of 17 whose names are conveniently written across the front of their space helmets so the audience can remember who is who.
They arrive at LV-223, just a hop and skip over from the infamous LV-426, home of face huggers and other bad things but no one on the Prometheus knows anything about aliens with double mouths, acidic blood and a strong desire to kill all humans. They are on a mission of science! Except they actually aren’t because the infirm Weyland, who has faked his death for no apparent reason, is secretly onboard the ship and hopes the engineers will help save him from his old man disease or make him young again or something because if they could make humans, surely they can fix old man disease, right? Right.
Also onboard is Vickers, who is revealed late in the movie to be his daughter, as if it’s supposed to be a shocking moment. Her character is the alleged commander of the mission, though she seems hostile and indifferent to everyone and everything, possibly related to unspoken daddy issues. Her character is completely superfluous and unlikeable as a bonus. That she gets squashed by a rolling space ship would be considered a small payoff if it didn’t come so late in the film.
Naturally there is also an android, this time played by Michael Fassbender. He is the son Weyland never had or some nonsense like that. Mainly it seems like every Alien movie, even a sort-of prequel, needs an android so here is David. David might be described as a paranoid android, as he engages in a lot of quirky and vaguely (and sometimes overtly) menacing behavior. While Fassbender is interesting to watch, the character is a puzzle piece that is never explained, an Ash without motive.
After discovering artificial structures on the surface of LV-226 — by someone literally spotting them through a window on the Prometheus — the movie sets about with the worst science team in the history of forever exploring the mysteries therein. It starts with cool shots of ATVs scooting off of Prometheus and heading to the structures because there seems to be a rule that you can’t park your space ship close enough to just walk over. Maybe they were worried about getting a ticket.
The crack team begins its work. As they enter the structure the doctor guy notes that it has a breathable atmosphere (explanation: none). To prove it he laughs, takes off his helmet then laughs some more. When he doesn’t keel over dead everyone takes off their helmets. This is bad procedure for several reasons. Firstly, without knowing the source of the breathable atmosphere you also don’t know if the unknown source might suddenly cut off, leaving you to die within seconds from the otherwise deadly poisonous air. Secondly, with their helmets off it makes it that much harder to remember the character names.
After finding a room filled with vases that leak black goo that is probably alive, possibly sentient and very bad indeed, the crew returns to the ship. But no one notices that two of the crew have wandered off. One is a geologist who is ‘in it for the money’ and shows his contempt for the mission via a Mohawk haircut and piping weed through his space helmet. But he does have fancy probes that scoot through the alien structure and map its interior. Then he gets lost. The guy with the mapping probes.
Getting lost with him is the biologist. He goes back to the room filled with mysterious and seemingly alive black goo. When the goo resolves itself into a snake-like thing that rises out of the goo, the biologist does what any trained professional would do — he leans forward and tries to pet it like a kitten. He ends up being killed by the snake, which is pretty surprising! Didn’t see that coming.
Meanwhile the android infects a doctor onboard Prometheus with the goo for no given reason. The doctor starts to Go Bad but it’s okay because Vickers is there to ice (er) him with a flamethrower. Also the geologist, who got lost with the biologist, turns into a zombie but he gets taken out, too. Then Vickers sleeps with the ship’s captain. Or maybe that happened before. Anyway, the doctor also sleeps with his wife, whose name is SHAW because that is on her helmet. Shaw becomes pregnant with a babby except it was earlier revealed that she can’t get pregnant but now she is — HOW WEIRD IS THAT? She tears off into a room with an all-purpose medical pod and programs it to REMOVE THE BABBY. Except the medical pod is made for men only, kind of like Dr. Pepper or Irish Spring soap. Shaw is smarter than the machine, though, so she orders it to just cut open her stomach and yoink out whatever is in there (well, not her stomach, obviously, but whatever she might be ‘pregnant’ with). The machine complies and in loving detail pulls out a tentacled something or other that squirms about terrifically in the pincers that hold it. Shaw leaves after getting her stomach stapled and thanks to advanced 21st century drugs seems no worse the wear.
So, the black goo. It apparently is what creates or modifies life. The engineers abandoned the goo moon of LV-226 but left piles of their ships buried beneath its surface for some reason (the ships are the same as the one discovered at the start of Alien). They dress up in suits that explain the look of the famous Space Jockey from Alien. There are weird holographic ‘security camera’ projections that show these guys all fleeing in terror from something then dying somehow in a big pile. Why these holograms show them running but never reveal what they are running from is never explained. Maybe the tell-all hologram got corrupted by black goo. One of the engineers had his head cut off so the crew take this two thousand year old head back to the ship and somehow their medical machinery revives it and it explodes. SCIENCE.
All right, it seems they aren’t getting the answers they want here what with everyone dying and things exploding, but Weyland is not to be deterred. There is a single life sign being picked up by lost dead geologist’s probes and they find out that it’s an engineer in a stasis tube. David the android has been studying their language, which I guess did not evolve in any way over thousands of years, and speaks a few words of greeting to the engineer after they force him to wake up. The engineer rips David’s head off and kills everyone he can get his tremendously large albino hands on. This is what you call waking up in a bad mood. SHAW and VICKERS escape.
Back on the ship, the captain (who is not actually in charge of anything except for flying the ship) and two crew whose names I can’t recall because they never got helmets and only had a few lines each thinks it might be time to leave. The engineer thinks the same thing and jumps into the pilot seat of his Uterean craft. David the android tells Shaw, who escapes the alien ship, that the engineer is going to deliver some goo to Earth. Probably not a good thing for Earth. Shaw tells the captain the alien ship must be stopped but they are a team of SCIENCE , not the military so the best the captain can do is ram the Prometheus into the alien ship as it takes off. Which he does. Shaw and Vickers are scrabbling about on the surface as the alien ship comes crashing down in slow motion. Shaw leaps out of the way but Vickers forgets how physics works and as the alien ship rolls like a giant wheel toward her, she keeps running away from it in a straight line, hoping that somehow she will outrun it. She does not and gets smooshed.
Shaw goes back to the lifeboat/medical pod left behind and oh dear, that tentacled thing is now 50 times its original size and probably hungry. David the android’s head is still functional despite being removed from his body and landed conveniently close enough to a communication device. He contacts Shaw and warns her that the engineer is out and about. Sure enough he shows up and is very mad because they smashed his ride and he’ll show that woman what’s what. Shaw then introduces tentacled thing to the engineer and escapes again. The tentacled thing shoves a tentacle down the engineer’s throat in order to deliver a final shot SURPRISE.
Shaw and David the android’s head decide to commandeer another alien ship (remember, the moon is littered with them) and take off to the engineer’s home planet because, well, because.
THE END.
Okay, looking over this, I realize it’s more a plot summary than a review but in summarizing I am hoping to capture how inane, illogical and plain dumb the plot is. This is a movie trying to be deep, profound and meaningful and failing. And it fails because Alien was a neat horror movie set in space and trying to build it up into more was a bad idea in the first place. It also fails even when you strip away its metaphysical musings and simply take it as a horror/action movie because it is neither scary nor filled with satisfying action.
But yes, the visuals are great.
I give Prometheus 4 out of 10 Uterean ships and one of those is for the visual effects. Maybe two.
I recommend checking out this Broken forum thread on the movie for a rollercoaster ride of anticipation, disappointment, resignation and in a few odd cases, absolute love for what Ridley Scott hath wrought.
I’ve seen three movies this summer (I use the term ‘summer’ loosely) and as befits the season they are all typical blockbuster fare, although one tries hard (and fails) to be more than just a pretty picture.
The Avengers
There really isn’t much to say about The Avengers except that it achieves exactly what it sets out to do and does so with style and wit, thanks to a smart script and direction by Joss Whedon. The interplay of the various heroes and villains is spot-on, the quips are funny (even if they don’t always perfectly fit the character doing the quipping), the action is well-choreographed and remarkably easy to follow. This is an achievement in and of itself since so many action movies chop up the action into an incoherent series of quick cuts.
I give The Avengers 8 out of 10 Thor hammers.
Magic Mike
I hadn’t even heard of Steven Soderbergh’s latest film when I was asked to go see it. A film looking at the seedy side of male strippers? Sure, why not? As it turns out, this is an entirely decent look at a lifestyle that is often anything but. The titular Mike is played by Channing Tatum, whose name will forever sound backward to me. He’s a 30-something male stripper with dreams of striking out on his own as a custom furniture designer. To pay the bills he works a couple of other gigs, including the one where he takes off most of his clothes. The characters and dialogue both feel authentic. I especially liked the character of Brooke, Mike’s would-be girlfriend and sister to the troubled Adam. She spoke in a plain, honest way that worked really well. She was also very good at giving The Look, for both comedic and dramatic purposes.
Speaking of which, the film essentially starts as a comedy and grows progressively darker and more serious as Mike and Adam both start spiraling downward. The change in tone comes gradually and doesn’t feel forced so I didn’t have a problem with it. The ending (and by ending I mean the literal last minute of the film) felt strangely pat, almost like something out of a sitcom’s Very Special Episode. It didn’t feel wrong, exactly, it just didn’t fit with the way the film had been going. It was nice, though, and doesn’t appreciably detract from the experience.
With an engaging cast of characters (Matthew McConaughey is excellent as the strip club owner/performer) Magic Mike is an enjoyable slice of bare-cheeked life.
(The experience in the theater was further enhanced by a woman sitting to my left who gasped audibly every time some male flesh was revealed — which was frequently. Her shock/delight was quite cute. Not surprisingly the audience was mostly female.)
Location: Burnaby Lake, CCW
Distance: 11.52 km
Weather: Mainly cloudy, some light rain
Temp: 16ºC
Wind: light to none
Calories burned: 817
Total distance to date: 1511 km
Ran: Spruce and Conifer loops.
I was waiting and hoping that the light rain that was falling this afternoon would stop — and it did! But only after I started my run. Fortunately it was light so I had pretty much dried by the time I finished the run. With temperatures significantly cooler than Friday and a weekend of rest I was more energetic and able to maintain a steady pace more reliably. The left foot and shin also behaved enough to not be factors. This allowed me to clock my second best pace to date at 4:47/km as well as my fastest 5K at 23:16. I also passed 1500 km tracked, woo.
Near the start of the counter-clockwise run I had a Fitness Dude with armband iPod run past me. It happens, I’m not the fastest guy out there. I took two of the three optional trails, spotting him some extra distance. When I hit the Cottonwood Trail (which is a very long straight stretch) I spotted him a fair distance ahead of me. He disappeared where the trail turns back toward the lake and I did not see him again. At this point I assumed he stopped at 5K or was chased off my a wily coyote.
For the final km I found a reserve of energy and picked up my pace significantly. This was nice. Then I saw Fitness Dude coming out of the parking lot (basically the 10K point of the run), heading past me. I am now assuming that he was some kind of running robot with fully charged battery. Or maybe a clone.
In all, I was quite pleased by today’s effort. The cooler temperatures are definitely better for runs but it would still be kind of nice if summer showed up at some point.
