Run 579: The longest run ever

Run 579
Average pace: 6:14/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 12:36 pm
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 31:21
Weather: Sun and cloud
Temp: 18-20ºC
Humidity: 44%
Wind: light
BPM: 168
Weight: 163.4 pounds
Total distance to date: 4480 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8

Or at least it felt like it.

I headed out again with two full days off, my first back-to-back(ish) runs in a long time. Usually when I do this my pace is faster on the second run because I am a tiny bit more in shape than the previous run.

That did not happen today.

I expected the knees to be sore from the start and they were. In fact, the 4 km walk to the lake seemed to stretch out way beyond 4 km, which was not a good sign. But it was warmer and semi-sunny, so I set off with slow-and-steady being the favored approach.

The first km was actually not that bad. I came in at 5:48/km, which is faster than the previous run. By the second km the wheels were wobbly, slipping to 6:12/km, a fair bit slower than the previous run.

And then the wheels came off. For the third and fourth km, my pace was 6:34 and 6:49/km. By this point my knees actually didn’t feel bad, but my stamina had packed up and left the country. The gas had been siphoned from the tank. Elvis had left the building.

I didn’t just feel slow today, I was slow. I plodded. I thought about pausing the run and walking for awhile. I thought about stopping at the 4K mark. As I neared the last stretch by the athletic fields every step felt like I was getting no closer. I looked at my distance. 4.84 km. Normally that’s a number I laugh at as I sail to the finish. Instead, it felt like it would not move. I keep looking, seeing it go up in horribly small increments. I finally heard the triumphant ding that signaled 5K completed and congratulated myself for still being upright.

My external monologue immediately after (and it was external, between gasps for oxygen) went something like this:

“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck, that was hard.”
“Fuck.”

I used my potty mouth quota for the entire month in the space of a few seconds.

In a final irony, the walk back went fairly briskly, with a rare sub-9 minute pace of 8:58/km, so neither knees nor stamina were an issue once I actually finished the run (or perhaps more accurately after the run finished me).

The higher temperature and sun likely played a factor. I sweated a small amount, which is more than I have for most of the spring. Still, the complete bottoming out was weird and a little disturbing. I even ran the “easier” side of the lake, going clockwise. It made no difference.

On the plus side, I didn’t stop early, I never switched to walking, and I actually picked up the pace in the final km, even if I felt a little like barfing those final few steps. On the neutral side my BPM was the same as last time–168–which is higher than I like, but still below the threshold of 170.

I am both curious and terrified at what the next run might be like.

Here are the splits with bonus commentary.

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