Run 628 Average pace: 5:42/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 10:43 am Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:39 Weather: Cloudy, some sun Temp: 18-20ºC Humidity: 70% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 161 Weight: 163.3 pounds Total distance to date: 4720 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 2, iPhone 8 Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (75 km)
I was expecting to slow back down at the lake and I did, but I am still weirdly consistent, as my pace was 5:42/km, and the majority of runs at the lake (and some at the river) have been hovering right around this pace for some weeks now. I’ve peaked before but never so…precisely.
My tentative plan is to run counter-clockwise next time, even though it appears the side trail resurfacing still won’t be done (it is taking them a curiously long time). Speaking of, yesterday I scouted out the progress and took this photo where the Conifer and Spruce Loops intersect:
You may be thinking, “Why does a closed trail have so many footprints on it?” Given the erratic pattern, I’m assuming they’re from the workers actually spreading the gravel and not from trail rebels not letting little signs tell them where they can and can’t go.
Technically, one of the footprints is mine, as I tested to see how soft the surface is. It is very soft. I would not want to run on it.
But it looks like a lot of the Conifer Loop is done, with just some rolling remaining, while the Spruce Loop still needs some more top gravel placed and then rolled. Given the current pace of the work, I expect the side trails to re-open sometime next year. 😛
Okay, maybe next month.
And speaking of pace, back to today’s run, in which I nearly stepped on a snake (good thing they move so fast without having legs). I felt perfectly fine, though I did notice the knees a bit early on. They weren’t hurting, I just noticed them, but my mind wandered off soon enough. Unlike the river, I did not have a fourth km blitz today–my fastest km was the first, as is traditional (next was the final km. I want to say I pushed a little, but I’m not sure I did). I treated the whole run fairly casually, not looking for a great pace, just a steady one.
After the run, I walked/jogged a recovery km, then ran the next with a pace of 5:30, which was actually faster than all but the first km of the actual 5K, so I was clearly keeping things bottled up.
It was humid, so I sweated a bit, but clouds moved in mostly just for the run itself, then parted on the walk back, which suited me fine.
Overall, this run was more of the same. I’m curious to see if my times actually start shifting more in one direction or the other soon.
Oh, and the raccoon. I was walking along the river trail toward the lake, about halfway there, when a raccoon came out of the brush on the left, which is the river side. It saw me and froze. I mean, it did not move at all. It became a raccoon statue. I also chose to stop, though with a less statue-like aspect. I paused my run, as I was not sure how long it would take the raccoon to come out of its trance-like state. Finally I got tired of waiting and made a grand sweeping gesture to the right, telling the raccoon it was free to go.
And then it did, hurrying off into the brush on the other side of the trail. It was a little weird. Also, I accidentally ended my run instead of pausing it, so I had to start a new one. This made me think the Done button at the end of the stats of the workout should have another button that says something like Continue Workout, because the End and Pause buttons are next to each other and hitting End doesn’t offer any confirmation, the workout just stops. This would let people have an Oops button and keep the workout going. (The current UI is actually better than it used to be. Originally there were two buttons, Save and Cancel. Yes, you could finish a workout, then accidentally tap the Cancel button and nuke everything you had just done. Brilliant! You now have to go into the Activity app on the phone to delete specific workouts.)
