Today, I completed a 5K and officially reached 5,000 total km since I started running back in the olden days of 2009. That works out to about 384 km per year, which sounds less impressive. So forgot I just wrote that.
Instead, I will note that I didn’t track distance in the early days of running and have definitely missed a few here and there, so I probably hit 5,000 km awhile back. Still, it’s a nice milestone. And the fact that I am still running 13 years later shows that I must like this running stuff or something.
For today’s run, I returned to the lake after two days off and ran clockwise, improving my pace by four seconds and reducing my BPM by 5. Nice! I didn’t bring the water bottle with me, but it was so humid that I felt I could just open my mouth and drink the air.
In terms of pace, it was a long, steady decline. I tried to hold back form the start, but still turned in an opening km of 6:01/km. by the fourth km the pace had drooped (plunged?) to 6:36/km. Yikes. I mean, the humidity was wearing me out and I’ve been exercising a lot this week. Now, normally I don’t look at my splits while running, partly because I don’t want them to influence my performance in unhealthy ways, but because the Apple Watch is so gentle with its haptic feedback that it feels like it’s afraid to interrupt me when I hot a km, so it sends this faint, barely detectable feedback that is totally lost when your arms are swinging and your feet are pounding the ground.
Today, though, I played music directly from the Watch and doing this also transfers the notifications from the Watch to the AirPods. The AirPods will even lower the volume of music when they pop up, meaning you are guaranteed to never missed them. Clearly, this is Apple’s plot to drive AirPods sales.
But it also meant that I could easily check my splits live, and I did. When I saw the fourth km come in at 6:36/km, I decided that would not do, and put on the gas to finish–or at least as much gas as I could spare. My final km was at a pace of 6:04/km–almost as good as the start. Not bad!
I then made a beeline to the nearest water fountain and supped. When I got home I was pretty pooped, but now, some hours later, I actually don’t feel that bad, though I am going to be a tad stiff in the morning.
Overall, it was a good outing and I’m glad I went whole hog™ and did the lake loop again. It’s the best way to improve my stamina, plus it’s just so pretty this time of year.
Look, pretty!
While I’m always happy to see them resurfacing parts of the Burnaby Lake Loop, I wish Metro Vancouver Parks would prioritize the trail next to the athletic fields. This is what I faced today, after yesterday’s monsoon-like rainfall:
Stats:
Run 680 Average pace: 6:14/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 2:16 p.m. Distance: 5:02 km Time: 31:23 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 21ºC Humidity: 60% Wind: light BPM: 155 Weight: 172.5 Total distance to date: 5000 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (115 km)
