Today’s run was going to be chilly, with the temperature only 1ºC at the start, and 3ºC by the end, a difference I did not notice!
I dressed thus:
- Three top layers: sleeveless base, long-sleeved shirt, running jacket
- Running pants
In the end I feel I could have worn two layers up top and shorts might have been okay. The only problem is the 4 km walk to the lake before. Near-freezing temperatures on my bare legs that long would probably lead to a lot longer warm-up period during the run, and it’s not like I was sweating a lot or something.
It was sunny and once again, the lack of any sort of wind was conspicuous and weird. In anticipation of getting that flickering effect from the sun shining through the now naked trees on the Cottonwood Trail, I opted to stick to a counterclockwise route. I did encounter some strobing on the south shore, but it was a lot more intermittent. There was frost in some shaded areas of the trail, but it wasn’t that bad as far as being slippery goes. Even the boardwalks were decent.
A bigger hazard may have been the Slightly Dim People out walking. Because it was sunny, there were more people out, which is fine, because it still wasn’t exactly crowded. I don’t know if the cold makes it harder to hear, but virtually no one heard me approaching from behind and most people were walking in pairs and hogging the trail, as people do. This didn’t lead to any situations, I just noticed everyone seemed a bit more oblivious today. Maybe it’s a Monday thing.
Unlike Friday, I had no weird heart rate spikes. At around the 7.5 km mark my BPM went up to 157 but it didn’t stay there and within a minute was back to the 150 range, which actually turned out to be my overall average. Nice!
As an experiment, I wore my Apple Watch on my right wrist, but locked the display so it wouldn’t record official workouts. I was hoping it would only track my move stats (steps) as these mysteriously don’t carry over from the Garmin watch, leaving a massive gap in my step total (on a lake run I usually put in about 20,000 steps). I was skeptical, but it actually worked. The Fitness app has my exercise accounted for by the Garmin watch, while the steps were tracked by the Apple Watch. I’m not sure if I want to wear two watches for every workout, but at least I know it does what I hope it would.
This was a solid start to the week, but there are portents of snow in the forecast. We’ll see what happens on Wednesday.
Stats:
Run 736 Average pace: 5:47/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 10:50 a.m. Distance: 10.04 km Time: 58:08 Weather: Sunny Temp: 1-3ºC Humidity: 56% Wind: light to nil BPM: 150 Weight: 161.5 Total distance to date: 5445 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 12 (117 km)
