For the first time in 16 days, I ran outside. Woo!
And an interesting run it was.
I originally planned to do a 5K on the river trail, if enough snow had melted. Indeed, that was the case, but with some snow still on the trail, I thought I might continue to the lake, to see if it might be better there. Initially it seemed to be the case, so I headed out for a 5K, with the possibility of doing more, if I felt perky enough.
I did not feel perky enough. But after clocking in a respectable 5K, I found that after around half a km of walking, I got my second wind and ended up running most of the rest of the way around the lake.
My initial blog entry for this run was going to be “Picking my steps” because the first half of the run I encountered some stretches of trail that still had enough snow to require caution, or to find a nice clear rut left by one of the putt-putt cars the parks workers use to get around. But as I continued to run, “Trail of destruction” felt like a much better fit.
Conditions were decent–cloudy and around 5C, with little to no wind. I wore two layers and running pants, but shorts and even one layer would have been fine. As mentioned, snow in some spots meant I had to be careful at times, but it didn’t affect my pace that much, really.
But I have never, in over ten years of running at Burnaby Lake, seen so much destruction in the form of downed trees, branches, bushes and other debris littering the trails. Even a lot of stuff that hadn’t collapsed was now leaning precariously over the trail, often right at eye level.
Several large trees that have been leaning over the trail for years are leaning more prominently now, and I suspect they won’t last much longer. A lot of this will be cleaned up soon, no doubt, but at the same time, we’re not even two weeks into winter, so there may be a lot more havoc to come.
Still, it was nice to finally get back out again. Friday is looking soggy so boo on that, but I’ll head out, anyway, probably doing a full 10K this time.
Stats:
Run 738 Average pace: 5:55/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW) Start: 9:34 a.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 29:45 Weather: Cloudy Temp: 5ºC Humidity: 98% Wind: low BPM: 155 Weight: 164.1 Total distance to date: 5460 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: Saucony Peregrine 12 (132 km)