Burnaby Lake runs

My first rule of running on statutory holidays is: Never run on statutory holidays. Today is Labour Day, which is a stat holiday. But it’s also a regular run day for me, the conditions looked surprisingly pleasant, and I didn’t want to reschedule, so off I went for a mid-morning start.

Today’s predicted high/low of 23/12 actually matches the average high/low for this day and indeed, it was an entirely pleasant 17C when I started the run, with humidity probably somewhere in the low 70s (and falling to 68%), and the temperature rising to a still modest 19C by the end.

The lower temperature, combined with a light breeze and partly sunny skies, meant the dreaded H+H combo (heat and humidity) did not manifest. It felt like the first time in a long while when I was running against my own limits, not those imposed by the weather conditions. It was very nice! Even my left hip kept pretty quiet.

I opted to forgo sunblock and that was fine, because the sun was low and not ever-present. I also elected to skip the nipple guards because they’re a nuisance and this was also fine–but only barely. While I sweated far less than on most summer runs, the place where I sweat most is around the chest and both nipples were feeling tingly by the end of the run, but nothing worse happened.

As for the people, the trail was definitely much more crowded than usual, but everyone was aware, courteous and all that. Even the few unleashed dogs (bad dog owners!) were well-behaved and caused no issues.

As for the trees, it looks like the rain that fell yesterday–the first significant precipitation we’ve had in many weeks–was too much for one tree, and it nearly took out one of the markers near the Avalon parking lot at the start of the trail. This is also pretty close to the Jiffy John™ and one can only imagine the horrors if the tree had clobbered that.

Due to its particular position that is in the gap between the parts I run, I didn’t have to negotiate it while jogging, I just stepped over it as I was heading out.

With a relatively blazing pace of 5:53/km–and running the “harder” counter-clockwise route, as well, I am quite pleased with today’s run. Here’s to more comfy weather and complication-free runs.

Oh, and the ex-tree:

Stats:

Run 712
Average pace: 5:53/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 10:30 a.m.
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 59:00
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 17-19ºC
Humidity: 68%
Wind: light
BPM: 151
Weight: 160
Total distance to date: 5222 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (330 km)

The weather finally changed today, giving me a break from my least favorite combo of heat and humidity.

It was a mere 18C and cloudy, with even the very slightest bit of drizzle around the 7K mark. It was refreshing! Even with the humidity at 78%, it was still fine. In fact, I sweated very little after the first half, thanks to the cooler conditions and a nice breeze.

The hip was present for the back half of the run, but it wasn’t exactly sore, more just there. More annoying was the right foot mentioned in the title–right near the start pf the run and until some point between the second and third km, the sole was hurting in some weird way, kind of like an arthritic kind of pain when I stepped on it. It wasn’t hugely hurting or anything, just random and annoying, as I’ve never had issues with the right foot. It went away and after that was back to normal.

The body is weird.

Speaking of weird, I decided to skip the side trail since I started back of the zero marker and because the sun wasn’t going to be beating down on me. However, after having a woman with a stroller suddenly push the stroller directly into my path at the last moment (she apologized as I deked around) and a couple with a dog mildly freaked on my approach, forcing me to awkwardly run between them, I abandoned the plan and cut up the newly-resurfaced connector trail that leads to the Conifer Loop, then stuck to that. I also stayed on the Piper Mill Trail. I’ve learned my lesson in experimenting!

And speaking of experiments, two kids were on a bike midway between the 6-7K mark, careening all over the place and laughing. I told them bikes weren’t allowed on the trail as I ran by, annoyed. I could clearly see their drunken path in the dusty trail right by the sandwich board that says NO CYCLING. I hope they rode the bike into the bush, punctured both tires, fell into a giant bush of poison ivy, then had a deer pee on them. Sure, I’ve never seen deer at Burnaby Lake, but this is my fantasy, so deer it is.

As for the run, my energy level was much higher thanks to the more favorable conditions, so I finished the full 10K without issue. I did flag a bit at the 7K and 8K marks, but picked up after that to finish with a pace of 5:57/km for the last stretch and an overall pace of 6:06/km, which is perfectly cromulent (and matches my 5K-shoulda-been-10K on Wednesday).

Overall, a nice way to end the week.

Stats:

Run 708
Average pace: 6:06/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 10:36 a.m.
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 61:18
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 18ºC
Humidity: 78%
Wind: light
BPM: 152
Weight: 160.4
Total distance to date: 5197 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (305 km)

I won an award for today’s run. Hint: It wasn’t for the fattest pace ever!

Now, my pace today was 6:10/km, which is fine, but far from spectacular. It’s a full 16 seconds off last Wednesday’s pace, in fact, so how did I manage to burn a record number of calories? Well, there are a lot of factors involved–hydration level, amount of sodium I’ve ingested recently and so on. And then there’s that one persistent thing that has accompanied me on pretty much every run this summer:

HUMIDITY

Go ahead, pretend I somehow re-enabled the <BLINK> tag on the above, to get the full intended effect.

Once again, high humidity plagued my run, and I have resigned myself to facing it for the rest of the summer. I’ll probably have to wait until the cooler temperatures of fall before it no longer factors into how my runs go. Today felt like a slog, due to the combo of warm temperatures, sun and the H-word.

That said, I did manage a full 10K and the left hip started out fine, then started being a mild bother about 2K in before settling down and not particularly being an issue for the last few km. What kind of threw me was starting farther up from my usual spot today due to trail work. Every time I’d expect to hit a milestone, I would still have a ways to go, and I ended the run right at the dam, instead of well before it. It felt weird and made the whole thing feel even more slog-like.

My pace was actually pretty consistent, though. Observe:

Also contributing to the slog-like effect today was the return of the No-wind. This is another peculiar phenomenon that has only occurred this summer. I mean, here we are two-thirds through the season, with little precipitation in the last month, and the forest fire danger is still only Moderate (one step above the lowest level, which is cleverly called Low).

Anyway, enough kvetching, here are the stats:

Run 705
Average pace: 6:10/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 9:58 a.m.
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 61:47
Weather: Mostly sunny
Temp: 22-24ºC
Humidity: 51-59%
Wind: nil to light
BPM: 152
Weight: 161.1
Total distance to date: 5172 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (280 km)

Quite often I will think about what I will write about a run while I’m still actually out running. For example, I knew that today’s entry would be titled “The internal battle” shortly before the running part ended (and when the internal battle also ended).

When I went out today, I was planning on taking it a bit easier, because I was expecting it to be warmer and still humid. In fact, the forecast this morning even specifically mentioned it would be humid:

When I left it was 22C, but it rose to 24C by the time I got to the lake and ticked up another degree during the run. Humidity was in the mid-60s, which is gross, but if you look at the previous run, you might be thinking, “Humidity was even higher then, yet you did a lot better. Why? Has science been lying to us all this time?” And the answer is: I don’t know why, exactly!

But there seems to be some magic line where if the temperature is X and humidity is Y, then the run will be POO. Today it reached into the POO zone. I did handicap myself a bit by running counter-clockwise, which is the “harder” route–it starts out all technical and windy and doesn’t offer any nice straight stretches until you get to the Cottonwood Trail about 3 km in. Conversely, running clockwise starts you on the Avalon Trail, which is perfectly straight, save for one gentle curve. After that, the trail tends to slope gently downhill for much of the way.

So, there was that. But I started out okay. The hip was fine for the first few km, then when I could feel it, it was muted, not really a factor. But the humidity really wore on me. By the sixth km, the bottom began to fall out, with a pace of 6:22/km. After 7 km, it had fallen further to a yuck-o 6:32/km. This is where the internal battle began and while it lasted only a few moments, it went something like this:

Sensible Me: You’re not going for a personal record, you planned on taking it easier today, there’s no shame in ending the run a bit earlier than planned!

My Ego: Do you want to be a quitter? You can make up time on the Avalon Trail. If you stop now, you’ll only have done one measly 10K this week! Sure, no one will really know or care, but YOU’LL know! Keep going, hoser!

My Ego, after some more thought: You know, if your pace continues to flag, it’s going to drag down your average and look bad. Maybe cut your losses now and look better!

Yes, in my mind, my ego calls me a hoser.

The call was pretty easy to make. My pace was falling off a cliff, so I listened to both Sensible Me and Me Ego, after some more thought. To prove the hip was fine, I did run a decent amount for the remainder of the 3K around the lake and felt fine.

However, when I was trying to do the same on the river trail, I started experiencing stomach cramps and about half an hour after getting home had to make a beeline to the bathroom to attend to an urgent nature call. So the roiling of my gut may have had some impact that I was not fully aware of, too. At least that’s what My Ego is telling me!

In the end, it was not a bad effort and I think if I’d run clockwise and conditions had been better, it would have been perfectly fine. But I’m content with settling with “just okay” after Wednesday’s faboo run.

In fun resurfacing news: I was surprised and delighted to see that they have done some patching along the trail that borders the athletic fields. As I’ve noted before, the trail here is narrow and floods even when they just run the sprinklers on the fields, due to strangely poor drainage. Sometime in the last two days workers came in and did a couple of things: they filled potholes, shored up parts where the trail is a bit sunken and laid down what appears to be a preliminary section of new gravel along the eastern part that right-angles past the row of trees that you can see in your favorite map software:

I’m hoping this is all leading to a Grand Resurfacing™. I should know the next time I am on the trail. It may seem weird that I am kind of obsessed with this, but until you’ve had to choose between going through a long, deep puddle in the middle of your run route or detour into a marshy field that will have you sink into water past your ankles, you just can’t appreciate the anticipation of this being addressed after more than ten years.

Stats:

Run 704
Average pace: 6:14/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:30 a.m.
Distance: 7.02 km
Time: 43:44
Weather: Partly cloudy
Temp: 24-25ºC
Humidity: 54%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 151
Weight: 162.2
Total distance to date: 5162 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (270 km)

Today’s run had me filled with trepidation: Would my left hip be hip (fine) or most unhip (sore)? Would I be able to run 10K or go conservative and only do 5K?

As it turned out, I turned in my best run at the lake so far this year, breaking both the six-minute mark and coming in under an hour for the first time in actual years. Woo.

It started out weird, with the Apple Watch claiming a BPM after 1 km of 97, which would be possible if I was actually a godlike supernatural being and not a guy with a sore hip. I paused the run for a few moments, which sometimes lets the watch “catch up” and the BPM leaped to 158, which seemed too high, then fell back to 149, which is my Goldilocks BPM zone. I continued on.

Three big factors in today’s performance:

• The temperature was a relatively cool 22C and stayed there the entire time
• The sky was mostly overcast, with only a bit of sun poking out near the start
• An actual breeze was blowing, providing additional cooling (and occasionally resistance)

This meant I sweated a lot less than usual (in fact, on the back half of the run I was sweating very little), and I was seeing much better results while putting in the same usual effort. I let my BPM go up slightly to 152 because it didn’t feel like I was working harder. Of the 10 km, only two were above the six-minute mark and one was right on it, the rest were all under, with the first km being a rather zippy 5:36/km. I felt good. It was nice.

So, the hip. Was it sore? Yes, I could definitely feel it. But at the same time, it was clearly not affecting my pace. Was the soreness being covered up by a rush of endorphins? The proverbial runner’s high making me oblivious to the pain? Maybe a tiny bit, but mostly I don’t think so. It was clearly not as bad as Monday, so may be on the mend. We’ll see on Friday.

Other things:

• I went Watch-only. After the three workouts (two 4K walks, the 10K run) and listening to music for about 100 minutes, the battery was down to 16%. I could probably squeeze more juice out of it by turning off always-on mode, but it is about three years old now, so I am not overly surprised it drained so much. Well, maybe a little surprised that it dipped below 20%. I basically didn’t do anything with the watch in the few hours before the run, other than wear it.
• I skipped the sunblock, hoping it would neither be sunny, nor cloudy-but-still-sunburn-y, and it looks like I was right! Sunblock has helped a lot this summer, but it is horrible and sticky when running, and I always think I’ll rub some of it into my eyes when wiping sweat away.
• I also forgot to protect my nipple. Ack! But it turned out that I didn’t sweat enough to cause any issues. The last km or so on the walk back I could feel the start of something (not something good), but it went away after I washed up, and my chest is happy for now.
• Without the phone, I did not wear my SPI-belt, which I believe caused some minor abrasions on my belly after Monday’s run. My evidence is that the abrasions perfectly match where the buckle of the belt lines up when I’m wearing it. I did feel weirdly naked without the phone, even though the watch has cellular, so I can still make/take calls and messages. But it was nice to carry less junk, too.

And now, I will bask in a good result and the good feeling from it.

Stats:

Run 703
Average pace: 5:55/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 11:53 a.m.
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 59:22
Weather: Overcast
Temp: 22ºC
Humidity: 64%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 152
Weight: 164.4
Total distance to date: 5155 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (263 km)

It was 22-24C today, which was fine, but humidity was still 50%, which is kind of gross, but admittedly not as gross as 76%. I decided to start my run at 1 p.m. and an additional benefit was the Cottonwood Trail is nicely shaded at that time.

I deliberately ran slower due to the leg issue on Wednesday and also a mysterious left knee issue that popped up yesterday when I walked to uptown New Westminster (there are two long, steep hills on the way). The good news is the knee was fine, but the upper left thigh was still a little sore, though not as bad as Wednesday. Basically, a bionic replacement for my left leg would be handy, though it would probably misfire and cause me to run in circles or something.

Another change today was an actual breeze! This summer it’s not only been weirdly humid, there’s been very little wind when running at the lake. Today, possibly related to the weather breaking and becoming sunny again, there was an actual wind blowing in from the west. It felt nice!

I did put on the jets just a little for the last stretch, and my final km came in at 5:57/km. My first was a decidedly more casual 6:31/km. In fact, the first half of the run my pace got faster every km, then slowed and plateaued until that final burst.

Overall, it went about as well as I could have expected. Here’s hoping some time off over the weekend will leave my left leg feeling sparkly and fresh.

Stats:

Run 701
Average pace: 6:15/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 1:09 p.m.
Distance: 10.02 km
Time: 62:38
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 22-24ºC
Humidity: 50%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 148
Weight: 163.9
Total distance to date: 5140 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (248 km)

Best news: No bears!
Good news: Only 22C instead of 32C like on Sunday.
Bad news: Humidity was still 58%. What is the deal with the high humidity this summer?
Ominous news: My upper left thigh was sore right at the start of the run and stayed sore throughout.

I mulled about doing only 5K early on, but pressed through and toward the end the thigh didn’t feel as sore, though I’m pretty sure endorphins had kicked in at that point, numbing my brain to the pain.

I have no idea why the thigh was sore. Maybe I did something in my sleep. I could set up a webcam to find out, but it would probably be like watching a found footage movie and creep me out. Despite the thorny thigh, I still finished with a perfectly cromulent pace of 6:05/km. The difference in temperature really helped, as did the partially cloudy sky. I like the sun, but it’s nice to not have it relentlessly beating down on you while you run. Stamina-wise, I felt fine throughout, so the actual 10 km distance wasn’t an issue.

I’m also impressed at how steady my pace is. I hit exactly 150 for my average BPM, though it dipped a little below and above that at various points.

In all, my official 700th run was good (I probably have a dozen or so that went uncounted in my early days of running). Here’s hoping the thigh behaves better on Friday.

Stats:

Run 700
Average pace: 6:05/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:31 a.m.
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 61:06
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 22ºC
Humidity: 58%
Wind: light
BPM: 150
Weight: 163.7
Total distance to date: 5130 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: Brooks Caldera 5 (238 km)