Another fine winter’s run

With the temperature around 11ºC (normal high 17ºC) and the sky a sullen gray I headed off to China Creek, choosing to upgrade my run length to 25 minutes as I continue to move closer  to the realm of the 10K run.

Despite some rain the trail remained puddle-free, though the usual sections were rather mushy, meaning I did have to watch my foot placement. My time at the 20 minute mark was almost identical to my previous 20 minute run but as I shaved a second off my pace, I managed to pick it up for the last five minutes.

I later took photographic evidence of the deteriorating condition of the trail (one pic is below) but they all came out blurry for some reason, so I’ll probably have to take another batch. I’m hoping to get a response from the city on when or if repairs will be made to the pathway.

This was my first run since coming back to regular jogs where I could feel the shift between my stamina holding up and my legs getting tired. In other words, my energy level was keeping pace better and as a result my leg muscles were working a bit harder to keep up. This is generally a good thing. I may try a full 5K on Wednesday.

The Nike+ site is currently experiencing server errors but I have all the handy stats from iTunes, so here they are for today’s run. I’m including everything just because I can!

Time: 25:06
Distance: 4.54 km
Pace: 5:32/km
Calories: 308

Total workouts: 95
Total distance: 706.79 km

And in this fuzzy shot you can see how the bark mulch has been stripped away by the rain, exposing the soil and rock underneath. There are several sections of the trail like this, with others also having many new exposed roots coming through. Not so great for jogging and unpleasant, too, for walking.

In other running-related news, Jeff visited his doctor and found out he has tendinitis and is on a 5-10 day Advil regime to bring down the inflammation. He may or may not be able to resume running at that point so he is going to be out for at least a few weeks if not more. Not surprisingly, he is not happy about this!