dust and sweat

Average pace: 4:40/km

Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW), Brunette river trail, railroad tracks (!)
Distance: 5.21 km (official), 10K+ unofficially
Weather: Sun, high cloud
Temp: 15ºC
Wind: light to nil
Calories burned: 353 (official), closer to 700+ unofficially
Total distance to date: 1812 km

Ran Spruce Loop.

Tonight’s run sucked.

Pace-wise it was fine and I had no difficulties in terms of stamina or with muscles being sore or strained.

The problem arose at the start of the Brunette river trail. A large new sign indicated that a month-long construction project was underway and the trail would be closed. The small bridge near the western entrance was also being replaced. Since no fences or gates were visible, I continued on.

A construction pickup then drove by me, leaving behind it a dust cloud that stretched back hundreds of meters. And because there was no wind at all the cloud hung there, forcing me to run through it. It was less than pleasant.

When I reached the bridge I saw that it had indeed been fenced off. To its immediate right is a trail that leads up to the train tracks. I couldn’t recall if there was another trail leading back down past the bridge but it seemed worth investigating. Up I went and I gingerly ran along the ties (on the outside edge, lest a train appear) and running on rail ties is not exactly an easy thing to do. My gait is longer than the spacing of the ties, making things awkward at best.

I finally made it to Cariboo Road and crossed over into Burnaby Lake park. By this point I decided to just do 5K and call it there. I ran to the Spruce Loop, came back and hit 5.21 km just before the lake exit.

I didn’t want to walk the rest of the way back so I ended up retracing my route over the tracks and down the Brunette river trail. And that stupid construction pickup rolled by me again going in the opposite direction, forcing me once more to wade into a mega dust cloud.

I ran at least 10 km in total but only half of it counted. In hindsight I should have kept the Nike+ going for the whole thing. My pace would have been decent, I think. Oh well.

Now I must contemplate how to work around the construction for the rest of the month.

Chart

Today I had vowed to do my first post-injury 10K run.

And I did! Woo!

It was breezy but I must have tugged with an extra bit of manliness on my cap because the Cap Tug Number was only 1. It was about 19ºC and sunny, though I found the sun was not really an issue until the last km or so.

I had girded myself for the run by dividing it into chunks that could be managed more easily psychologically — the first few km as one, getting to that halfway mark as another and so on. As I passed 5 km I was reasonably confident I could make it. By the time I hit 8 km I knew I would and even thought about trying that little extra burst of speed in the final stretch. It was in the last km that my body began feeling like a furnace, so instead of turning on the boosters, I focused on just maintaining my pace. I added roughly three seconds every km and ended with an average pace of 5.34/km, which is pretty decent for 75 days between 10Ks, so I’m fairly pleased with how it went.

As expected on a sunny afternoon there were a decent number of people in the park but no remarkable incidents to report. Tiger Woods congratulated me for another 250 miles completed. Yet again.

Comparison chart of today’s 10K and the last one on April 21st: