A few brief appearances by a couple of other joggers but the light rain and muddy conditions kept most people from the park today. As the rain eased off a few dogs came out to let their owners go for a walk.
With the temperature again close to the 10ºC mark, I think it’s pretty much officially shorts weather until the fall. I did wear a jacket but may opt to just get a bit soaked in a single layer next time.
I got off to a good start and was determined to stick to my plan to keep up the pace. This was evidenced by being four seconds ahead of the previous run at the halfway mark. By coincidence I also had a burning desire to quit at 5k but pressed on and managed to hit that velvety smooth runner’s high shortly afterward. While not precisely easy the rest of the run went smoothly and my overall pace leveled off, which seems to be a nice trend (as opposed to the pace getting longer and longer each km).
I ended up with a pace of 5:20/km, beating my previous best by three seconds. I am now closing in on the pace I had on my original 5k runs. This was also my first run to come in under 54 minutes.
Because we’ve had some rain the last few days the usual muddy parts of the trail were, well, muddy again, with a few puddles here and there. Rather than jog around it, I decided to meet the puddle at the SE corner head-on and try jumping it. I picked where I wanted my foot to land but the spot was gooshier than I anticipated, causing mud and water to spray up my leg, as depicted below.
After one impressive plunge I noticed a rather septic-like odor and at first dismissed it as coming from one of the many trucks in the area. But there it was again when I splashed through the puddle on the next lap. It very clearly smelled like poo. For the remainder of my run I stretched just that much further to clear the puddle and its foul material entirely.
A few laps short of finishing my right shoelace came untied due to getting loosened by the constant jog/wet cycle, forcing me to stop and retie the filthy, soggy thing, thus getting questionable puddle water on my hands (along with rather gritty mud). I managed not to run my eyes for the rest of the run. I finished the run by jogging slightly farther than normal because the iPod was not popping up the menu when I hit the menu button and it took me 0.02 km to trick it into working. I gently curse technology again.
Results:
Total distance: 10.05 km (previous: 10.02 km)
Average time/km: 5:20/km (previous: 5:25/km) <– best to date
Best time/km: 4:54/km (previous: 5:03/km)
