The back to the bugs run

Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 6ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 700
Average pace: 5:47/km
Total distance to date: 1090 km

With conditions about as good as you can get for the first week of March, I set off on my second return run today and I had a nutty plan.

I was originally planning on running 5Ks this week to work on getting my stamina back up but I felt surprisingly good after Monday’s run so I devised a plan that would encourage me to run a full 10K.

First, I set the actual Nike+ sensor to track a 10K run instead of 5K. I’ve done this before and nothing bad happens if you don’t run the full length, you just don’t get the countdown in the last km if you quit early and your run report shows it was set for 10K when you only did 5K, you wimp.

Next, I plotted my route. Unlike Monday I did not take the SkyTrain to Burnaby Lake. Instead I walked there, a distance of about 4K. Once there I chose to start out on the south side of the lake and would quickly reach a point of decision: I could either run 2.5 km, turn around and get the 5K that way or I could keep running to get the 5K and if I was too tired to continue could walk the rest. But that would put me halfway around the lake and mean I’d have about a 10 km walk back home (and no transit tickets or money to cheat my way out of it). So this would encourage me to keep running to…avoid walking.

And it worked!

As the chart below indicates, my pace was slower even from the start vs. my 5K on Monday but that was deliberate. I wanted to avoid cramps if possible and the more measure pace did just that. You can also see after the initial few km of ‘oh god this is what it feels like to be running again’ my pace moderated and settled down.

In comparison to my first-ever 10K on December 30, 2009, I was actually three seconds faster — not bad for not running one in six months (and considering that first 10K was just the capper on regular runs that had me going up to 8K).

Temperature-wise I didn’t need the gloves I took and the jacket was probably optional, though I wasn’t overly warm wearing it. The air still had that last kick of winter in it. As the title of this post suggests, though, it is now warm enough for the bugs to be back. I had to wave them out of my face a few times but had no intake incidents.

Chart:

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