The bouncing birthday run

Average pace: 4:34/km <– personal record (for runs over 10K)
Location: Burnaby Lake, CW
Distance: 11.50 km
Weather: Sunny, warm
Temp: 17-20ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 780
Total distance to date: 1886 km

Ran Piper Mill trail, Conifer and Spruce Loops.

I had two goal for today’s run:

1. Start earlier to beat the heat (for real, this time).
2. Improve my sluggish pace of 4:44/km on Monday’s run.

Related to #2 was the fact that today is my birthday and I wanted to reverse the trend of getting slower over the past four runs to prove that turning one year older did not mean I was actually slowing down.

The good news is that I not only beat Monday’s pace, I came in at 4:34/km, my fastest 10K+ time to date, besting my previous best of 4:45 on September 9th.

I set records for:

• fastest 1K: 4:19
• fastest 5K: 22:15
• fastest 10K: 45:23
• fastest mile: 6:57

It was already warm when I started out but fortunately the earlier start meant it only got as high as 20ºC by the time I completed the run. My energy level remained fine throughout.

My only real issue again was bugs, specifically giant clouds of them that are impossible to avoid. I actually lost count of how many landed on my glasses or got stuck to my sweat-covered face. Bleah. Why can’t these things find a nice pile of poop to socialize on?

I also came close to crushing a dog under my foot. A woman was walking a tiny black ball of fur that on closer inspection turned out to be some kind of dog. As I jogged by the unleashed dog decided it wanted to playfully run alongside me. I didn’t see it until it was beside my right foot. If, at that point, a root had appeared in front of me, I would have automatically stepped to the right and smooshed the dog. Dear dog owners: the leash bylaw is not there because the city hates dogs or enjoys being mean to dog owners. It is there to protect everyone — including the dog itself!

Other than that, the run hummed along nicely, with a low, steady decline instead of a lot of hills and valleys.

Chart (records are in pink)