Yes, I have been bad. I fell off not one wagon but two of them. The first was posting something every day to the blog. My fear of spamming nonsense and/or haikus in an effort to get something, anything up froze me not unlike the proverbial deer in the headlights and I ended up posting not a thing. In fact, that will be my next topic — drafts of posts that have never seen the light of day and why they were kept shuttered away.
The second wagon I fell off of smells of sweat — running. I had one day with a good excuse when having the blood samples taken left me seriously woozy for the better part of the afternoon. But the next two days I had no such excuse, I simply didn’t run. I have made amends and am back on schedule.
Like my previous run I did the approximate 19 km route:
- briskl walk 4 km to Burnaby Lake
- run 10K around the lake
- briskl walk 5 km back home
This is good for about 1200 or so calories burned, which if I keep to my schedule, should help in keeping me slim ‘n trim. That and declaring Doritos an enemy of the state.
First the usual stats:
Distance: 10.02 km
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 7ºC
Wind: initially brisk then light
Calories burned: 700
Average pace: 5:53/km
Total distance to date: 1100 km
Overall the run went well. I was again primarily concerned with cramping up and moderated my pace to prevent that from happening. This resulted in my average pace being six seconds slower than the previous run, which is disappointing but understandable. And it certainly beats having to deal with cramps. Plus this was with a week and a half between runs and that’s just enough time to start losing the edge again. Given that I was still planning on doing 5Ks at this time I’m not going to beat myself up over a few seconds.
And man, I really start feeling it on the uphill parts of the walk back home. It brings to mind that R.E.M. song, ‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull’.
I have noticed that the black slugs I encountered in the past are missing, either gone for the season or wiped out in some great black slug extinction event I never heard about. I suspect the former. We’ll see as the days get warmer. In their place, however, is an abundance of geese. One pair were standing on the edge of the trail as I rounded a corner and the closest took umbrage at my presence, hissing and fluffing out his wings as I strode by. I captured this moment as best I could, Internet meme-style:
Temperature-wise I again didn’t need the gloves I took and the jacket could have been shed. It was a touch warmer than the last run but still not warm.
Chart as usual below (and a lusty boo to the Nike+ website, which currently is producing a Firefox-crashing script bug, forcing me to use Chrome to view or edit my running stats. To Nike’s credit they are promising a revamped site come the summer, one of the bullet points for which is ‘No more Flash’. I’m going to guess they are not heavily invested in Adobe stock).
| Mar 16 | Mar 7 | Mar 5 | Feb 6 | Feb 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 km | 5:08 | 5:06 | 5:02 | 5:06 | 5:06 |
| 2 km | 5:22 | 5:22 | 5:17 | 5:15 | 5:21 |
| 3 km | 5:32 | 5:30 | 5:24 | 5:21 | 5:31 |
| 4 km | 5:37 | 5:33 | 5:30 | 5:25 | 5:37 |
| 5 km | 5:42 | 5:35 | 5:33 | 5:28 | 5:39 |
| 6 km | 5:47 | 5:38 | — | — | — |
| 7 km | 5:49 | 5:40 | — | — | — |
| 8 km | 5:51 | 5:42 | — | — | — |
| 9 km | 5:52 | 5:45 | — | — | — |
| 10 km | 5:53 | 5:47 | — | — | — |