Average pace: 5:19/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Ran Piper Mill Trail and Conifer Loops
Distance: 11.41 km
Weather: Sunny, Africa hot
Temp: 23-27ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 825
Total distance to date: 2389 km
Blergh.
For some reason runs always seem to go worse when I run clockwise around the lake. But I get ahead of myself.
I was curious how today’s run would go because I was heading out around the same time of day but with a few differences: it was much warmer (bad) but there was a breeze (good), it wasn’t as humid (good) but it was sunny instead of cloudy (bad).
It was my second run in three days after a slothful five days off.
I started out about four seconds off my previous pace, slipped a little further and ended with a time of 5:19/km, pretty lousy after getting as low as 5:07 previously. On a positive note my feet were both fine, though the left one was a tad sore on the walk back (not enough to slow me down, though).
On the negative…this was a very dry run. I felt parched and with the breeze I had a definite case of desert mouth. The temperature rose rapidly from 23 to 27ºC, the kind of change that is noticeable and not in a good way. Worse, though, the lingering effects of either a nascent head cold or some fun new allergy meant I had a pressure headache before heading out. I dealt with this by taking two Advil. The headache went away but at around the 5 km mark I felt very odd, a mix of light-headed and weak. I was passing by the athletic field at the time and wanted to just lay down on the nice soft grass for awhile. Instead I mustered on, got past the wooziness and even managed a slight uptick in my pace after bottoming out at the 10K mark.
Barring actual injury, I’m all but guaranteed to do better on the next 10K+ run.
On the run itself there were two things of note. The first was a rare triple rule violation. Seeing people walk their dogs without leashing them is pretty common. Seeing people riding bikes on the trail is (thankfully) less common. Today I saw a mother and her son both riding their bikes, with an unleashed dog in tow. Good job, I say!
We met up at the dam as I ended my run, dehydrated and cranky. I still managed to sound fairly polite as I said to her, “Actually, bikes aren’t allowed on the trail.” She didn’t seem to hear and hoisted her bike up and over the stairs on the dam, rolling it to the other side. By coincidence I was going the same way to get a long drink from the faucet nearby. I watched as she walked her bike down the path past me. I kept drinking. She waited for her son to catch up. Then she waited some more for no apparent reason. I finally got my fill of liquid nirvana and headed off. I’m sure she hopped back on the bike as soon as I was out of view. All I can hope is that she skidded out on some horse poop on the Avalon trail and landed face-first into it.
The other odd sight was a man jogging ahead of me. Occasionally I see people running with smartphones strapped to their arms. This guy was like that except instead of a smartphone it was a tablet, either a 7 or 8 inch Samsung tablet. It looked huge and uncomfortable. The guy had his tablet arm raised straight up, as if hailing a cab. With his free hand he seemed to be making some adjustments and was not having much luck. As I caught up he got things settled and resumed a regular running pace. Or as regular a running pace as you can manage with a freaking tablet strapped to your arm. It was weird.
