Average pace: 5:03/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Ran Piper Mill Trail and Conifer Loops
Distance: 11.06 km
Weather: Sunny, somewhat humid
Temp: 21-24ºC
Wind: nil to light
Calories burned: 799
Total distance to date: 2405 km
This morning I was greeted by the shocking sight of rain showers. Normally rain showers rate very low on the shocking scale in the Metro Vancouver area but given that we had no rain at all in July and August thus far has been rather dry, I was surprised to see a fairly heavy shower merrily showering away until about 11 a.m. I pondered the pros and cons of running when the sun returned. On the plus side, cooler temperatures. On the con, higher humidity.
I wanted to at least “finish” yesterday’s run so off I went around 1 p.m.
(I forgot to mention that yesterday was the first run where the fire hazard signs had gone back up at the entrances to the trails. It is somewhat ironic that the next day I see the sign is after it had rained.)
The sun made quick work of any rain that hadn’t already soaked into the ground, so there was nary a puddle to be seen, apart from the top of the dam, whose uneven concrete serves to collect and retain water much like one would expect a dam to do. Even that had mostly dried up by the end of the run.
As I had to make use of the port-a-potty before heading out I opted to run clockwise, my less-preferred direction for assorted reasons. Given that two of the three previous runs were dismal and the other being salvaged through the expedient of ending it prematurely I did not have high hopes. I set off.
Immediately I felt different. I made a spontaneous decision to try a rare balls-out approach and deliberately run faster for as far as I could, hoping I could bank enough steam to get to the end without a total second-half collapse.
Surprisingly, it worked!
I was confident my 1K time was pretty good and when I hit the 4K mark shortly after starting along the second boardwalk I was suitably encouraged. This meant I’d covered over a third of the run without my pace appreciably falling off.
I thought that with the rain in the morning the shaded areas may feel cooler than they might otherwise and that the air in general would be fresher, despite the higher humidity (68-73%) and this was indeed the case. For once the humidity didn’t make the run feel like a slog. That, combined with a modest rise in temperature allowed me to keep the energy level higher until about the last km where the run finally started to catch up to me.
But it wasn’t enough to drag down my overall pace appreciably, which was my best in quite awhile–5:03/km. That’s a full 16 seconds better than my last 11K run. It was, as they say, just what the doctor ordered, at least in terms of encouragement.
The only down note was my right tendon began to feel sore for the last few km. Not enough to slow me down but a sign that the total distance over the last two days was probably more than it was able to comfortably manage. It’ll get a couple of days to rest so should hopefully be good by the next run.
