Back in Action

Today I woke at 5:40am to get ready to do a run. It was a throwback to 2007 when I was getting up at that time out of necessity to run because of a day job and an evening improv training program I was running for a company. While three weeks in that lifestyle led to injury out of presumably overtraining on little rest, it was still a time of amazing accomplishment, and this morning recalled that.

66 degrees with approximately 60% humidity made it feel warm but rather “just right” for running, and breaking a sweat, and challenging myself. In fact, I wasn’t sure if I’d feel comfortable running Great Hill, but sure enough, I went that way. Part of the reason was that a speedy girl passed me around mile 2 and was a few steps in front of me; I thought I would eventually catch her but she was good, then she veered off on the 102nd Street Transverse. I’m amusingly sexist when I run.

Mounting the hill wasn’t so bad, but again, another girl passed me on the hill, but I passed her by the top. Down the hill, a couple passed me but then I passed them. There were a number of these passings in this run as you can tell, which is generally unusual for me to experience because I’ll go days without being passed in the park. To that stat, Central Park had a lot of runners this morning in the 6 o’clock hour.

I felt fairly strong. I wanted to work on steadying my breathing a bit, as that seems to be the best bet for sustaining my runs. It seemed to help. No twinges though I did feel a little tight in the morning, and I was wondering if I would end up with some kind of surprise injury from today’s run. Thankfully, no.

I had ArginMax and quercetin just before my run again, but this time I had a spoonful of non-fat yogurt plus a Strawberry-Banana PowerGel. (While it has fructose in it, I was happy to find out it didn’t have high fructose corn syrup, which is something I’ve been generally avoiding in the last month or so.) Last night I had coconut water with my late dinner; it boasts of potassium and general hydration, and while expensive, I wonder how that may aid me. No caffeine or diet pills for another day, which is making me feel a bit more, I guess, normal. That is, my run didn’t have with it any strange kidney or chest pains accompanying it.

As you can see, Garmin got the map off a little bit. I ran on the road, not parallel with the road. I noticed at one time going up a hill, it also Auto Paused, which was peculiar to me because I was moving, not nearly walking or stopping. I wonder if I set it in a way to trigger Auto Pause then.

Overall, this run felt as if I was back in action. It felt like a decent run. While I’m still on the slower side in running 7:25s, I did do a lap in Central Park fairly comfortably, including Great Hill. That is, Great Hill didn’t cut into my capable pace, which I guess is pretty cool.

Afterwards, I hit the gym for abs, back, and arms. Just a little bit before I start the rest of my day.