Author: Ben Hauck

Running with Elizabeth-in-Pain


Today’s run was interesting. I spent a great number of hours today at the New York Stock Exchange and Helen Hays Theatre playing a huge costume character called “Larry the Stag” for The Hartford. Physically, I was pretty spent. However, I did get the evening free and it was still daylight, so I said to myself, Ya know what, I should run.

And I did. And it so happened that Elizabeth Corkum was about to run around the same time was going to. So I got her to delay her run so that we could run together. Which was funny, because when we arrived in Central Park, the television show White Collar was shooting at our subway exit … which Elizabeth is working on tomorrow … which I’m working on Wednesday and Thursday … and then a production assistant we both know from the television show Mercy, Ryan, who was working White Collar, showed up at the top of the steps we were trying to mount, saw me, then Elizabeth, and suffice it to say, it was crazy-happy! Elizabeth even screamed.

That was fun. The run was fun too, at least for me. For Elizabeth, it was a test of her body. She is running with some serious pain, and it seemed to me today’s run was a lesson in pain for her. For me, it was a nice run to have in light of all my exertion and exhaustion from earlier today.

We started off at a pretty fast clip, with our first mile knocked out in 7:08. Whoa! Each mile after then was a little slower, but by the end, we had a sub-8:00 pace–7:58s, in fact! Great, Elizabeth! Nothing really special for me to report about my run, though it will be interesting to see what my body will be like tomorrow. That stag costume puts strain at the base of my neck, which is the area where I tend to get pinched nerves. I’m trying to massage and take care, but there are some obstacles in the next few days that may conflict with that goal. We’ll see!

Oh, and some tidbits: 58 degrees and windy–BRR! I had an ArginMax and quercetin just before the run, as well as lobster sushi. 🙂

Exceeded My Goals

Unofficial Race Results per Garmin:

This morning I did the R Baby Mother’s Day 4-Mile Run in Central Park. It was a gorgeous, if surprisingly cold and windy, race. At the start, it was 44 degrees! While winds were recorded at 9 mph, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were gusts above 20 mph.

For this race (my first race of the year), I set my goal as running sub-7:10s. I based this goal on my pace last year for this race, when I did the 4-miler in 7:10s (28:42 net). I haven’t been able to achieve that pace regularly yet this year, so I wasn’t certain I could accomplish it. My secondary goal was to run this race in under 28:00, which would have meant a 7:00 pace. In running it in 6:58s for a 27:50 finish, I exceded both of my goals!

In order to accomplish these goals, during the race I cut a number of tangents, but more importantly I had to push myself. In the first mile I did a nice amount of passing (to my surprise), but inside mile 2 I started getting passed. I found this a little confusing because I thought I had more pace than the bodies of the other runners suggested, but I did wonder if they were burning themselves out and I would eventually pass them with my steadier approach.

It’s hard to say if that happened. Inside mile 3, this hilliest part of the race, I told myself to push myself in it and I did. I pushed just a bit on the hills, doing some passing but not really reaching a blonde who had passed me earlier with a great frame and cute running legs. I immediately dubbed her in my mind “The Gold Standard.” Later, I dubbed her “My Blonde Ambition.” She was a person I imagined other guys between her and me were cursing, or envying, or wishing were theirs because she demonstrated a solid pace and probably finished around 27:30. I never reached The Gold Standard; I just couldn’t get my pace up that much.

Pushing on the hills seemed to pay off in seconds. My body supported the push to a degree and relative to the other runners, I did well. When it came to the turn for the finish, I could tell I didn’t have as much juice to really all-out sprint. I reserved my finishing sprint to pass a couple women who had newly passed me in the last bit. I was also trying to figure out the balance of pressing my Garmin’s stop button while also giving a photogenic finish. I opted for stopping Garmin a few seconds after the finish line as what mattered more to me was the official time. I was a little confused by the finish line, which had a time-track about 30 feet in front of the actual finish line, then the usual two time-tracks at the finish–I had thought the first track was the finish.

ArginMax, quercetin, and a Strawberry-Banana PowerGel powered this race, not to mention another pasta dinner the night before. Afterwards, I got my bagel and water, stretched, then went to the gym for a quick set of abs, back, and arms. This race was nice and just the right amount of challenge for me at this place in my training. It’s interesting to note that I seem to be adapting to training quickly. But I’m very cautious about injury right now and don’t want it to happen in light of 3 important races ahead.

Photos to come in about a week. Check the Photos page on the right to see them.

Pasta Strong!


Yea! Today was a great run! I thought it was a bit greater than the results showed, but it felt great, and that’s what counts right now.

First off, the weather. As soon as I arrived in Central Park, it started to, um, pour. The beginning of my run was in rain but the rain didn’t really hold out, making a brief reappearance around mile 5 but ending soon after it restarted. Althought it was wet and cloudy, it didn’t feel too humid out; it kinda felt about right, though a little bit on the warmer side of “about right.”

My lungs felt pretty darn good. And my legs did, too. I didn’t train as much as I really wanted to this week, still trying to figure out how to balance work and running. But I did go a little longer today, running 8.15 miles (which last year I measured as 8.273 miles). I did it in just over 1 hour, which isn’t so bad and suggests to me that I have a lot of capability in my current body if I stay healthy.

I’m wondering if Garmin may have been a little off on judging my pace because I felt much faster in several places than Garmin was letting on. I saw a number of 7:45ishes when I felt was I going maybe more like 7:15s, but all in all, the added mileage didn’t diminish what is turning out to be my standard pace for now (7:26s I did today and I’m doing around 7:25s). Today’s results typically would mean to me that I’m actually a little bit faster than 7:26s in the early miles. However, for this run it’s not true because if you view the Details for this run, you’ll see that my pace actually sped up in the later miles. This was because I had some “challengers” trying to overtake me, and I fought them off for as long as I was with them!

As for pains, I’m going to call the area in the north part of the park around the ice skating rink/swimming pool “Pain Valley.” Regularly in that area I feel something here or something there, that doesn’t tend to be much of anything in the grand scheme of things. It is downward sloped in that area, which may betell why there are bodily changes yielding discomfort. Today’s sensation in Pain Valley was on the inside of my left knee, the muscley area. The sensation didn’t last longer than Pain Valley so it didn’t seem like anything. The rest of the run felt pretty strong and strengthening.

After the run, I did abs, back, arms, and legs, doing a couple more reps for abs, back, and legs than I have usually been doing.

Tomorrow I have a race! We’ll see how the extra training affects it. Extra pasta may have affected today’s strong run: I had Oglio & Aglio with Chicken from Euro Delights (a favorite meal pre-long-run) both Thursday and Friday nights, and I was thinking during the run that it was a significant factor in why I was running so strongly today. I probably could have gone two full loops around Central Park, but I thought that I best not do that just yet, that it would be smarter to hold to about 8 miles for my first long run of the year.

P.S. ArginMax and quercetin plus a Strawberry-Banana PowerGel went into my system about a half hour before my run.