Category: Runs

It’s been a punishing week this week. I started off this week with a night shoot into morning with me on my feet most of the night, then followed with a gig that next day after 4 hours of sleep, then a gig with an early calltime and another day mostly on my feet, but in the heat, humidity, and business suits. I even had an audition then a callback in the only potential time zones of availability, just ruining my opportunities for training runs. With a somewhat later calltime, this morning I eked out a run before work, and although I have been unable to run this week in light of my work schedule, I went really fast! I managed 7:12s, a considerable improvement in my time with pretty even splits. Here are the deets:

It helped that it felt considerably cooler today. The temperature was 74 and humidity was negligible (about 60%) with a cool wind in the morning sunshine. No one passed me today and I blazed through the park in 45:19, over a minute faster than my fastest time over this distance this year (set a month ago). I had set out to do 8+ miles but the urgency of going to the bathroom made me reconsider.

As for pains, my left ankle got that stabbing feeling in the very beginning of my run, and interestingly enough, it was when I was fiddling with my mp3 player. This is leading me to believe that when I get distracted when running, I improve my chances of experiencing that pain, possibly because my balance changes and the forces redistribute on that ankle, triggering the problem. And my left calf is a big pain. It wasn’t a pain when running, but it has been extremely tight since the last run. It’s as if I ripped some muscle and it’s healed and now I’m tighter. I seem to have more flexibility with it but it’s still painful to do a calf stretch on that leg.

Anyway, that’s it! I’m hoping to score a pasta dinner tonight and maybe tomorrow night before an upcoming half-marathon!

A calf cramp and running through a few swarms of evening insects didn’t stop my long run today. This evening I did 17.57 miles in Central Park in an evenly paced 2:23:10 (8:09s). The temperature for the first loop was 89, which eventually diminished to 86. It felt like almost no heat at all, though, because the humidity was around 35%. Here are the deets:

Inside the 11th mile, I developed some pain in my left calf. At first it felt like the calf injury I sustained recently creeping back up on me. It actually got me to stop to stretch it (Ouch!), then stop soon after to stretch it (Ouch!). While I considered dropping out of my run after the second lap, instead I treated this injury as a mental test to endure 18 miles (well, my 17.57) despite it. I invented a term for this kind of endurance: “despit endurance.” “Despit endurance” means “enduring despite something.” In this case, calf pain.

Other than that, and some mouth-filling swarms, the run in the evening had nothing notable to report. I ran after a 3-hour nap that came for whatever reason. I did two loops and my third loop was sans Great Hill. I finished at the light pole on the feeder entrance to the park. Over the course of the run, I stopped a nice amount of times to fill up on water. I didn’t weigh myself before my run, but after my run I weighed just about 169 lbs. I probably dropped about 6 lbs. today. And Garmin said I burned 2,440 calories in today’s run. I think for me that’s about a day’s worth of calories.

Tomorrow looks like a rest day. I will probably need it.

Yea for rain! Today’s run in 82 degrees started off with about 60% humidity, though with all clouds and no sun, it didn’t feel nearly as humid as yesterday, which was about the same temperature. In my 6th mile, the rain started up, and the sky eventually opened up to soak me. Did I disapprove? No! I loved it. I did 8.11 miles today in 1:01:05, which isn’t that great given the 7:32 pace, but considering I packed on 22 miles in the last couple days, and the heat, I suppose it wasn’t that bad. I needed to sneak in this distance today, though, because I don’t know what my running will be like the next couple days. Here are today’s stats:

About 3/4 of a mile in, I had the stabbing pain in my left ankle. This time it happened as I scratched myself–it was almost as if the distraction led to the “misstep.” Other than that, I felt fine. I wasn’t all that successful in keeping my head up (yet); hopefully when the temperature cools I’ll get better.

My splits grew over the course of the run. I didn’t stop for water so maybe I was losing performance, but I wanted to do that to better train myself to work without stops. I did, though, start off with a 7:01, and I felt pretty good over that mile.

Once it rained, it cooled off, though I didn’t see it. I stopped by the set of White Collar in the pouring rain–it was shooting around the corner from where I start my runs. I saw Marsha but that was about it since they were shooting inside. No big loss: I work there tomorrow!

After the run, while typing this, I consumed a whole 32-oz. bottle of Naked Juice Protein. 64g of protein, baby! I also had refreshing coconut water just before.