Category: Runs

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. 🙂

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.

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.