O'er the Hills

Yesterday I received a brand-new running toy: The Garmin Forerunner 405CX. It’s an expensive running watch with GPS, heart-rate monitoring, pace-monitoring, and lots of other cool statistics.

The watch is linked to an account I have set up with Garmin. Using that account, I can embed in my blog maps of my runs plus their respective stats. From what I can tell, this will be a very helpful way to monitor my progress as I train this year for the NYC Marathon, and also provide you some interesting visuals as I train. You might end up learning more about my running that I do!

In what may turn out to be a dependency, I ran again today with Elizabeth Corkum, who did pretty well despite a great pizza party she threw last night. It was Central Park, laden with springtime revelers soaking in the beauty that was today.

Blue skies and a great temperature that seemed warmer than what was on the thermometer paved the way for a well-paced run. This was my first shirtless run of the season, an event I rejoiced in because it is just so liberating and complementary to my task (and it doesn’t leave me with chafed nips!). I didn’t pressure myself to do any speed in this run, though I sprinted for about 90 ft. around Mile 2 and in the last bit where I always do. Elizabeth kept pace throughout the whole run, even despite some instability in the last mile. She fought and won! I just used this run as a leisurely run for-the-sake-of-running, so not much to report.

On the chemical side, pumping through me was Redline Ultra Hardcore, a new supplement that seems to be quite wonderful (if you’re the Devil). I seemed to have some pain in the kidney area of my back around Mile 2.5, which is just something to log. Doing supplements like that might affect my kidneys (I have no idea) as the caffeine presumably dehydrates me, and I tend to already run without much in the way of liquids (for fear of needing to take distracting bathroom breaks). We’ll see how these things affect me if I use them again pre-run.

Today, Elizabeth Corkum and I worked a commercial in the morning, and since we were wrapped at the same time, we resolved to do another run in Central Park today. Actually, this run replaces a cancelled run Sunday for us as she ended up with a cold then. Today’s run was significantly better than last as we both broke 8-minute miles. (Nice job, Elizabeth, with your 7:52s!)

Today’s run for me was about as decent as I can expect. The weather was gorgeous. I missed the actual temperature in the park but it was about 61 degrees, cool, sunny, and in the mid-afternoon. I had been up since 4am, when I got up, took 3 Redlines, and did 30 minutes of some workout DVDs concentrating on butt, thighs, and abs. Didn’t do much for fitting into my skinny jeans (on set the director had me turn my butt away from camera, for what I’ll read into as too much junk…), but it did help for my self-esteem knowing that I accomplished a workout despite an early calltime.

The run had labored breathing but it seemed I was doing the pacing and Elizabeth was actually keeping up (rather than last time when I was letting her set the pace). We didn’t do any sprints, just pushed a little toward the end to beat our last time. It worked.

Other that that, nothing much to report other than significant improvement in pace in such a short amount of time. I still definitely don’t feel in shape. Oh, but I did learn one thing: Don’t eat canned salmon just before a run. The taste was in my mouth by around mile 4 and it made me so nauseated toward the end that I didn’t want to sprint for fear of gastric consequences!