The Bridle Path

Since starting this blog, I ran my requisite 3-mile run outside for the first time, and I ran it on my favorite 3-mile route along the bridle path.

It's called the "bridle path" because it's unpaved dirt pathways where the equestrians in New York City - yes, the City - can and do ride their million dollar pure breed horses.

I love it because it's easy on the knees and affords cool shade and sweet floral scents in the warm months. I start on the pavement at Columbus Circle and make my way north on the west side, following the path in front of Tavern on the Green. I follow it all the way to the reservoir where, conveniently, there's a water fountain. One way it's approximately 1.55 miles, and at that halfway point I can hydrate. So I take the path back again the way I came, and I usually can run it slightly faster than going out.

Today I ran it in a little over 28 minutes, so I was running at about a 9:00 pace. That felt fast; I can't believe that when I was in college and had to run 3 miles for PE 100 (affectionately known as "Run 100"), I ran 3 miles in 24 minutes! And the crazy thing is I feel like I'm in such better shape now! Of course, I do weigh about 10 pounds heavier now, too...

Give me the bad news first

It was only a mile more than last week, but today's 14 miles were brutal.

The conditions were ideal - it was a balmy 67 degrees when I started, and there were bits of rain here and there that felt like a refreshing Evian face spritz for the whole body.

I'd mapped out my course beforehand: 1 lap of the 6-mile loop, 1 lap of the 5-mile loop (bound on the north by the 102nd street traverse), 1 lap of the reservoir, and 1 lap of the 1.7-mile loop (bound on the north by the 72nd street traverse). I like the bad news first: give me the hardest and longest lap first so that everything thereafter feels easier.

Again, I made myself walk every 8th minute, and I can only imagine how much worse it would've been had I not done this. I ran exactly 14 miles in 2 h 41 min, for an average pace 11:32 min/mi. Not too bad considering that I walked 1/9 of the time!

Sunday must be most marathon trainers' long-run day. There were a lot of Fuel Belts out.

I didn't see too many characters out today. I saw the military guy - the big dude who is at every NYRR race, shirtless, with his army hat and cheers everyone on - and he said hi to me. I also saw the older glamorous woman who walks and wears the black veil across her mouth and nose. Speaking of walking, there was one race in the Park today - a racewalk that looked pretty intense.

One lesson that came to mind as I ran today's hard run - you can't judge the runners around you. In the Park, where there are tons of people running at the same time, it's so easy to judge whether or not you're better or worse, faster or slower. I was plugging along pretty slowly and didn't pass too many people, while I found myself moving out of people's way more often. There's no way to tell what another runner is doing - whether she's doing a long or short run, whether she's experienced or not, whether or not she's training for anything. So you have to run your own race plan or training run without paying attention to the next guy.

I think that's what this year's marathon is going to be for me. Chicago last year was all about crossing the finish line any way I could, even if it meant that I crawled across the finish. This year I want to finish on my terms - to execute a race plan I intended. If I walk during the New York marathon, I hope it'll be because I planned to - like in these long training runs - and not because I can't bring myself to keep running, as in Chicago.

Sunshine in the Rain

I missed the ideal temperature window to run this morning, and by the time I geared myself up to do the run, it had begun raining. It was about 1:30 by the time I was able to get out there.

I reached a PR for 7 miles today. On Wednesday it took me 1 h 13 min to run 6.7 miles, and today it took me 1 h 5 min to run 7.0 miles. I did a counterclockwise loop of the 5-mile loop (bounded on the north by the 102nd street traverse), with a back and forth on the traverse to add 0.3 miles, followed by the 1.7-mile loop (bounded on the north by the 72nd street traverse). I had a chocolate PowerBar gel at about 45 minutes.

Today's run felt good - there was spring to my step, and my joints didn't hurt at all. I felt faster. Maybe the new shoes really are magic!

It's amazing how truly small yet large the running community is in New York. There's this African-American man in, maybe, his 40's who's clearly a professional runner. He waves to me when I run by. I've seen him on the bridle path and on the 6-mile loop, and he always does a salute to me. It's pretty cool. I felt legit - a part of the running community.

Day of Rest

Today is a scheduled "rest" day. I did Celestine's Yoga II class, and then because I kinda wimped out on yesterday's workout (only 2 miles instead of 3, and no strength training), I hit the stairs in my apartment building. Besides, I need to break in my Lowa mountaineering boots for Mt. Kilimanjaro - can you believe I leave in less than a week?! I only did the 50 flights once up and once down, though; didn't want to take too much wind out of my sails for this weekend.

Magic Shoes

My new Asics GT-2110's just got in from Activa, and I couldn't wait to try them out. Broke them in on the treadmill. 2 miles.

There's no stopping an endurance athlete on a mission

As a beginner runner, one of my pet peeves is not knowing exactly what distance I've run on a training run.

When the training schedule says 3 miles, not a problem, give or take a half mile. But when the schedule says 6, 7, 10, 15 miles...I don't want to do a single tenth of a mile more. Call me a wimp, but Hal Higdon, Jeff Galloway - you're not going to get anything extra outta me!

So imagine when the NYPD had set up a road block along the 6-mile loop on the east end of the 72nd traverse. I panicked. I'd meticulously calculated which loops I would run today in order to fulfill my 7-mile assignment. What was I going to do if they cut off of my route an unknown distance? Unfortunately, my Garmin Frontrunner was on the fritz, so it wasn't reliable. (Maybe I should return it!)

I learned it wasn't only me. Several runners, cyclers and rollerbladers just went around the road block - hardly breaking pace - and sustained shouts from the police who tried to prevent us. But we kept going anyway. There's no stopping an endurance athlete on a mission.

Treadmill Training

Today's assignment was a 3-mile run. Because Hal Higdon suggests that these short-run days be combined with stretching or strength-training, I took the opportunity to do some much-needed upper body lifting. I've read in Runner's World that upper body training is largely useless, particularly because it adds unnecessary weight, but I find that working out my chest and back in opposing sets helps my posture, strengthening my core for running.

I alternated a set of push-ups with assisted chin-ups, a set of incline dumbbell press with lat pull-downs, a set of pec decks with flies, a set of flat bench dumbbell press with seated rows, a set of curls with tricep extensions, and finally a set of front shoulder raises with lateral shoulder raises. It got the heart pumping, and I broke out into a sweat, which warmed me up for my run.

I jumped on the treadmill and set the speed at an easy rate of 6.0 mph. This 10-minute mile setting should be fairly easy, but when I first started, I was huffing and puffing. By the 5th minute I finally settled into a comfortable stride, and I resolved to be patient throughout the entire 30 minutes it would take to run this distance at this pace.

The pace felt good. I felt like I could've continued at that pace indefinitely. So I started to get impatient and began transitioning the workout into a tempo run, eventually increasing the speed to 7.0 mph. I only shaved off maybe half a minute off the 30-minute timeframe it was supposed to take me.

Treadmill runs are largely uneventful, but luckily each unit in my gym has an attached TV, so I got to catch up on my MTV and VH1.

The easiest 13 miles I've ever run

I dreaded today. I'm in the 4th week of Hal Higdon's Intermediate II 18-week program that I've extended to 20 weeks, and this week's long run was 13 miles. I prepared for it, though, gear-wise and psychologically the best I could.

This week I started buying running clothing. I always thought it was silly to buy a $30 nylon-lycra-polyester shirt when I have about 5 dozen T-shirts in my closet. But then I bought a sleeveless running shirt to serve as a liner layer for my hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro next month, and I chanced to wear it running on a 6-mile run.

It was amazing. I was running in North Carolina, where it swelters in the summer from the humidity that adds 10 degrees to the actual temperature, and instead of a shirt that was clinging to my body, the REI shirt felt dry on my skin even though it actually was wet when I used the hem to wipe my face. I was sold. I probably won't give up running in cotton T-shirts, but I definitely will throw on the synthetic blend shirt for the long runs.

I added a couple of shorts, a running hat, and a Fuel Belt to the repertoire, and I realized that the rest was up to me. Last night I laid out the entire outfit - which included synthetic blend underwear - and I pre-selected and packed 2 gels into the Fuel Belt pocket. The final elements were my Oakleys and my Garmin Frontrunner watch.

As I approached the entrance to the 6-mile loop from Columbus circle, I started to feel nervous. I let the expectations go, started the clock, and went on my way. I was already disappointed that I'd stalled so long this morning. I'd wanted to get up and hit the loop at 7:30AM to avoid the 90-degree day it was supposed to be, but I didn't make it out there until after 9AM.

The disappointment and negative talk evaporated in the heat when I got to the 72nd Street traverse and saw a line of runners with bibs running South on the inside lane. It was hard to put my finger on what kind of race it was. The participants were much more athletic than the mixed bag one usually sees on the weekend New York Road Runner (NYRR) races, and their running outfits didn't look quite like running outfits. As I ran north, I realized that it was the running leg of the Nautica New York City 2006 triathlon.

These people were ridiculously in shape. As I watched each man and woman struggle forward, I realized I had nothing to complain about. I was fresh, probably not yet even to the 3rd mile of my run, and these people had swum and cycled what I couldn't do in the hours I was still sleeping this morning. On that last turn towards their finish at the traverse, there were people along the sides of the route cheering racers on, and hearing and seeing them cheer choked me up. I know that feeling - you're in pain and you're digging deep and you're alone. It's only you. It can only be you. No one else will move your feet for you. And then suddenly you hear a voice uttering your name or your number or the words on your shirt, and the sound pulls you along. You're so grateful someone is there with you at the same time you can barely say thank you or nod in gratitude.

This moment of connection is powerful to me.

As I rounded the corner into the descent on the east side of the Great Hill, I realized how much I love the sport of running. A woman was struggling up the incline, but deliberately and strongly, and a man slowly passed her. The man had a prosthetic left leg. As he passed by her left shoulder, she called out, "Great job!" And he called out over his right shoulder, "Hey, you too!" I could barely breathe I was so choked up by this exchange. She was working hard, running uphill, but she still took the time and breath to yell out encouraging words, and so did he.

I realized that, paradoxically, running is the most generous sport out there. It's an individual sport, so you'd think that it would be uber-competitive, but it's really not. It's you discovering just how much your body can do, pushing and pushing back the limits. There may be rivalries, and runners may go head-to-head in a race, but the other runner is really only a reference point to help you figure out your limits. The runners who are missing limbs and/or have prosthetics are doing the same thing - instead of only figuring out their limits with what they have, they're trying to figure out what they can accomplish when something is taken away. Either way, we're all digging deep, reaching for the next peak.

I would get inspired over and over again. I would get choked up every time I saw a group of fans cheering on the runners, every time I saw the pain on a racer's face as he or she ploughed ahead, every time I heard the prosthetic leg pound the pavement.

Central Park also is a unique venue for running and races because I guarantee it's the only place you can be running a race and the people who are cheering you along the way are themselves either running, cycling or rollerblading.

The triathlon, the people cheering, the individual racers - all these things helped make this run the most painless distance above 10 miles I've ever run. I also read Jeff Galloway's advice on www.coolrunning.com website that for these long runs you should run at a pace 2 or 3 minutes per mile more slowly than your normal pace and that you should incorporate 1- or 2-minute walk breaks every 8 to 9 minutes. I was very disciplined about this, and it worked. It forced me to slow down as I first ran the full 6-mile loop, then the 5-mile loop (bounded on the north by the 102nd street traverse), then the lower 1.7-mile loop (bounded on the north by the 72nd street traverse), and as a result I didn't experience the cramping or fluid build-up I remember feeling the first time I ran the 6-mile loop twice.

Another piece of Galloway advice I followed is that I made sure to take a long cool-down walk after the run. As usual, I could only walk very slowly right after I finished the run. To help me continue walking, I took in the sights between the Park and my apartment, and I ran errands. I walked the block around my building, and because the Late Show is there, I popped in to put my name on the lottery for a taping. Then I picked up some spaghetti bolognese to go at Leone's on Broadway between 52nd and 53rd and then did some grocery shopping at Gristede's. By the time I finally settled in my apartment, I was back to walking at my normal city pace, and I didn't cramp up. I still iced and elevated, however, and overall I've taken it easy.

I can't believe I ran 13 miles. It took me 2 h 35 m, and that's perfect. I look at it at running the whole time but at a very disciplined, deliberately easy pace. It felt amazing. And it will definitely make future runs less daunting.

Kicking off

For the first time, I'm training for a marathon...again. I ran Chicago last year and finished, but it was pretty ugly and I didn't train for it. Not really. I think I ran distances above 10 miles 3 times ever before I ran Chicago in October 2005. So this year I'm training for New York, and I'm definitely being more disciplined about it. Let's keep our fingers crossed that I stay focused.

This blog is meant to help me stay disciplined. But it's also meant to help me see my progress as I increase my mileage over the next few months. It's also intended to help me remember the montage of amusing moments I see on my runs here in New York City and, specifically, in Central Park. It's probably hard to believe, but I don't run with an iPod (even though I have one), and since my running partners, Jenna and Scott, have decided to spend the summer and early fall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I run alone. So what do I do to work through the pain on a 13-mile run that can last over 2 hours? There's plenty to see - the gamut of characters that you can only find in a city like New York. There's a story behind everything, and on a long run you get a glimpse of each one if you take the time to look.

So here's to running - and to all the adventures along the way.