Back in the Brooklyn/NYC Saddle Again!

It's good to be home. Went out for my typical training run and ended up competing a good one. Misty, threatening rain the entire time...but I made it and did a pretty good job.



Details -

Distance: 9.33 miles
Time: 1:14:30
Pace: 8 min per mile (spot on)

Only real comment is that I'd thought that my original version of this included a trip around City Hall, so I ran around City Hall after coming out of the South Street Seaport. Turns out that loop is new and different from before. Compare this result to my run on March 11th - there I ran 8.71 miles in 1:13. Here I did 9.33 in a minute longer. Again I didn't 'push it' at all, just nice and steady and easy. Felt great. Excellent to be back at it. Perhaps those hills that I ran in Belgium paid dividends on this run? I felt a slightly better push off during my stride and definitely maintained a better cadence than before.

A final thought - I signed up for the 100 miles in 31 days Challenge at MapMyRun.com. So I have 31 days from today to get the 100 miles in. I'm at 9.33 - so I have 90.67 miles to go. I figure that I can average 3.3 miles per day for this next month...why not? It's a good challenge at least.

Stockholm Syndrome

Meeting went on and on. Needed to get out and run despite my hacking cough and occasional shooting pain down my right thigh (from coughing too hard and potentially from a wee bit of lactic acid in there from the hills of Genval, see below).

Ran for 1:06 and got in 7.5 miles and got lost. So in the end I probably ran another 1.5 miles trying to find the hotel - which I did but not in time for dinner.

Missing dinner was actually a good thing as I had a glass of wine with the team (for my heart and to be social) and felt as though I didn't miss anything. These meetings sometimes feel like feeding frenzies.

Miss my heart rate monitor - need to replace that bad boy soon.

And by the way it was pitch black, great for seeing the City lights but horrid for being in a 100 acre park that you've never visited in the day!

The hills of Genval

Ran twice around the Lake (Lac) with Dom(e) Hein aka Pierre. After the warm up, headed to the long hill that my hosts used to live on. Then, in around 4 minutes per go I ran up hill 0.4 miles on average each time. After each run I walked back to the lowest point and started again. The best news was that I ran the last loop as quickly as any of the others.

Today my bum hurts, so perhaps I made some progress, perhaps. I'll throw these kinds of runs into my weekly pursuit of completing the 2009 Marathon as I hear that it's important to push the lower body's muscle groups vis-a-vis hill runs like this.

Given all the walking the time frame of the workout isn't really relevant. Although I did beat my time from the day before on the laps of the lake!

Early evening Genval Run

Visiting Dom and Mlo I couldn't help but to run around their lake.

22:40 for two laps wasn't bad.

Grandfather's 90th celebratory run

Got up early and jumped out for a long, slow run. Was cold and rainy - 38 degrees f

took around 1 hour 8 minutes to complete the loop. Felt great to be in the old neighborhood of my grandparents. Sure miss the Pacific weather.

Since islands are surrounded by water

one can jog around both sides - my typical run goes straight across Manhattan (from Brooklyn of course) and then around the southern most part of Manhattan. Now I have discovered another route - this time on the East River.

Run: basic fitness run
Route: my watch said 8.71 miles



Time needed : 1:13
This suggests that I would have been on course to match my best 15k time of 1:14 or thereabouts - which is amazing since the only time I pushed it was on the way back across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Lesson learned: taking time off to rest the bones and muscles is important!

Long holiday from running & travel as well

I've been quiet on the streets and quiet on the blog for some time.

First of all, I've managed to come back from my UK, France, UK trip with a cold. Second, I suppose that it's good to take some time off on the knees every now and again.

First the surf trip

Went on a short jog around Tooting Bec with Dr. Thom of Dr. Thom's Clinic. We jogged for about 3 miles and called it a day.

Later that Friday, we flew to France and surfed south of where we were staying in Biarritz. Since I didn't catch any waves there, I won't tell you where I was.

Saturday was different. Following our resident LK (Local Knowledge) we went on this trip:
Surfed for two sessions of a total of 4 hours (2.5 plus 1.5)
Caught too many waves and they were long ones. Can conclude that running does zero for one's upper body - at least not mine. So I struggled. But the cold water didn't help either.

Had a blast, came back sick - what can you do? Wanted to run today (first day that I felt up to it) but didn't/couldn't find the time with my Mom leaving town (thanks Mom!) and a trip to our cousin's to get some baby clothes.

Shots of the surf trip - here