9 miles in 63 at 6:30am at Rockefeller, starting and ending at Gory Brook. It was cooler than previous days (about 75). Here in the East, during summer it often never gets below 70 or 75, even at night. Avg pace was 7:04 and avg HR was 151. I ran fairly easy but threw in 6 or 8 pickups lasting, say, 30 seconds to 2 minutes each. My legs accepted these only grudgingly. When you have lifted hard the previous day, you really can feel exactly what muscles running uses. In particular, my hips were feeling it today when I tried to pick it up. After I finished my legs felt pretty beat up. The ol' knees are aching but nothing out of the ordinary. Took an ibuprofen and will ice later.
Stopped to look for a cougar around 4 miles. Timed it to run past the visitors' center where they have porta-johns. I saw some of the local Africans training this morning. They are "sub-elite" or semi-pro, not internationally competitive, but it still gives me a little thrill to see them training. I think they all have day jobs and just try to scrape up $500 or $1000 at the local and regional races. If there is prize money at a local race, there will always be some of the local Africans there. If you can run 5 miles in 24:00 and it feels like a tempo run and win a couple hundred bucks, why wouldn't you?
Khalid Khannouchi, US record holder in the marathon, lives in Ossining and sometimes trains at Rockefeller too, though I've never seen him. Anyway, towards the end I passed a woman who I think is Kenyan and lives in Sleepy Hollow, and I said hi. I have to admit it gave me a tiny bit of satisfaction to pass her. Well, you know what, later my wife said she had seen her cranking out intervals on the trail, so I guess by the time I passed her she was warming down. I guess that's a little sad to feel like a stud for passing a woman on her warm-down.
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