What ever it takes!

Bad news, my Hip was bothering me last night after my little downhill sprint in the park yesterday.  I hope I didn't break anything.

I pretty much have the day off of work today, which is lame.  I could have either flown home from Miami for 1 day or come straight here.  I decided I didn't want to sit on the plane that long just to turn around and come back, now I'm thinking I should have just for the airline miles.  Today would have been a great day to run in Central park since I have all day but I decided I needed a break.  Well I woke up at 5:30 with nothing to do so I went to the Hotel Gym.  They have a super cool video spin bike which is just a regular spin bike with a virtual spin class which you can pick your workouts from.  I decided to do the 1 hour interval class.  It was just like being in a real spin class but that video guy never got tired.  Cheater.  It was a really good workout and the screen said I went 18 miles, which seemed about accurate.

Now a whole day off in New York by myself.  And they hotel doesn't have Verses so no Tour De France.  Humm!  I'm pretty lonely can you tell???

P.M. 30 minutes on the elliptical and 30 minutes of weights.

I slept in this morning and didn't get out the door until 6:00, I was kind of shocked that there were hardly any cars or people out.  Then I realized, Oh!  I'm probably the only person in the entire Country that has to work today.  Well, I'm sure some people have to work today, but not many.

Beautiful morning in the park, good temperature but the humidity was a bit stifling.  There was a lady I saw from a distance running with her dog and a baby jogger, when I got closer I saw inside the baby jogger and it wasn't a baby at all, it was another dog.  I thought, now that's a good pet owner, take your dog for a jog in the park even if it's to old or crippled to run itself.

Same Central Park I did last Saturday, once around the long loop, once around the short.  My watch is on the charger now, but I think it was like 9 miles in 1:07.  7:30 avg pace.

Decided I wanted a change of scenery this morning, watching the fireworks from my hotel room window last night gave me the idea to go run the Hudson River bike trail.  I've never done it before but have had a number of people tell me to try it.  got an earlier start 5:30 found the trail right at the Intrepid Aircraft carrier museum and started heading up the river,  I had no idea how far it went but knew it hooked up with Central Park somewhere along the way so that was the initial plan, but the trail kept going and going, I wanted to see how far it went but when I hit the 6 mile mark I decided I'd had enough and 12 miles was probably pushing my still recovering hip so I turned around.

Pretty nice trail, nice and flat and a nice breeze coming off the river.  It was more like running through a land fill a lot of the way with all the garbage left over from firework goers last night.  But other than the stench and trash a very nice run :)

12 miles in 1:30:12  7:31 avg pace.

Kept waking up all night wondering if it was time to go run.  Not sure why I was so excited to go run cause when time finally came I sure didn't feel like it any more.  Legs started out pretty stiff, and I was just all around tired.  Took about 5 miles into my 8 mile run to get in to it.  Plan was to just run an easy pace 8 around the long inner Park circle.  Started out as planned then when I got to the far side of the park I started feeling frisky.  There is a pretty large up hill that cyclists tend to struggle going up, I made it a goal to start passing as many of the straggling cyclist as possible.  I ended up only passing 2 but it was fun anyway.  After that a guy came off of one of the trails about 100 M ahead of me running a pretty good clip so I made it my goal to use him as a rabbit, chased him for about a mile, finally caught him, talked to him for a few seconds and then off I went.  When I got to the turn off I realized I was only going to be 7 miles so I cut across the park on some walking path and met back up with the main road.  Was planning on taking the final loop nice and slow but I sensed that I was now the Rabbit.  I could hear footsteps coming up behind me going up a slight hill.  I looked back and it was some guy who obviously made it his goal to have me for breakfast. (figuratively) I picked up the pace to about 6:00 going uphill and to my surprise he stayed with me, at the top of the hill he started to pass me.  I thought to myself  "come on guy, do you really want to do this?"  He did.  We started going downhill at that point so I hit my 5:35 button (surprised I still had one) after that the poor guy didn't stand a change.  I just started rollin' and never looked back.  I was quite happy to get an un-expected speed workout in and happy to find I still have some kick in my legs.

Now it's time for me to go catch some breakfast.  In the Concierge lounge.

8.5 miles in 1:03:30

I did the Hudson River trail again today because I wanted to try and do some sort of tempo run to evaluate my fitness.  Plus I'm running a 5K race in Wyoming in my wifes hometown next week which 1 year ago I told her I would win it this year.  It will actually be the first 5K I have ever raced.  Strange huh?  Well I have no idea what my 5K speed is, truthfully I have no idea what any pace is at this point.  So I wanted to run a short 2 mile tempo just to see what I could do.  Plan was to just try and go under 12:00 for the 2 miles, I was kind of thinking 5:45 pace in the back of my head.  So I ran down to the trail, ran out to the 5 mile point at 7:05 average pace, turned around got a drink of water, ran 1 mile in 7:30 to try and cool down.  Then I hit the gas, found 5:45 and tried to hang on, did the first 1/4 in 85 which was good, probably to good,  I knew at that point I wasn't going to be able to hold it, next 1/4 in 87 then I just lost it, all but gave up and slowed way down.  Despite feeling sorry for myself for not being able to keep the pace I decided I might as well still get a workout out of it.  So I found 6:20 pace and just kind of stayed there for a while but slowly over the 2 kept getting slower and slower.  2 mile tempo in 12:45  6:22 avg.  Stopped, got a drink and ran the last 2 miles back to the hotel slow feeling bad for myself.  It was awfully humid which I'm sure had something to do with it, but truth is I'm just not in the shape I wish I was, but hey, really what can I expect after 12 weeks off.

I guess I wont be winning the 5K next week.

10 miles in 1:10:55  7:05 avg.

I really like my job, until it interferes with my running.   DS3 went down 3 times last night, I literally did not sleep.  Sometimes you say that because you lay in bed without being able to go to sleep.  Nope, I was actually sitting in front of a computer in a cold dungeon of a telephone room all night long.  Went up to my room at 5:30 am, took a shower, changed my clothes, had a banana and redbull for breakfast and now I'm back in front of a computer screen watching pretty graphs.  So no run!!  Probably for the best, that's when I tend to get injured, when my body is physically drained from working to many hours.

Pretty tough run this morning, not cause I'm out of shape or wasn't ready, but because it was just a pretty tough course.  Ran the entire perimeter of Central Park, pretty much a gradual downhill all the way out and a really steep climb all the way back.  Go figure that!! The cobble stone side walks really beat up the legs and feet.  Was disappointed when I finished the loop and saw that it was only 6 miles, I wanted 14 miles today so I new I'd have to run the entire inner long loop.  Those rolling hills really start to take it out of you!  The hills aren't as steep as hills in Utah but the way they keep rolling really makes it tough. 

They were setting up for what looked like a 10K race in the park today.  My first sign there was a race is a taxi pulled up in front of me coming up 5th Ave and 3 elite Kenyans jumped out.   You can always tell the elite Africans cause they always have on their way too over sized Asics warm-up suits and carrying an extra pair of running shoes by the laces.

Pretty much ran the entire race course, which was cool cause I felt like I was winning.  I was the first one through all the aid stations and was pretty much the only one on the road. No one was cheering for me though. 

Anyway, I was pretty glad to just be done with the loop when I finished and didn't really feel like trying to figure out how to get an extra mile out of it so I just ran back to the hotel and called it good at ~13. 

13 miles in 1:35  7:18 avg pace.  I looked at my watch for distance, but never really let it influence how fast I went.  Just kind of ran the whole time at a "comfortable" pace.