Diz-gus-ting - Queen's 10K!

Sunday's Queen's 10K was my remaining goal race for the year so far.

After the marathon and half marathon I went down to 10K hoping to use that leftover higher mileage training to get close to last years 38.11 at the same venue.
Oh well, best laid plans......

The night before there was a thunderstorm. They sent out notice they had delayed the start by an hour to 9am hoping the rain would have stopped and the course would be dry.
I was glad of the extra hour in bed and it seemed to have worked as there was only light drizzle when I left for the train around 7am.

The downside was the humidity was around 94% (21 degrees) and after a couple of miles I could already feel this wasn't going to work out well.

I started a little fast, 5.54 but the 6.06 2nd miles had me right on pace. Then my vest started to weigh me down as it was already soaked in sweat, ha ha.
Nah, more just the humidity started to work its magic and my breathing (and legs) felt heavy. I had to pour water onto my cap at each stop for all the good that did.
I started to slow, 6.16, 6.24 and I knew I wouldn't make that back up.

Mile 6: I'm flying, but inside I'm dead

6.19 and 6.20 was the best I could do to finish in 38.55.

The relief!!!!!

After speaking with a couple of people from the club, on reflection this was a decent time and without the humidity would've been right on last years time.

I came in 61st and 8th in my age group out of the 8650 finishers.

Everybody getting their globe photo

Spectating not racing

Heather and a couple of friends did the Running Of The Balls 5K and or 10K today. I went along to spectate, support and have a little jog around Roosevelt Island cause it's a funky little island to visit!

And of course you get to take the Tram thing back across to Manhattan. I did nearly 4M of light jogging around in prep for tomorrow's Queens 10K. Just watching the weather forecast now though as it's supposed to be rain for sure and chance of a thunderstorm. Aggggghhhhhh, humidity!

Music x3

After seeing the Maccabees supporting Mumford & Sons at Coney Island, they announced they were doing a little show at Le Poisson Rouge, the intimate Bleecker Street venue that we seen Mumford & Sons earlier this year.

We got there about 35 minutes before they went on and timed it just right to get a great view from the left of the stage. It filled up nicely and there seemed to be quite a lot of fans who knew all their songs going way back.

Heather even asked nicely just before they came back on for the encore and the sound guy was nice enough to give here a copy of the setlist to add to our collection.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday night I got to go to Radio City Music Hall for the first time as we saw Belle & Sebastian.

The sound was awesome. The large screen behind them was pretty cool the way it was worked into some songs. They had a few dancers on stage all the way from Scotland and then even brought a little bagpipe action into the end of one song.
It was all seated but pretty much everyone stood after the first song. Combined with last night and running a hard-ish tempo that morning on the way to work killed my quads and calves though, ha ha.
After the next 10K I am definitely getting a massage or two.

Then the following Wednesday we took our camp chairs over to Prospect Park to see, well, listen to Damien Rice. It was a paid Summerstage / Celebrate Brooklyn show so the fences went up but you could obviously still hear it, quite well it turned out.

It was a cold-ish 14 or 15 degree night, combined with it being Damien Rice, meant it was pretty quiet where we decided to sit off to one side on the top of a little hill.

Amazingly when he came on stage he stood right in the gap between the poles and bandshell frame so we had something to focus on rather than just hearing the sound. Sitting in your camp chair, drinking and eating a snack is more like it. Although we left with about 4 songs to go as we were just too cold by that point.

The view in front of us

The normal view

The megazoom view!

Definitely looking forward to going back for more free cheap seat shows, Interpol, Punch Brothers and Willie Nelson to come.

Al Goldstein PPTC 5K #2

Last Wednesday was the next round of midweek 5K racing.
I tried my lighter shoes this time and the weather was a little cooler so I had hopes of going close to my 18.19 from a couple of weeks ago.

There was a bit of a course change though as the park was heaving last Wednesday.
National Running Day meant NYRR had a stall at one entrance, no doubt enticing a few more out for a run.
More importantly it was the first in the Summer Concert Series at the Prospect Park Bandshell so as well as the line to get in being insane there were a crap tonne of people all over the top end of the park and even food carts stuck in the pedestrian/running lanes.

So it was two lower loops. A very slight uphill, downhill then the regular flat-ish run along the bottom of the park.

The start was a little funny as there were about a dozen kids who all lined up right at the front. Although when the gun went they were a bit all over the place as kids tend to be and a few runners were a bit put off as it was a little crazy for the first 200m.

The slight downhill led me to a crazy 5.38 first mile. But I managed a 6.03 2nd mile and another strong 5.53 finish. 23rd out of 318 and 3rd in my age group.

So I ran a PB of 18.17 on National Running Day. Nice!

Coney Island in the rain

It had sounded so good at the time. The Maccabees and Mumford & Sons at MCU Park, a small minor league baseball stadium just on the other side of the beach at Coney Island. A nice Summer night in June, shorts, tee....
Well, it was nice weather the few days before but it rained heavy the night before and it lingered all day long making it a little bit cold and damp, a bit of a novelty at this time of year as it's normally still warm when it rains as it's more thunderstorm weather.
I'd never seen so many ponchos at an event!

Anyway, it didn't ruin the gig. The venue was really cool with the Coney Island theme park stuff in the background. Both bands sounded awesome and after a bit of initial shuffling position we got a really good view off to the side.