The last 8 weeks!

Took a mini mid-season break with 8 days off with only 1 light trail run and a massage filling my time.

Then I dived straight back into it with the next round of PPTC speed sessions on the Tuesday and one of the midweek 5K series races. That didn't go great, mainly as it was around 26 degrees and a bit humid. 19.10 was my time, and a lot of lost fluids.

We 'celebrated' 4th July. Not really, just went up on the roof where we could watch the fireworks display they have on the East River.

The iPhone camera doesn't really do it justice!

We have decided to do the Philadelphia Marathon which is third week of November, a couple of weeks after the New York Marathon which so many people here seem to be training for.
So I drew up my plan, hovering between what I did before and the next mileage level up, we'll see!

The heat is one of the main disadvantages to any distance running at this time of year. If you can get out before 7am, it's generally nice running to work but unless you wait until after the sun goes down, and a lot of people do, you just suck it up like I do and head out from work around 4.45pm. It's normally just the first hour that the sun is really bad then it's just down to how humid it is!

Sleeping in the bath, it's that hot.

At least I don't have a fur coat.

I'm coming up for six weeks in and just hit 17M last Sunday. So far so good, I'm doing a few of my long runs with English Ben from the club. I'm not used to that distance (other than races) without music but the chat is enough of a distraction and also plotting the routes to show him a few new areas of Brooklyn.

I wouldn't run many races during the training as they tend to just get in the way of a regular plan but then I was persuaded to enter the NYRR Team Championships 5M.
It is only open to club runners and the men and women run separate races with each club generally cheering on their runners from their own little cheering sections out on the course.

 
A lot of the bigger clubs have their own little baggage and food area in Central Park and the support zone was a novelty as the cheers were so loud as you ran through it.

Unfortunately it was super sunny and hot, so much so that it was the first race I've done where when I picked up my number the day before, it came with an info sheet.

Plus I started a little far back so I took it easy-ish for 4 miles then went hard for the last mile, finishing with a 5.59 last mile for 31.44 and helping the Masters team to 9th place overall.

Thanksgiving Turkey Trot

Busy week. Monday night we went to see Interpol at Terminal 5.

So didn't get to bed until late. Tuesday I had my 2nd week of speed sessions, 8 x 400m which I actually kind of enjoyed although it was really warm inside so I definitely need to go back to storage and take some shorter shorts out.
We were really busy with customer orders at work due to the various sales going on at the moment too.

Thursday was the start of Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if it just used to be Thursday but now includes Black Friday shopping, Thanksgiving weekend and then your Cyber Monday online shopping day!

I entered what will be my last race of 2014, the Prospect Park Track Club's annual Turkey Trot. A 5M trot of a lap and a half of Prospect Park.
A good price, a nearby start but really more so I could eat all the food later without feeling quite so guilty.

Can you guess what the race give-away was?

Weather was a windless couple of degrees and the start was at 9am so I tried to time it and jogged over around 8.40am. The start was actually a little further over through the Center Drive road than I thought so I ended up arriving at 8.57am and as they were starting in the direction I was entering from I stepped over the start line, turned around and 2 minutes later we were off!

The roadway is narrow so the other people turning up late had to wait to get past so they could start by crossing the timing chip mat.

I had a fast start, 6.12 then remembered that it was 5M's and not the 5K that I'm used to doing in this park.

 

So 6.39 along the bottom and then 6.55 including up the hill.
Once I crested the hill at Grand Army, I rolled up my sleeves, settled in to track a couple of other runners and did a 6.24 mile.

 Then with a strong finish I did another 6.12 through the line for a total time of 32.24, 32nd out of a decent field of 2279 and 3rd in my age group. A decent training session too when you add in the jog there and the jog home.

That made 22 races for the year which when I thought about it sounded a lot when you think that's a race every 2-3 weeks.
I'm also well over running 400 more miles than I did last year although I've only done half the amount of biking too!

Onto the food! Late afternoon we went round to Heather's cousins. They had a couple of friends round and everyone brought a couple of dishes round. Thanksgiving food is like our Christmas dinner so I had WAY too much food.

There was a spectacular ham, mushroom gratin, potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables, mac n cheese, chicken adobo & rice. Then obviously dessert consisted of a little of everything; ice cream, ginger cookie, sweet potato/pumpkin pie, lemon bar and of course some apple pie.
Haven't been so full for a long time.

I had to work Friday morning but luckily I am down in shipping so had minimal contact with the tonnes of customers that were swarming all over the store on Black Friday, I mean it's not like we sell tv's!