Training Week 3 & 4

Just about managing to keep up with my training schedule. Work ocasionally gets in the way, ha ha.
I had to work a footwear shift on Sunday last week and I stupidly ran 14M miles on the way to work then worked 8 hours on my feet. I'd gotten there early enough to stretch and eat and the first couple of hours were fine but after that I was in a daze, the last couple of hours my feet and quads were aching.

The weather almost forces you out earlier as it's generally been 10 degrees hotter later in the day. Back home, I was lucky if I was out of bed by 8.30am now I'm managing short runs on the way to work and even ran 7M one day finishing just after 7am, oh how times have changed!

Ran an 18.50 in last weeks PPTC 5K and felt strong all the way if not fast. I am also enjoying the long runs at the weekend, the pace is a lot slower than I'm used to and I've been running in new areas too.

Week 3: 43 Miles - included my 14M run in 2 hours which is probably the longest run I've ever done.
Hopefully I'll be saying that every couple of weeks from now on though!
Week 4: 31 Miles

It all starts here

I took a couple of weeks off running after the Queen's 10K. I cycled a lot, over 130miles and ate a lot of cake.
On a Sunday with no World Cup games we tried to head up to Williamsburg to see this giant sugar sculture.

The old Dominos sugar factory is being torn down and an artist had created this large sugar woman/sphinx sculpture out of sugar along with some (melting) resin sculptures.

NYTimes

animalnewyork.com

Unfortunately we didn't get there until about 30 minutes after it opened for the day and when we rounded the corner to see the queue was over a mile long, in the baking sun, we decided after a couple of minutes that we weren't going to wait. So we went for brunch instead!

a giant mural side of a cinema in Williamsburg

I'm just finishing week two of my marathon training. First couple of runs it certainly felt like I hadn't ran for two weeks, my legs felt disconnected from the rest of my body!
I made up a training plan myself based off two main plans I found online along with some responses I got to questions I posted on the Runner's World marathon forum. The marathon has a lot more variation in possible training compared to races of up to half marathon distance. I think I just have to be ready to react and adapt the plan as it's rare to follow a 16 week plan to the letter.

It also takes a lot of planning especially as I've tried to do a few of the shorter runs before starting work at 8am. That has involved leaving kit and food at work the day before along with my glasses, iPhone charger lead, etc. I've found it takes longer than you think if you want to do a little bit of stretching before showering and eating, before starting work! I've ran over the Brooklyn Bridge at 7am a couple of times though, pretty cool, have never ran there before.

I just managed an 18.45 5K on Wednesday in Prospect Park and despite being slower for the first two miles I managed a 5.41 last mile down the hill and felt a lot better than when I finished last time.

Wk1 32 miles, Wk2 39 miles

Thunder & Lightning

I don't really see much news programming here especially during the World Cup but it is hurricane season and I found out Hurricane Arthur is moving through North Carolina and heading up towards New England and out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Well, New York got hit last night with some pretty amazing thunder and lightning.

I was home and on the couch by the time it started getting ominously dark just before 7pm and then the thunder and lightning started followed by some heavy rain then more thunder and lightning that seemed to last for ages.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

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Bryan Pace for New York Daily News

This shows the flooding that occurred three avenues down the hill form us, luckily it's a fairly steep hill (Park Slope!) down to the canal.

Queens 10K

Next up in the NYRR 5-Borough Series was Sunday's Queens 10K.

 
After May's half marathon I tried concentrating on more distance endurance rather than the speed sessions I did last year and also took part in quite a few weekly 5K races instead.
I felt I had more stamina at this point in the year and had made the Queen's 10K my next target with the hope of getting under the 39 minute mark. Indeed, with my last couple of 5K times I actually thought I might be able to hold a mile pace of 6.10 especially on a near flat course.

I took the F train out to Queens, seeing a couple of runners join the train at each stop. Then by the time I switched to the 7 train to head further out to the 2nd last stop the train was completely full with runners and spectators. When we exited it was like going to a football game or something. There is a long wooden walkway from the station over to the tennis court and park entrance and it was just a sea of runners.

Flushing Meadows Corona Park. I've been out here and across the road a couple of times to where the Mets play baseball but never over to the park on the other side, in the shadow of where the US Open tennis is played. It was also my first close-up sighting of the Unisphere. Famous from the World's Fair Expos, whatever they were!

I didn't really see much of the sights during the run as I was too busy concentrating, ha ha. It helped this time that the paths were reasonably wide and there were enough runners, over 8400 finishers, that I could just do my own thing unlike the smaller races where you end up racing the same couple of people for almost the entire race.

©NYRR

©NYRR

My mile splits were 6.02, 6.00, 6.13, 6.22 (tiny uphill), 6.09, 6.08 (& 1.14). For a really pleasing 38.11 finishing time. 62nd overall and 7th in my age group. My 5K split was 18.57 which is like my 4th fastest 5K as well, ha ha.

It was also probably one of the last chances to get a decent race in before the temperatures take their toll on me. My mouth was so dry during the entire race, I took a cup of water at three of the stops, didn't drink any, just rubbed some over my lips.
The sun was out in full force before 9am and I noticed from this picture below that they must've turned on a hose not long after I passed by.

©NYRR

They took a couple of good pictures out on the course, I'm sure a few people will buy them with the globe in the background.

Dug out the short shorts

Like a few other people I wandered over afterwards and had a look and took a couple of pictures.

Got a pretty nice race tee for a change too.

On the way back I stopped off on 5th Avenue back in Brooklyn and hit up the farmers market for a couple of goodies, including a small cherry pie and then ate some gelato while I took the bus a few stops to home.
As usual, it felt like I'd been away for ages but I was still home at noon, just in time to drift in and out of sleep while watching the World Cup. A couple of hours in the sunshine gets me every time!

To the beach

The thermometer has been creeping up recently. It's been hovering around 20º but over this weekend it was up to 26º. Difficult to get up early this weekend to run in slightly cooler weather as I played soccer on Friday night and kick off wasn't until 10.45pm therefore I didn't get home until around 1am! Plus we were a player short so I ended up running a lot more than normal.

Saturday I did a 7M run with a 5M tempo in the middle, sticking near the cemetery and then the park perimeter. That was hard going especially the last mile being slightly uphill and I was laid out on the couch later that day.

This morning was an easy 8M-ish and for a change I decided to run somewhere different, the beach!
We are about 6 1/2 M from Coney Island and the last stop on the F train runs there so I could just take the train home.

Ran over to the park and then down through some streets with really nice big houses. Then onto Ocean Parkway where the Brooklyn Half route goes. The downside is it's just one long straight blast all the way, counting off the lettered Avenues from about K through to Z. The plus point was for most of the route there was an element of shade from the trees and I even started running on the grass for a while.

I perked up a little when I could feel the ocean breeze and the thought of seeing some new-ish scenery. Plus I got to top up on water and soak my cap.

In the end I did just short of 8.5M and because it was going to take 30mins to get home I thought I better get a little food in me.

When in Rome....

That was a nice change for a run, I spent about 20 minutes hanging out on the boardwalk while watching the people piling off the trains headed for the beach. When we start marathon training I'm going to need some new routes for the long runs. As much as I love Prospect Park I need a change especially if I'm running there during most of the week.

And now I'm on the couch again, trying to keep my eyes open but so far we are resisting turning the air conditioner (money burner) on as it's not really humid yet.

This will be our newest cats first summer and she is already finding it getting warmer in the house. At night we find her lying in the dark on the mat in the bathroom and probably not connected but we recently found that she finds the bathroom tap intriguing. She tries to drink out of the tap but it runs down her face as she chases the water stream.

Another new PB

Wednesday night was the 2nd of the PPTC 5K series. I went off faster than the previous one to see if I could improve on last times 18.24 effort. I guess these little midweek events on the same course let you try and approach the race differently to see what best works.
So it was a 5.57 opening mile up the hill, then a 6.04 2nd mile followed by a 5.44 downhill and 33 sec slog where I had nothing left.
The clock came into focus right on 17.59 and I really was hanging on as it was a bit warmer that night too. 18.21! A few seconds shaved off I guess although I get the feeling that going off a little slower and trying to finish faster feels the way to go but you just get carried along with who you're racing alongside too.
Trouble is, it's only going to get warmer and more humid here as the weeks go by!

Walkabout

After I got a glimpse of the area near the top of Central Park when I walked to the Riverside run a couple of weeks ago I thought it looked like a nice place to go back for a better look.
We haven't done this for a while but Heather and I went back on Saturday for a wander around the neighbourhood.

We got the subway up into Harlem then walked over to Morningside Heights which then leads down into the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We had a little wander through Columbia University grounds which were open as it was the end of graduation so they had a tents up and people taking photos, the immaculate grounds and imposing libraries show why it costs $100,000 a year in tuition.

Just a block away, the Cathedral Church of St John the Devine was impressive.

 
We had lunch in the little park next door which had a children's sculpture garden with an undersea theme.

It started to rain on and off and Heather needed to collect stuff from work so we took the bus all the way down from 99th to 42nd street. In amongst the tourist throng in Times Square there was a couple getting their wedding photograph taken.

Then on the way home we stopped off in Brooklyn Bridge Park where there were at least two other wedding parties including one beside the carousel with a large contingent of men in kilts. We got a bit of Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes as we walked around them.