Another race and something new

Saturday I did a 10k in Central Park for my fourth qualifying race. This time, it was the Healthy Kidney 10k. According to my trusty Forerunner 205, it took me 1:01:27 to run 6.3 miles, a 9:45/mile pace. The official time was 1:01:29 over 6.2 miles, for 9:55 a mile. Either way, I've done 4 out of the 9 races I'll need in order to qualify for guaranteed entry to the 2010 NYC marathon.

I wasn't even going to go out tonight. I hadn't done anything between the 4 mile race on Sunday and the 10k on Saturday, that stupid IT band thing was hurting, and it was already dark out and my gym was going to close too soon. But, Beth was going to go for a run, and far be it from me to let her beat me, so off I went.

I got dressed to go out in warm clothes, and I was about to go out, when I realized I was dressed from neck to ankle in black at 10:15 pm. Considering how stupid I think pedestrians are when I'm driving and they're dressed all in black at night, I figured I'd better do something about that. It turns out I don't own anything reflective, and there's no way to attach my bicycle lights to my shirt. So I got the yellowest shirt I owned, threw it on top of the black, and headed out. There are plenty of benefits to dressing safely, chiefly not getting hit by a car, but looking good is not one of them.

I did two new things tonight. First, I did the same 2.5 mile loop around Russell Gardens that I've done plenty of times before, but I've always done it clockwise, so I reversed it. It's pretty remarkable how much a route can change just by switching directions. Suddenly you notice inclines that were too slight to feel like downhills when you had done it the other way. I'm pretty sure the uphills were tougher counterclockwise, so between that and and other new thing I did, I modified the loop the second time a keep a little of it a little more flat, but I still kept the biggest hills.

The second new thing I did was that I added sprint intervals. In addition to the last .2 miles, I had 3 quarter mile sprints and one 1/8 mile sprint (only because that section was flat for less distance than I expected). For those I did about 8 min miles, and the rest of the time I did about 9:50 miles, ending up with an average pace of 9:28 over 5 miles. It was definitely not the longest run I've done, but with the inclines and the sprints, it was one of the more challenging runs I've done.

1/3 of the way to guaranteeing entry

After being sidelined from running with what my cousin diagnosed as IT Band Syndrome for about a week and a half, I was finally completely pain-free on Thursday and Friday, and with a race in Central Park scheduled for Sunday, I went out for a jog on Friday evening when I got back from work. My sister was in town and wanted to join, so she and I headed out for a 5k loop around Russell Gardens and part of Great Neck Estates.

About halfway through, my sister had to stop to walk (she has a bad back), but she told me to keep going, so I did. The rest of the run felt like it was entirely uphill. It was just like having a conversation with Beth. Still, I did it, in under 30 minutes, and with not that much pain in my leg after.

The next day, my cousin told me it would be alright for me to take some of my brother-in-law's mobic, a prescription anti-inflammatory, to keep my leg from getting bad again, and it turns out, mobic is my new best friend. That stuff works great. I took it before the 4 mile race on Sunday, and never felt any pain, other than some soreness for a couple of days after.

This week, I have a 10k in the park on Saturday morning, and I'm hoping that I'll have time to get 4-5 miles in tomorrow night to stay loose for it, since I've done nothing since the race on Sunday. This stupid class that I'm taking to stay licensed as an attorney in New Jersey has taken up basically all of my free time, though, and I need to finish homework for that before I can go out to run.

Oh, the pain...

So, that little new pain I mentioned at the end of my last post? The one that started creeping in while I was walking home to cool down? Yeah...that turned into what has now been almost a week of pain. It forced me into a pretty ugly limp, especially going up stairs. Luckily, after being at a consistent level of hurting until Saturday, I woke up Sunday much improved, and I think I'm up to about 80%. Still, since I'm ridiculously busy for the next three nights, I'm going to keep resting the leg until Friday, when I'll head out and see if I can do a 5k, in preparation for the 4 mile race I'm doing on Sunday (Mother's Day). Should be fun.

I know what you're thinking..."Where's Beth been? She's the funny one." First of all, you're wrong. She's not funny. Second, she's just a lazy slacker. No big deal. She's just not as good a person as I am.