Return to the Park

I haven’t run in Central Park since the Manhattan Half-Marathon over a month ago, so it was a real treat to dash up there after work to meet one of my friends from my first TNT season for a social run.

It’s a perfect plan, really.  Work until 6:15, do the quick-change in my office as if I was running home, run up 5th Avenue to 61st Street, and bingo! Not a minute after I arrive my friend DR crosses 5th Avenue towards me.  I of course am in shorts and a long-sleeved tee-shirt, while she has on a hat, shirt, sweatshirt and running tights. But, at least we matched with our blue eyes and brown hair.

As we are deciding how far we’re going to run, D starts fiddling with this massive fob on her wrist.  A Garmin 350.  Curiosity!  I’ve never seen one this up-close before.  It’s extremely large, I suppose to accomodate its extremely large brain.  In any event, 36:08 minutes later, it tells us we’ve run 3.4 miles, which is about .4 miles than D was hoping to run.

We ran up from 62nd Street along the east side of the park.  I know that side of the park so well, and this time it was a pleasure to be out with the packs (and there were a lot of runners on the footpath).  Sometimes, after too many runs in the park, I take its hills personally.  But, tonight I was content to run the familiar road, and enjoy D’s conversation. At one point our old coach from TNT passed us, but I didn’t recognize anyone else out there. We ended our run deciding to make Thursday evening a standing date at the park;  I hope it holds.

Didn’t get any running in earlier this week; work has been extremely time-consuming lately.  I did, however, lock in my preferred Runner slot for the Green Mountain Relay — I’m runner #7.  Over the three legs, I’ll be running 17.3 miles, which are mostly downhill (net elevation change -1,179). And, I plan to run home from work tomorrow, and then take a long run on Sunday (I am not sure if I’ll have a chance to run on Saturday, since I want to watch Alan Webb and Dathan Ritzenheim battle it out in the USA Men’s 8k Championships).