Has anyone registered for the 5-mile NYRR Anniversary Run in Central Park? It’s on June 4th, at 5:30 in the morning! I’m definitely running it, in fact I’ve already signed up. Here are five reasons (one for each mile) you all should, too:
- It’s a NYC Marathon qualifying race.
- It’s free to register. (FREE, people!)
- Five miles before work!! Five miles of superiority!!
- Celebrating our [club’s] anniversary together.
- Another chance to prove what a crazy runner you really are.
The Anniversary Run is a weekday race. There’s something very summery about weekday races, as they are official, on-the-clock indications that our recreation has pushed its way out of the weekend window, and is now filling in the extra hours of daylight we all get during the week. Corporate Challenges, the AHA Wall Street Run, Media Challenges… I’ll race ’em all!
Home from work today in under 30 minutes (29:53; 8:32 pace, 3.5 miles) for the first time ever. Kind of a landmark event. I’ve been waiting for it to happen, I knew it would come. Of course, I was helped along by leaving work as late as I did — there is considerably less traffic at 7:20 PM, I probably saved 2 minutes not waiting at intersections. It still means, though, that rather than my goal being to get home under 33 minutes, I’ll now be shooting for under 30. In the scheme of a runner’s world, I’m still not fast. But, I can feel myself becoming less slow. My successes here, whether quotidian or personal bests, are a treasured consolation on a bad day.
All this without regular tempo runs, speed workouts, or hill training. Naughty, naughty me. Let me pull down my old Runner’s World magazines… I’m looking for the issue that presents Ryan Hall’s half-marathon training plan, as adapted for mere mortals. Here it is, on the top shelf, August 2007. What I like about this plan is that the weekly mileage never exceeds 46 miles. And oh yeah — I also like that Ryan Hall did it (or something like it).
If I follow the 10-week plan for the July 27th New York City Half-Marathon, I’ll have to start this Tuesday with Week 1. However, I don’t yet know if I’ll get in to that race through the lottery. Really, I was planning to use this training program for the Queens Half, in August, but a quick scroll through the NYRR race calendar shows that it went from scheduled (8/23) to not even on the calendar. WTF. By the time Staten Island Half rolls around in September, I’ll be waist-high in training for the NYC Marathon. Considering all of this, I’m going to stick with Plan A and expect the Queens Half sometime in August, and train for that.
On my run home today, my wandering brain took me through the following scenario. I meet my running goals for the year (complete the Half-Marathon Grand Prix; run a sub-2-hour half; run a sub-4:30 NYC) and buy myself the self-promised Garmin Forerunner 405. It’s a crisp November afternoon, and I’m heading home, on a recovery run. My Garmin happily tracks my every move from midtown office to Sunnyside coop. And what do I discover upon my arrival? The route I thought was 3.5 miles, for years, from my tracks on gmap-pedometer, is actually 3.3, (or worse, 3.1 miles) and all the “fast” runs home suddenly convert to chump runs. For sure that would suck. But, how bad could it be, because if that Garmin is on my wrist, it means that I still ran at the right level to meet my goals, even if my jiggity-jigs weren’t quite as jiggy as I thought.
How bad could it be, indeed.
Pigtails Flying 