The Wind, The Wind

RIVERBANK...

It felt like I got the wind knocked out of me and socked in the groin at the same time. I was running a 500 last Friday at Red Bank Regional High School and was rounding the turn into the 200 meter mark when it happened. Whabam! I was stopped cold. No matter how hard I pumped my arms or how quickly I picked up my legs, I couldn’t go fast enough. I thought it was one of the windiest days I had ever worked out on. But I forgot about the Riverbank Track at 145th St.

This morning was one of the worst possible days to run. Rainy, humid, and WINDY. The track is right on the Hudson River next to a sewage plant (I always used to joke that I had eaten the wrong foods if we ever worked out there at Columbia), and the gusts are plain foolish. I have been doing my tempos in Central Park, which is a little tough because of the hills, but I would have loved to be there this morning blocked from the howling wind. Instead, kicking up puddles of water in my face were Will and Delilah as we all took turns taking the brunt of the wind.

I have no one to blame except myself however. I have consistently chosen windy tracks as places to train my entire running life. And the least windy track I have ever been on (aside from high school), wasn’t even a full 400 meters.

The Bath track has actually been the least problematic weather-wise of all the tracks that I have called home. It would get some gusts on the back-stretch here and there, but overall it was a darn good high school track.

The Baker Field Track opened my eyes to what winds could be. Situated on the northernmost tip of Manhattan, it gets some bursts of wind off the Hudson as well. It also seemed that whenever it was calm there, someone, *cough*CoachWood*cough*, would mention how calm it was and within minutes a monsoon would be approaching.

The Duke Ellington Track at Georgetown didn’t have many meteorological mishaps, but 4 and ¾ laps to a mile? C’mon.

Now, my two main home tracks are Rutgers and Riverbank. Somehow, Rutgers is windy as hell. Not as bad as Riverbank, but not much is.

Nothing you can do about weather, unless you choose to live somewhere with great weather. But in my mind, it’s not really worth it. I’d rather live in New York and toughen myself up than somewhere without wind. Now if only it would stay light past 5pm.