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.

Night Running

For a city that never sleeps, Central Park at night is at least in nap mode. Instead of kids yelling and cars honking you hear bike spokes whirring and footsteps clomping. And it is a welcome break.

Wednesday’s are going to be my busiest day of the week for the next long block of time. Here’s what I have on tap:

7:30am – Wake up and do ankle exercises that I have do every morning in bed (a lesson from Ron Warhurst back in my high school days).

7:34am – Brew a pot of coffee and have a bowl of cereal. Check out some really important news sites.

8:00am – Get a call from Gags telling me not to run the first mile of my tempo too hard.

8:30am – Head out the door for my run.

8:41am – Meet Will in Central Park and start up the tempo four minutes later.

8:50:24am – Run the first mile of the tempo too hard. Curse at Will under my breath.

9:06am – Finish up my 3 mile tempo in 16:25, getting the pace right for the rest of it.

10am through 5:30pm – A lot of stuff goes on here, and since it was going to be a really long post if I continued with the minute-by-minute update, I’ll start doing some blocks of time. Here is where I make sure to eat some bfast, get in an ice bath at Columbia, head down to work, do some work in usual Mad Men fashion, and then take the god forsaken rush hour train back up town.

6:00pm – Out the door for my evening hill session. It is really nice running in Central at night because it is just a little bit calmer. You can hear your own breathing, can look up at the glowing buildings, and actually relax while running. You can get this in Central at other parts of the day, but it is a lot easier at night.

7:00pm – Get back from the hills (8x100 meters) and make myself some dinner. Today it was burritos. *it most likely will be burritos every Wednesday, considering how much I love burritos.

8:00pm – Let my friend, Krisch, in because he locked himself out of his apartment. Keep him company while watching “Man V. Food” (one of the influences for “Will Run For Food”).

9:00pm – Shower time.

9:30pm – write a runLBP post.

10:00pm – Bedtime. Boom.

And there’s a day in the life. For one of the first times in my life I am really busy, and its actually pretty nice. But it’s 9:58 as I’m finishing up, and as you can see from the schedule, 2 minutes ‘til bedtime. Let’s Go (to sleep)!

Tempo Runs

There are a few times every year where I really question the whole “I want to be a runner thing.” It always seems to happen during a tempo run. I hate tempo runs.

For those unaware, a tempo run is, scientifically speaking, running at your aerobic threshold for a long time, most often in the 20-30 minute range. In layman’s terms, this means being on the edge of trying really hard, but not quite running all out for that period of time. In my terms, it means that it sucks.

Tempo runs are the kind of thing that feel really good for about 10 minutes, and then your body slowly starts to let you know that you’re not supposed to be doing this. Everything starts to shut down, the legs become heavy, the stomach begins to tie up in knots, the shoulders stiffen. But then you have another 10 to 20 minutes to go.

Paul O’Neil of Sports Illustrated once wrote:
“A man who sets out to become an artist at the mile is something like a man who sets out to discover the most graceful method of being hanged. No matter how logical his plans, he can not carry them out without physical suffering.” – “A Man Conquers Himself,” May 31, 1956

I feel this way about tempo runs.

As it turns out, the tempo being one of my weaknesses, Coach Henner has made sure that I have improved upon it. Last fall’s training log was filled with 8 mile tempos, he even through a 10-miler in there once so that I would learn to focus for 55 minutes.

And even as my tempos have improved, they haven’t become any more fun. This past Friday was a 6 miler with three freshman on the team. What was meant to be a progression run of miles at 6:00, 5:50, 5:40, 5:30, 5:20, and finally 5:10 turned into a nice little 6 miler that went 5:37, 5:40, 5:36, 5:31, 5:14, 5:04.

There will be plenty more tempos, and there will be plenty more of me complaining to myself that I have to do them. However, I understand what they mean, and I’ll continue to give them my best shot. The worst part will be the tempo tummy that follows.