Category — Larry

Sunday (2/24) I went on another running journey with my friend Larry through New York City. We started out with a partial lap of Prospect Park, exiting through Grand Army Plaza and then down to Lafayette Street where we picked up the NYC Marathon course. The roads were a bit icy, but not too bad, although on occasion my foot would hit the occasional icy puddle and get cold and soggy. The course was nothing new at this point and we slowly and steadily made our way through Fort Greene into Williamsburg.

Once in Williamsburg, we stopped for a moment at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration . It’s supposedly the most beautiful cathedral in Brooklyn. Either way it made for a nice picture so I stopped and snapped a photo. We then ran into McCarren Park for a quick stop at the comfort station. Normally at this point we would then head for the Williamsburg Bridge, but today we decided to go for the 59th Street (Queensborough) Bridge.

To get to the 59th Street Bridge, we picked up the NYC Marathon course again and headed towards the Kosciuszko Bridge for our trip into Queens. The Kosciuszko Bridge is the half way point of the NYC Marathon and in my opinion one of the more difficult parts of the course. The view from the bridge is spectacular though. We were fortunate to come across someone walking over the bridge at the same time we were crossing it and asked this person to take a picture of us. Here we are on the bridge with the picture looking southwest towards midtown Manhattan and the Empire State Building. The Newton Creek runs below the bridge and separate Brooklyn from Queens at this point. I also took a picture of the skyline alone so you can get a better idea of the view from here.

Once over the Kosciuszko, we ran through Long Island City towards the 59th Street Bridge. Larry and I talked about a future run in which we would skip the 59th Street and head to the Tri-Borough Bridge instead. In the meantime though, we kept running and made a pit stop at corner bodega about a half mile from the bridge. The pit stop was just in time as I was getting a bit hungry and I unfortunately forgot to bring some Hammer Gel with me, so I bought a Snickers bar and a Gatorade to refuel. It wasn’t what I preferred to eat, but it will do in a pinch. Honestly though when it comes to ultra running, you need to train your stomach to take on a variety of foods which includes something solid; not just gels.

After eating and drinking we made our way onto the 59th Street Bridge. This was undoubtedly the least pleasant part of our run. Only the north side of the bridge was open for running, which meant that you didn’t get the nice views of Manhattan. Plus this side was in the shade and also very icy, in addition to being very cold, windy, noisy and had freezing water dripping down on us from the upper roadway. I would have liked to have gotten several pictures from the bridge, but it was pretty miserable on it and I really didn’t feel like stopping. The only picture I took was looking north from the bridge, on the east side of Roosevelt Island. The most distinguishing landmark of this picture is the smoke stacks which were featured in the movie Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts.

Once we made our slow miserable way off of the bridge, we headed south on First Avenue until we could make our way onto the East River Greenway. The East River was flat as glass and the path offered great views of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Manhattan skyline and was just in general a very pleasant place to run. As we made our way south, we ran into another ultra runner that Larry knew, so we stopped to chat for a while. This gave me an opportunity to take one last picture during the run. What you see here is a view of the east river looking north towards the 59th Street Bridge from somewhere around the 30’s (streets between 30-39th Street).

Once we got going again, we decided it would be non-stop until we made it back home. We ran along the East River path under the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges and made our way onto the north side of the Manhattan Bridge. We once again did a nice tempo run over the bridge into Brooklyn and made our way back up Flatbush Avenue, through Grand Army Plaza and back into Prospect Park to complete the loop we started earlier that morning. As we approached our normal exit/entrance to the park Larry asked me if I wanted to go for the extra distance and run down the hill to the Ocean Parkway exit to tack on a couple of extra miles. We were approaching 22 miles at this point and I could feel my pace slowing down a bit so I decided that I had enough for the day and said that we should just call it a day. I also figured that I should perhaps taper a little bit as only a week from now I will be doing the Camseutt 50K out on Long Island. Larry gave me no argument, so we exited the park at the Bartel Pritchard entrance and made our way to the local bagel store for some post workout bagels.

I was a bit tired after this run. I could feel it in my muscles. I attribute that mostly to having taken the past few days off running due to skiing and avoiding running due to shin pain. I hate how it feels like I lose fitness so fast. But maybe I am being just too hard on myself and this new course was a little tougher than I’ve been used to. Anyway, I knew I needed to refuel, so I make a delicious shake consisting of Soy Milk, Chocolate Syrup, 2 Scoops of Recoverite and some Malted Mix. I drank that along with eating Peanut Butter and Jelly on a Multi-Grain bagel. It was a lovely and quick and easy meal. I was satisfied with how my shin felt during the run, although I will admit it was a bit painful the next day. I am really going to need to learn how to ignore this pain so that I don’t even recognize it anymore.

Tuesday night was the first snowfall of the year and I went running in it. It was my regularly scheduled Tuesday night run with my friend Larry and I don’t think either of us would have missed it for anything. It’s so much fun to be out at night during a snowstorm. The world looks different, is all quiet and has a dreamlike quality to it. I will admit that running in several inches of snow is a lot tougher that running on dry pavement, but the extra work only added to the enjoyment of the run.

I wasn’t sure whether I should do this run as my shin is really starting to bother me. The snow outside, erased any doubts though as I really wanted to run in it. The snow lightened the impacts of my footfalls and was actually a help in that respect – it made the running easier on my shin. We practically had the park to ourselves and put in a strong 9 mile effort. The ground was slippery at times and the snow slowed our pace considerably. I remarked that when we completely two loops of the park, we were seriously behind schedule. It didn’t matter though, as it was just so nice to be out in the snow.

I would say that running in the snow was the best part of my day. However, after I came in from my run, I spent some time with my son wrestling in the living room. He has been on a huge wrestling kick lately and begs me to wrestle him every time I am around. Later, when I was tucking him into bed, I asked him about school, what he did and what was his favorite part of the day. This was the fateful question. He replied that his favorite part of the day was wrestling me just a few minutes earlier. This sent a stab through my heart as I suddenly felt bad about spending the time out of the house running. But it also melted my heart to hear that the best part of my son’s day was wrestling with his dad. My son just knows the right things to say to tear me apart emotionally. I just love that boy so much. I just wish I didn’t feel as though I am sacrificing time away from my children when I go out to do my training. It feels as though I could never do too much for them and what I do is never enough. I suppose that is part of being a parent. God I love my children.

On Sunday I ran with my friend Larry over the 3 bridges that span the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I say Brooklyn side, since this time we did the bridges in reverse and headed through Brooklyn to the Williamsburg Bridge for our first crossing into Manhattan. We got started around 9:30am and begin the day with a loop through Prospect Park, where we exited onto Grand Army Plaza. From there it was down Flatbush Avenue and onto the NYC Marathon Route through Fort Greene and into Williamsburg. It was supposed to be a cold and windy day, but in actuality it wasn’t so bad. At times it felt positively warm outside, especially when we were running in the sun.

When we got into Fort Greene we stopped at McCarren Park for a bathroom/water break. When we came out, the sun had suddenly disappeared and it felt like it dropped 20 degrees. We were only at about 7.5 miles at this point and the rapidly changing weather is what we had to contend with for the remainder of the day. It really wasn’t a problem as long as we kept moving. Otherwise, I tended to get a bit cold when standing still.

Once we left McCarren Park, we headed down Bedford Avenue for the Williamsburg Bridge. It was here that I decided to take my first picture of the day. I had brought my camera and asked Larry to take a picture. I am about ½ mile onto the bridge, just before the start of the bridges superstructure/suspension. If you can read the sign you can see that this bridge was completed in 1906. It is hard to believe they built these great structures so long ago. I wanted to take some more pictures once on the center of the Bridge, but felt it was poor form to ask Larry to keep stopping so I could indulge in my picture snapping habit.

It was a bit windy running over the Williamsburg Bridge, but the views were fantastic. The run over it took us to the Lower East Side. From there we headed back towards East River. We had a good view of the bridge from there, so we took another picture. Here I am trying to create an action shot. I hope it looks like I am running, though apparently I am heading right for a fence. After this picture, we headed down the east river towards the South Street Seaport and over to the Brooklyn Bridge. We stopped at a street vendor for some refreshments, who asked if we would like a hotdog. I have nothing against dirty water dogs, but not in the middle of a long run. We both got a Gatorade and then sat down on a bench by the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridges pedestrian path. I thought the Woolworth building looked particularly nice today so I asked Larry to take another picture. The building came out great, but I think I look like a dork.

We then did our run over the Brooklyn Bridge. The views from here are fantastic, but running the BB is a pain in the ass. It’s just too crowded. Once over the bridge we make a left onto Tillary Street and headed back into Manhattan by way of the south side of the Manhattan Bridge. It made for some excellent hill training. As we ran over it into Chinatown and we wondered if we would see any of the costumes for the Chinese New Year Parade. There was a lot of traffic, but other than that we didn’t see any revelers. We didn’t run for long in Chinatown and just crossed Canal Street for a nice tempo run back into Brooklyn on the North side of the bridge.

Once in Brooklyn, we headed back up Flatbush Avenue to Prospect Park. Larry and I were both wearing Polar 625x heart rate monitors which also gives you your distance ran. For some reason my monitor was reading about 1.5 miles greater in distance than Larry’s by this point. When we got back to our starting point in the park, I had just turned 20 miles, while Larry was at 18.2 miles. Larry wanted to turn 20 on his Polar 625x, so I accompanied him for a bonus 1.8 miles. For the record I think my watch was more accurate, so I am going to stick with my total distance on the day being just about 22 miles.

Once home, I ate, showered, ate again and then shocked my shin with my TENS Unit. After that I vegged out on my couch and iced my shins for about 40 minutes. My shin felt ok, not great, but not excruciatingly painful. Denial so far is still working out. For some reason, I was feeling a little tired by this point. I was a little concerned with this since 22 miles will have to feel as though it was nothing more than a warm-up at some point. However, I am not feeling tired or sore this morning so perhaps I was just running a little low on energy.

My shin was a bit painful today, but nothing too bad. I am still not limping when I walk. Developing a limp will be my litmus test to know I need to back off. In the meantime I am going to relish in my gradually increasing mileage. This week I am scheduled for two 9 milers, a 6 mile and a 24 miler. I am looking forward to them.

Ah well, the unexpected has happened and it appears that I will be taking two days off from training this week. I hate when that happens, which is why I never plan for a day off or let myself slack very often. You never know when something beyond your control is going to come up and force you to miss a workout. When this happens, I begin to start feeling all out of shape. I need to keep up with a regular dose of exercise to feel normal.

My first day off was Monday. I had intended to spin on my trainer after I got home from work, but I was feeling a little lazy so I said that I’d do it after dinner. Well, that was the end of that. I sat on my couch after eating and promptly started to fall asleep. I just decided to screw the workout and went up to bed at 8pm. I guess I needed the sleep, because I slept through the night without any sleep aids until 7am the next morning. In fact, I wanted to sleep longer, work was my unfortunate reality.

Tuesday night though I got back into the swing of things. I had my regularly scheduled run with my friend Larry and we headed out to Prospect Park for a couple of loops (we ran 8.1 miles in 1:11:11). At first I was a little worried about doing this run. On Monday morning, my shin was hurting pretty badly and by Tuesday night it was only somewhat better. So far my method of ignoring the pain and hoping it will go away has been working, but if the pain starts to get any worse, I fear that I may have to revisit that strategy for dealing with the injury.

So anyway, it was with a bit of trepidation that I went out and hoped that the pain wouldn’t get any worse. I was feeling ok during the first few miles and I began to relax. The pain was there, but nothing too bad. At just before midway into the run, I remembered about a website on Chi Running that my Twitter friend Gracie told me about. It espouses the idea of running with a more forefoot stride. I changed myself to a forefoot stride a couple of years ago and that had been very successful until relatively recently. In fact it worked until I came back from an injury to my left hipflexor back in September of last year. Thinking about Chi Running, I realized for the first time that perhaps my stride had changed a bit since I came back from that injury. That could explain why my left shin has been such a problem lately. So I re-concentrated on landing forefoot, especially with my left foot and noticed an improvement in the way my left shin felt. It wasn’t much but it was progress.

I guess the real test came this morning when I first started to walk around. I was expecting the type of pain that I had on Monday morning, but it just wasn’t there. The shin was painful alright, but it felt different somehow. It was the type of pain I could definitely deal with, even if it is always present. I’ll just need to pay a little more attention to my stride, until really landing forefoot once again becomes natural.

So this leads me up to today (Wednesday), in which I need to take another day off from training. I have a school event to go to for one of my children that will take me into late this evening, so I have no chance of an evening workout. I suppose I could have made sure I got to bed real early last night, so I could have done a workout this morning, but I just didn’t feel like making myself go to sleep. In the past, I would take an Ambien to force myself to go to sleep, but that doesn’t really work for me anymore. My body has learned how to fight it off and stay awake right through it. So basically I am annoyed at myself right now for getting myself into a situation where I miss two workouts in a week.

Maybe that is a good thing though. Every time this happens to me, which isn’t too often, I get hard on myself and tell myself that it is time to focus and recommit. Every now and then I need to reset myself and get my act in gear. I have a big race coming up and I can’t be fooling around with it. What I put in today will show up tomorrow. It is all cumulative. If I don’t put it in now, I won’t have it to draw upon when I need it most.

Tomorrow I am doing the NYC Marathon. I am as unprepared for this race as when I walked into a Calculus exam in college, having not studied or understanding any of the subject matter. I think I got 10 out of a hundred. I am hoping though that I will get more than 10 miles and my marathon grade will be a full 26.2. I think I am only doing this race, because I don’t want to sit out of my third NYC Marathon because of shin splints. Also, this marathon will make my 3rd consecutive year and my 4th NYC Marathon in total. I’d like to get to the point where I have enough NYC Marathons under my belt so that I do not have to worry about qualifying for it each year.

To get over the shin splints I think I’ve only ran about 3 times in the past 1.5 months. I am praying that the weather will be much warmer tomorrow with a lot less wind. I will be running this marathon slow which means the cold and wind will make it torturous.

This year I intend to run the total race with my friend Larry. It is his intention to run the 12 miles home after the marathon in celebration of his 25th consecutive running and his 50th birthday. I told him I would do this run with him, but I suppose I’ll have to see how I feel after the marathon. I already don’t think I am being smart by running a marathon off of no training and a painful shin, but if I feel somewhat ok, I think I’ll make the day into an ultramarathon. I know what my coach will say about this last statement – That I am questioning whether I can even do 26.2, but here I am talking about making it an ultra. I just like to keep my options open and by thinking of making it an ultra, 26.2 miles will be relatively easy. I am just being optimistic.

So Larry, Willie and I spent the day in Boston. We started out at a local IHOP, where I had the Ruti Tuti Fresh and Fruity breakfast for the first time in years. It filled me up nicely. After, we went to the marathon expo where we talked to some people, tried out some free products and said a lot of Hmmms and Huuhhhs. We hung out for a couple of hours which gave my friend Jon a chance to get off his Amtrak train to catch up with us. We made tentative plans to meet for dinner and we agreed to call each other later.

Dinner turned out to be much earlier though. Larry wanted to scout out the restaurant we decided to eat at to make sure we could find it later. By the time this happened it was already 3:30, so we figured we may as well eat dinner now. The food was delicious and plentiful. I can’t recommend this place enough. It is a must eat. Check it out at http://www.lafamigliagiorgio.com/. It is located on 112 Salem Street in Boston’s North End.

All through the day I did my sponsor, Hammer Nutrition justice by wearing my Hammer Nutrition winter cycling jacket. It is what I plan to wear for the race tomorrow. It is very flashy and most of all warm. I talked to the representatives from the Polar booth and “The Stick” booth about Hammer. It seems that Hammer is not to well know in the running community, but I am doing what I can to spread the word.

After dinner we whet to Whole Foods for supplies – freshly ground Peanut Butter, Organic Jelly, Organic Oatmeal and Organic Soymilk. I think I will be well fueled for the race. I still have a blueberry muffin from this morning to eat.

I did nothing else for the day. I didn’t even start getting my things ready until Larry stopped by my room and helped to make the decision as to the appropriate gear necessary for marathoning in a Nor’easter.

My xomputer battery died on the bus ride out, so couldn’y write a report. Really, it was nothing to report and the who trip was over quickly and without incident except if you count the time I missed the bowl taking a piss when the bus hit a bump.

I was running with Larry in Prospect Park this past Wednesday and I got to talking with him about how much better it is to train in the city rather than in the suburbs. Here we were running around a perfectly paved road free of traffic under the cover of darkness. Those in the country don’t have that sort of luxury. We both agreed it is far more dangerous to be running on country roads with their blind turns than to be in a city park at night with plenty of other like minded people.

Well my confidence in that belief was somewhat shaken last night. I was running on my own down by the skating rink (sometimes known as the low rent section of the park) when several young punks started to approach me from an angle. As soon as I saw them I knew I was in for a bit of trouble. The leader of them came directly across the road, up from behind me and then paced me on my left hand side. He asked me for money, to which I replied excuse me (I was listening to my mp3 player). He asked me again and I told him I didn’t have any. He then replied “What if I hit you”. I could hear his friend laughing and running up to my right had side while this was happening.

I was glancing over my shoulder to see where his friend was (he was just about on top of me), when the leader called out to him “Yo Chill”. I am not sure what happened to make them suddenly stop and I just kept on running. Perhaps he didn’t like the look on my face or the fact that my demeanor didn’t change at all. I don’t think I changed my pace a bit during the entire time, but I was ready to start to make a break for it. I just wasn’t sure if I could outrun them. Fortunately I didn’t have to find out. Possibly they were just kids looking to horse around, but you wonder what type of parents bring up kids who think scaring people is a good time.

Besides thinking about how I was going to get out of the situation, I kept thinking about how my kids were waiting for me at home and how it would really be sub-optimal to get hurt while out for a run. What scared me even more was my daughter was a fraction of a second away from coming with me this evening and I had no idea how I would have handled the situation had she been with me.

I am really pissed off over this. Running is one of the ways I can relieve my stress and I enjoy my time being out in the park where I can let my thoughts and worries disappear. To have that solitude disturbed by several assholes is extremely disturbing. I am now worried about taking my kids out with me at night and resent having that pleasure taken away from me.

After the incident had passed, it took a while for me to pass anyone else in the park. I finally saw a single woman walking towards me into the direction of the incident. I stopped and warned her along with another male runner who happened to come up on me. Finally a Parks Department vehicle came up from behind me and I flagged it down. The people I warned must have already told the officers, because they already knew about the hooligans and were heading towards the area. At that point the alert was sent out and I saw several police vehicle enter the park.
This was not the way to end my week. Or perhaps it was a fitting ending to a crappy week. It seemed as though everything that could go wrong at work did. It was a stressful week and a stressful way to end it. At least in the end I had a good run and my legs felt great. I have a 3-day weekend now, thanks to MLK, so hopefully it will be restful and peaceful.