Okay so the deal was I was going to try and run about 30K this weekend, but I did not want to run around the park in circles again. Well I achieved one of the goals. The New York City Roadrunners have a marathon tune up race, and it happened to be this weekend, and it also happened to be around central park 3 times! Oh well, I figured that a fixed starting time, an organized race and a chance to force myself to run would out weight the negatives of doing laps in central park. (The run is 18 miles which is only 28.8 kilometers.. close enough!)

Having run my 20ish Km on wednesday my legs didn’t feel great and the climbing the next night did nothing for the comfort of my toes. To ensure things weren’t too comfortable, in an absent minded moment when I headed out to get the race registration package last night I threw on my flip flops on to my already tired feet…. the problem with NYC is that you walk a lot and sometimes when you don’t expect it.

Once I picked up the race package I needed to solve my chaffing problem by getting a new pair of shorts. I remembered there was a running store in the new Time Warner building by Columbus Circle on the south west corner of Central Park. I picked up a new pair of Nike running shorts that appears to be missing the characteristics of my other running shorts, which allow them to moonlight as a toture device after about 15K. By the time I started walking home my feet were really quite sore but I had been walking for over an hour by this point, my delicate feet would prefer something other than flip flops at this point.

Got home made a pasta dinner with some meat sauce, surfed around for a bit and headed to bed. The race started at 7:30 so I needed to be up somewhat early to eat, drink, and just generally get ready. The morning didn’t go so well, the milk in the fridge went bad, I slept in a bit so I was in a rush, and my diet had to consist of some peanut butter cookies, some carrots, a couple bottles of a sport drink, and big cup of black coffee. I made it to the starting line 2 minutes before the race started; perfect timing!

Now the race.. first there was lots of people - over 4,000 according to the announcer, not bad for a matathon warm up race. Here is a play by play of how I think it went.

WARNING DORK ALERT!
When running I have my heart rate monitor to ensure I have something to confirm why I feel like hell sometimes. I also during races keep track of the split times of each kilometer or mile in this case. It lets me focus on the next couple minutes instead of the hours ahead of me as well as letting me know if I am pacing okay. Part of my goal today was to try and keep a really really steady pace. Goal achieved. My legs are a bit sore so I geeked out on my computer for a bit decided to chart my pace against my heart rate and see what things looked like. Here’s what it looked like:

I was able to get stronger and faster as the race went on (part of that in the start would have been due to the possible explosion that my internals were contemplating).

Some more dorking out.

p.s. I finished in 2h 32m 38s (or so)