Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Drawbridge

I have a regular route. It's a six mile loop with a nice few nice hills after the 2 mile mark. 3 out and 3 back. I can shorten that to 4 on some days avoid the hills and do some sort of quicker tempo run. One constant of the route though is the drawbridge. I start at the beach, on lovely long island sound, and once i cross the drawbridge I am at the 2 mile mark. From February - May, I never was stopped by the drawbridge. Since than I've been stopped about once every 5 or 6 runs.

Today was especially frustrating. I didn't even consider that being stopped by the drawbridge was a possibility. I wanted to get out for an easy tenner. Didn't wanna push too hard but wanted to build back up distance on some longer runs as I consider more and more that the Phildelphia Distance Run on 21 September is a possibility. I am going very well, 3-4 miles in and am wondering if my Hurricane's are in fact a better "long run" shoe than my paramount. As I round the corner I hear the bells and I look ahead and I see the baracade coming down. At this point another runner comes up beside me, she shakes her head and swears.

She starts running in place and I think how silly this looks. I mean I've done this at traffic lights, but not for two minutes of drawbridge time. I could stop my watch and stretch out. I could drop to the ground and do some core work, some crunches or pushups. But that would look sillier than this woman running in place. I could turn around and attack the hill again and turn my tenner into a 12er. But instead I just decide to take a quick lap around the block. This put my tenner a little bit above 10 miles, but at least I didn't jog in place for a while.

The tenner went well enough. Just about 730-735 pace pace without pushing too hard. I'll take that, and confidence is building and a PDR registration seems more and more likely.

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I railed against NBC mercilessly and with good reason for their awful coverage of Shalane Falnnigan's historic run in the 10k. To be fair they redeemed themselves a bit last night. The coverage of the Woman's Marathon was excellent in comparison. I woulda preferred to not have cut away as often as they did, but I understand why they did it. Still to go from only 7 laps of Shalane's 10k, to as much coverage as they had of the Women's Marathon was a great improvement.

As for the race, it was awful to see Deena go out so early. I am depressed for Magda Lewy-Boulet's luck, or lack their of. I am impressed with Paula Radcliffe's guts, and Blake Russell's finish. Tomescu-Dita deserved to win gold. She was the only one who attacked the course when conditions were better than anyone expected. It was a bit anti-climactic really. But she busted her ass, and got the spoils.

But the most exciting run of the day had to be Fam frontrunning like hell in the Men's 3000 steeple. I can not wait for that final on Monday. If Fam medals, High Life's and falafel for everyone!!!

Current Listening :: My Bloody Valentine - Isn't everything

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

your story about the running in place is funny....i do it slightly, just to keep loose, but i always feel like a choad doing it, and am always looking for the slightest opening to start going again.

scot said...

seriously, on my jersey runs, there is one intersection where if i hit the light red, i need to run in place for a moment. but only a moment, and then the frogger in me comes out. i wish i had the trail to run here or there, but it's all roadrunning.