July 11, 2006
Central Park, New York City

Hill training. Run back and forth 82 to 89th street

Met in Central Park at the lovely Bethesda fountain. From there things got a little ugly.

We took a warm up run from the fountain to the point where we'd be doing our hill training. A 7 block stretch of park where starting at 82nd we make a slow recovery descent down to about 85st. At 85th street there's a slight rise, not drastic but enough. So the training was this: At 89th street, run at 75% capacity, then at 85th St. go to 95% capacity (run like the wind) up to 82nd street. At 82nd street, turn around and jog slowly back to 89th street so that you can recover your breath, where you start all over again.

I managed to squeeze in four of these back and forths, and let me tell you when I hit 95%, I was flying. I even had some else tell me, “you were running really fast.” Yes, that was on the first go, I never got to that speed again. Running all out like that, is really hard on your joints and muscles, plus the technique goes out the window. I was exhausted after doing those. Aurora managed to do five. I had to take time out to get some water with all the runners in Central Park who didn’t bring there own water bottle.

Lessons learned today:

1) don’t run all out. It wastes too much energy and is hard on the body.

2) When bent over stretching, come back to a standing position very slowly. This was actually a bit scary. I was crouched down like a duck stretching the insides of my thighs and groin. When I came up to a standing position: BLACKNESS. I am not kidding, I saw a glimpse of the park, then I saw nothing. I said to myself, “you’re fine, you just stood up too quickly, it’ll pass. The light came back on, for a second, then BLACKNESS. Now I started to panic a little. Luckily Aurora was right there, and I grabbed her shoulder. Then the lights came back on. I really thought I was going to go down, but I remained calm and kept breathing. Lesson learned. All is well.