A Day To Remember

This morning Drew and I got up, ate breakfast, and then spent the morning visiting the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, which is in New York as part of Fleet Week. I thought it was an aircraft carrier, but apparently it's an amphibious assault ship (who knew they existed?), so it looks similar to an aircraft carrier, but not as tall or long, and it can partially flood with water to take on other boats. Given that today is Memorial Day, it seemed like an excellent reason to go and talk to some of the Marines and Sailors on board and say thanks for their service.

After that, Drew headed to work for a few hours and I headed home. He called around 2 and said he was done with work and would be heading to his house and would I want to meet him for a brick? I will say that I wasn't really in the best of moods about this idea. Mondays are supposed to be my days off! I also was nervous that doing a brick outside would be really hard and I'd fail.

We met in the park for our ride. It just so happened that we just happened to meet up on the road around the park, so we didn't even need to stop. Perfect timing on our parts. I decided that if I thought I had a chance of doing a successful brick, I would need to skip the Harlem hill and just cut across at 90th Street. We decided that we would go around the loop (minus the big hill) twice. The total mileage on the bike was 13.33, which I completed in 1:01. This also included my time traveling to the park since I didn't reset once I met up with Drew. Average speed: 13.1 MPH. (I also rode home from his house, which adds another 16:45 of riding time and another 3 miles to total for a grand total of 16.33/1:17).

A lot of the time riding my bike I spent thinking about this upcoming sprint triathlon and how I'm not sure I'm ready for it. Drew is a lot better rider than me (those boys and their strong leg muscles make it hard to compete). I spent a lot of the ride looking at the back of his shirt up in the distance. I definitely don't mind that he rides ahead of me because when we do meet up and ride together I feel a bit like I'm holding him back. Today I was just thinking about how he'd be able to finish the bike ride for the sprint much faster than me and I was feeling a bit down in the dumps about it.

Despite that, after our ride, I jumped off the bike, threw my helmet at Drew and started running around the reservoir. Right when I started running, for about the first 20 seconds, I just had to laugh out loud at how ridiculous my legs felt. My legs still haven't recovered from our workout with Billy on Saturday and I'm sure that was part of it too. Once I got up to the pathway, I felt like I actually was going to be okay.

I was really nervous before starting because the path around the reservoir is 1.6 miles and I wasn't sure if I should run for that long with my heel because all of my other recent running has been indoors. I was also really scared that I wouldn't be able to complete it because I would just be too tired. I figured that I would just do my best and see what happened. Turns out I shouldn't have doubted myself so much. I kept an easy even pace the entire time and felt really good while running. I completed the whole loop in 15:40 (9:45 pace), so I feel awesome about that.

It's funny how my mood could turn around in 15 minutes. By the time I finished the run I was thinking to myself that of course I'll be able to complete the sprint triathlon. I won't win, but I'll be able to finish, which is what I'm looking for. The other thing I should mention is that at the end of 2008, Drew and I made a list of things that we wanted to do in 2009. It included all sorts of things, but one thing on my list was that I wanted to run around one loop of the reservoir without stopping on two separate occasions. Obviously, when I made that list, I had no idea that I'd be able to complete one loop after having biked for 13 miles previously. It really feels great to be able to put one check mark next to that on the list ... and to know that there are many more runs to come.