Ramblin' In The Ramble

Last night I spent the night at Drew's apartment, which meant that this morning when the alarm went off, I had someone to help push me out of bed and out for my Terrier run. I was actually looking forward to the run this morning, since we were going to be doing the NYC Triathlon course (or at least the park portion of the course). I left Drew's apartment at 5:40, which should have been plenty of time to walk the 1.4 miles from his apartment to the meeting spot and get there at 6:00. I had been planning on just walking down 5th Avenue and turning into the park at 72nd Street, because I wasn't sure that I trusted myself to be able to find my way on the park paths. Turns out I should have listened to my instinct.

Instead, I saw a couple of people turning into the park at 85th Street and I thought to myself that I was pretty sure I could find my way, as long as I kept the road in sight. I was doing pretty well until about 79th Street. Then I entered the Ramble and completely lost my way. The funny thing was that as I was walking through, I heard two runners coming up behind me and thought that they might be fellow Terriers. And they were. I was thinking that I could hopefully just see where they went, but since they were running and I was walking, I quickly lost sight of them. When I emerged from the Ramble, I was standing at the edge of the boating pond, and I could see the fountain, which was where I should have been, but I would have had to swim to get there from where I was. Which meant that I had to turn around and find the road again and just jog on the road to the meeting spot. And I think I added on an extra 1/2 mile in my ramblings.

I ended up being 5 minutes late (so not too bad). I got there in time to do 4 quick stride drills and then it was time to start the workout. Robert had us run around the finish of the NYC tri, so that those who were doing the race would know where the finish was. Then we ran over to the corner of the Park Drive and the 72nd Street transverse (0.55 miles / ~5:00 minutes). From there, our task was to run north around the Park Drive and back to the finish line. We were supposed to run for 3 minutes and then rest/recover for 2. The recovery was technically supposed to be done running in place for 2 minutes, but the slow group that I was a part of walked through the recovery portions.

Running the park backwards - meaning the opposite direction that we normally bike or run - is really interesting. Especially the Harlem hill. It's not nearly as bad going from West to East as it is the other way. Although when I got to the end of the hill on the East side, I was wiped out and took my walking break about 30 seconds early. I didn't feel too bad about it because there were several times where I ran for more than 3 minutes in a stretch, so I think it all evened out.

The total running distance was 5.1 miles, which I finished in 53:38 (10:30 pace). I'm super happy with that time given all of the walking breaks that I took! I then walked the 1.4 miles back to Drew's apartment on the actual roads (I had enough of the park for one morning!).

Total running today: 5.6 miles / 58:38
Total walking today: 3.3 miles / 45:00