Friday, July 24, 2009

The Third Time Is Not The Charm

This morning Drew and I woke up early in order to head out for a run in Central Park. We were planning on doing the 4-mile loop from the 102nd Street Transverse to the 72nd Street Transverse. I poked around in Drew's cupboards and found no granola bars, so I just had a half of a glass of water before setting out. I wasn't sure how that would go for me since I was already feeling a little bit hungry before we started.

Drew had said that the last two times that we had gone running together he hadn't done so well, but that this time would be different and he would be better. To set the record straight, the last time we went running, I felt really bad for him as he was sick and I felt like I was dragging him out to go running when he should probably be sleeping.

We walked over to the park and started our watches and headed north. I'm not sure that we needed both of our watches, but it is just fun to be the one pressing the button. We weren't even a minute into the running before I noticed that there was something seriously wrong with my sock. I stopped my watch and bent down to fix it. I think that's fair to stop the watch when you aren't even moving. Somehow I must not have pulled it on all the way, since when I got my foot out of my shoe, my sock wasn't even close to being near my heel. I pulled it up all the way and then we were back on our way.

Right after we got across the 102nd Street Transverse, I felt like I wanted to give up. My head started to get that feeling of a running headache coming on and I was 100% sure that it was all due to the fact that I hadn't had anything to eat before working out. I told Drew that I needed to walk for a minute. I felt like I was wimping out, but I also knew that I would feel a lot worse later on if I didn't take a little bit of a break. We walked for about a minute (and I kept my watch counting while we were walking). Then we started back up.

Shortly after that, Drew mentioned that his right calf was feeling like it had a cramp. We stopped for a few seconds so that he could lean against a light post and try to stretch it out. After that, we kept going on our way. It quickly became clear that Drew was not very comfortable running because his leg was really bothering him. We stopped again for him to try to stretch, but still without any real success. I realized that we should stop running and just head home. It clearly wasn't our day to be out there and doing all this exercise with nothing in our bellies.

Our total time running was 20:09 and we went exactly 2.0 miles (10:04 pace). Not too bad considering one of us was crippled and the other one wanted to walk for a while. I know that this was not my best effort today, but I have to think that at least I got out there and did something and I'll just work a little bit harder tomorrow. I really think that Drew is never going to want to come running with me again since now on his third recent attempt, things went awry again. I just hope that he has a speedy recovery since next week at this time he'll be hunting in Africa and it seems like it'd be really quite bad to have a sore calf for that.

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