A Damp 10 Miles

Post for 8/2/09

Ten miles today. And it was hot. Brutal.

This summer the weather in NYC has been strange, to say the least. I suppose we’re lucky in a way. It hasn’t been as hot as it usually is in August, but we’ve had tons of rain.

This dampens the motivation for outdoor training. In addition, it creates lakes where lakes there should not be. I’ve come across unexpected bodies of water on both my standard 4/5 mile route along the East River and, most recently, came across entire paths in Central Park that have been closed due to flooding. (See photo at left.)

It’s almost enough to make you want to do your civic duty by donning a pair of municipal waders and climbing down there to muck out the drains. Almost. Anyway, I sure hope NYC uses some of the much touted “stimulus funding” to fix the sewers. If this summer is any indication, we’re really going to be in trouble when the polar ice caps melt.

The sun did finally come out, though... There are moments when this City can stun you with her beauty. An unexpected vista can leap up and bite you like a stray dog. The very best kind of biting stray dog.

By the way, I’ve come to love the community of crazy New York City runners. To be clear, I’ve never spoken to anybody running in the Park, but I do see the same faces over and over. There seems to be a core of dedicated endurance runners that flock to Central Park on Sunday for training and they come in all shapes and sizes. That’s one of the beauties of running: it is all about function. It doesn’t matter what body type you’ve got, if you have the motivation to put one foot in front of the other for extended periods of time, then you have the raw materials for endurance training. There’s a guy I see on Sunday, usually along “Heartbreak Hill” up at the northern edge of the park. He runs with, what appears to be, a fully loaded weight vest. Not just a belt, mind you; an entire vest. My hat is off to this cat, even if I think he’s totally insane.

I find one of the best motivators to push myself is to run in the company of people who are vastly more fit than myself. There’s one guy to whom I owe special thanks to in this regard. Again, this is a man I know only by sight. And he’s hard to miss. He’s probably 6’5” and he runs wearing nothing but a pair of Nikes, teeny tiny 70’s-style running shorts and a very short mohawk. Nothing ostentatious, mind you. Just a close-cropped, self-respecting hipster mohawk. On a normal Sunday, I’ll be hard-driving at a 7’30”/ mile pace, or something similar, and Mohawk just breezes past me. He must be doing a 6’00”/ mile at least. Probably faster. I made the mistake of trying to match his pace once... at a discreet distance, of course. I lasted about three quarters of a mile before I had to concede: This guy’s got mad VDOT. (More on this later...)

But I did log my ten, and for this Sunday, my modest 7’ 48”/ mile is going to have to suffice.

I wonder if there’s a relation between “runner’s high” and the “nitrogen narcosis” experienced by divers. This picture makes me think there is: