Always Charge Your Batteries

Thursday morning I woke up to this:

65 and Sunny in mid-July? Yes, please!

A morning like this after a week of heat-advisory-worthy weather must be a sign  that the Weather Gods/The Marathon Gods/Al Roker wanted me to go out and kick some major booty on my scheduled 13 mile run this morning. Who am I to let these fine and well-intentioned folks down? So I got up, sipped a caffeinated beverage, ate two tangerines, got dressed, took some crappy self-shots w/ my camera phone and off I went! In theory, at least.

Ready to Run! And perhaps take a basic photography skills class or two.

In reality, genius me couldn’t remember the last time I charged my watch, so of course it started beeping its “low battery beep” right as I was about to leave. I charged it for about 5 mins, bringing its battery life to 25%, and hoped for the best. Hello, literal race against time. Looks like you’re joining me this morning, huh?

The neighborhood was sunny and beautiful at that hour, and Central Park was too. The weather was amazing and felt more like the beginning of autumn in mid-to-late September, rather than in the middle of July.

Buenos Dias, El Barrio!

So off I went, and indeed I was kicking major butt as I went over the hills and next to the woods (who knew Central Park could be so “rustic”?). I felt great and just enjoyed being able to soak up the beautiful weather and temperatures. Not to mention how much faster I was going without the oppressive summer heat and humidity to weigh me down. That’s the part about training in harsh conditions–they make everything feel easier in comparison!

I stopped around Mile 4 at the Boathouse bathrooms to try out a new kind of training fuel: Orange Flavored GU Chomps. They had a weird powdery after-taste to them, but I liked them because they made it much easier to spread out the GU love throughout the run. They are individual gummy chews, so you can take as many or as few as you want and save the rest for later, as opposed to gels, which are a bit messy to split up. Decisions, decisions. Anyhow, I stopped. I Chomped. I watered. And then I proceeded to dominate Cat Hill. Yeah!

I looked at my watch at Mile 6 and realized I’d done six miles in less than an hour. Six HILLY miles. Man. Was there nothing I couldn’t do this morning? Ok, maybe “charging my watch battery by the sweat and electrolytes coming out of my arms”…but the trusty Garmin managed to capture 7.14 miles before it went kaput.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	01:09:57	7.14	09:48
1	00:09:24	1.00	09:24
2	00:09:53	1.00	09:53
3	00:09:34	1.00	09:34
4	00:10:05	1.00	10:05
5	00:09:50	1.00	09:50
6	00:09:42	1.00	09:42
7	00:10:01	1.00	10:01
8	00:01:26	0.14	10:24

It took me a few minutes to realize that my battery actually died, and then a few more after that to figure out how I was going to time the rest of my run. In the meantime, while I was stopped anyway, I took a picture of the park just for you, my devoted readers (you’re welcome):

Pic stop! Get it? Like pit stop, but not...

I decided to use the stopwatch on my phone, and off I went again. The rest of the run wasn’t as much fun as the first half, probably due to getting tired, rising temperatures, and not knowing how far or fast I was going, and being paranoid/distracted about whether or not I had really started the stopwatch again or if it would turn off on. As anyone who has ever fallen victim to my phone butt-or-purse-dialing could tell you, my phone likes to have a mind of its own sometimes (sorry again about that). I stopped, re-chomped when I passed by the Boathouse again, and prepared myself to crawl up dominate Cat Hill one more time. Even w/ the Chomps, water and bathroom break, i could feel myself hitting the hall soon and just wanted to be done, even though I probably had two or three more miles to go.  I ended up running about 12.5 miles instead of my planned 13, which I was a bit bummed about but definitely realize it’s not the end of the world. There will be so many more opportunities to run 13 miles (and many more) in the park this summer. Hopefully many of those times I will finish my run feeling as strong and as fast as I do in the beginning, with visions, thoughts and feelings of death far, far away. Pacing myself evenly is definitely one of my biggest challenges that I will continue to work on this summer (and probably beyond. Anyone who has ever seen me dance or drive could tell you that my rhythm and timing is totally a bit lacking).

I tried to take a picture of myself post-run so yall could see how nasty and sweaty I got, but see above re: need for photography skills class:

Use your imagination...let's just say it's a good thing I live alone these days.

Next week is a stepback week for me, which means the longest run I’ll do is five miles. Don’t worry, I’ll still find plenty to blog about; if you’re really lucky they may even be non-running related again. Hey, a reader can dream, right?