Getting caught up

Well, I have definitely not written in a while and, if you're curious, I haven't been running as much lately either.  But it's not as grim as the lack of blog posts might infer.  Here's a quick summary:

• Ran 2 miles in Pittsburgh on the Saturday before the half-marathon.  I thought that I was going to a part that wasn't too hilly.  And for Pittsburgh, probably it wasn't.  But by normal standards, there were plenty of hills.  No need to walk any of them though.
• Unfortunately, for the half-marathon in Geneseo, NY, there was A WHOLE TON OF HILLS.  Several super nasty ones too.  There were rolling ones around 4-5 miles and one super killer one right before the 12-mile marker.  Because that is what you want to see at Mile 12: a huge hill.  Also, it was somewhat humid.  Humid and hilly, my two favorite conditions.  But we did it (I ran this with another person).  We persevered.  Even if we had to walk some of the hills.  The part that I found hilarious was when we looked ahead at the killer hill near Mile 12 and saw everyone still out on the course walking.  It was very pretty, though, and the race was well-organized.  Its only major flaw was that it was ridiculously hilly for a Floridian.
• There was one advantage to having walked parts of the half-marathon: I ran the last mile.  Really ran it.  And was rewarded with a finish-line picture where I am actually running instead of gasping for my last breath of air before I die.  I liked the picture so much, I ordered a super-huge copy of it.
• Last weekend I did 2 miles on a treadmill and 5 miles outside.  I called it 'a treadmill' because it was in a different gym, which doesn't believe in air conditioning with the same fervor as my normal gym.  So that was why it was only 2 miles: I got too hot.  The outdoor run went pretty well, except that I wound up in the direct sun for ~20 minutes of the run (10 out and 10 back).  This was a mistake and I did some walk-running to finish up.  On the plus side, the weather is not nearly as horrid as it was in August.

Anyway, as this summary clearly indicates, at some point I transitioned from being a runner to being a walker-runner.  I'm hoping to get my runner mojo back soon.  And to do some more running, although I have been enjoying the opportunity to take more challenging yoga classes than normal.

For once, I'm not sure what my next goal is.  I was thinking to do a 10K turkey trot, but travel plans changed and that now won't work.  So I need to think about what I want to do.  Some long-term thoughts:

1) I don't know why, but I want to run the NY marathon.  So I will put in for the lottery and see what happens.
2) I feel like I still haven't had a good shot at a half-marathon with a respectable time.  This summer was brutal and then there were hills; the other halfs I have run were in Florida and humid, all too humid.  So one thought it to think about Philly if I don't get in for NY.  Philly is mostly flat and that race is in November, when it shouldn't be too hot and humid.....right?

But those are for next fall.  I need to find something for between then and now.  With a bit more digging around, I'm sure that I will.

New York. And Brooklyn, which is also part of New York

I missed writing about a whole week's worth of runs.  Oops.  Things have been busy here in NYC.  Things I have done apart from running: been to the Ghostbuster building, stocked up on semi-useless kitchen items at Zabar's (because you know you need a shrimp deveiner), seen 'Master Class' and 'Book of Mormon,' watched one hundred million people run in Central Park (only a slight exaggeration), ate Montreal smoked meat, and started to discover a whole new part of New York that they call 'Brooklyn.'  This trip marks the first one when I have spent any time in Brooklyn, making this exciting.  Admittedly, I did not actually feel like I was in NYC until I spent time in Manhattan; I sort of felt like I had discovered some kind of neat, new city that just happened to be near New York and was connected by subway.  Sad, but true.

Here is a quick summary of the past week's runs, all of which were completed, even if I forgot to blog about them:

Tuesday: 5 miles.  For various reasons, I had to move my runs around this week, the most important of which was the fact that I planned to run (or maybe walk) a 5K on Sunday.  So I opted to do 5-5-10-rest-6-5K instead of the normal schedule, which usually starts with the smallest number of miles.  This was tiring, but I got through everything.  For my very first run in this place they call 'Brooklyn,' I went down to the East River waterfront and ran there.  The city of New York deserves some kind of prize for the quantity and placement of their water fountains.  Although I got off to a late start, it was only a bit hot, and not killer 'I am going to die' hot.  I survived.  Parts of this run were slightly annoying, though, because there was a lot of waiting at lights and such.  These are the hazards of actually running in a city, though, and that's okay.

Wednesday: 5 miles.  Thanks to great advice from a friend, I had already decided to run my long run in Prospect Park.  I decided to give it a test before the actual long run in case there were unexpected surprises--I learned a lot from my challenging long run in San Francisco last fall.  Prospect Park is great for running.  There is a handy loop with some pretty good scenery, numerous water fountains, and only one downside, which is a rather long hill right near the end of the loop.  But this one challenge is conquerable, even if it is kind of annoying.  The loop is, by my estimation, around 3 miles, which means that for long runs you wind up circling around it several times.  However, it is not a boring 3 miles, which is important (as I also discovered while marathon training last year).

Thursday: 10 miles.  10 miles means that we are almost at the end of the long runs.  Only one more to go (plus the actual race).  Cool!  I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan to run slightly less than 3 loops around Prospect Park, engineered by getting off at a different subway stop.  For some reason, I thought that the loop was 3.5 miles.  It's actually 3.  However, backtracking is not so bad there because there is oodles of space for running.  Other than that, I got going too quickly at times, which came back to haunt me during the uphills.  Overall, though, I thought that it went quite well.  I had a designated place where I stopped each loop to get water, which I think is a good idea.  It cooled off and was less humid, which just added to the fantastic-ness of this run.  And most importantly, now it is over!

Friday: I slept in and boy, did I need it.  There is a reason that we usually do long runs on Sundays: so that we can rest afterward!

Saturday: 6 miles.  I ran to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which is that place featured in Brooklyn-set movies that has the scenic view of lower Manhattan (you know it from Annie Hall and Moonstruck...and if you don't, you should really see both of those movies).  They aren't kidding about the Heights: I did wind up walking after a futile attempt to run up the hill on the way back.  A bit too much for me.  Other than that, the run went very well.  I even managed to get out before 8am, which is nothing short of a miracle for me.

Sunday: Keith A. Ferguson 5K.  This run takes place across the Brooklyn Bridge.  It isn't the best run to try and PR since it's kind of narrow, but it did provide some great scenery on both sides.  I did this event with someone else and we opted to walk.  Truth be told, my legs were pretty tired, so I was okay with that.  We ran the end, by which I mean I was kind of a bad person and left my companion behind.  Bad.  But we both finished and got t-shirts.  The whole event was very enjoyable and brought a lot of different participants, even if it was Florida-level humid (not Florida-level hot, thankfully).  I got super sweaty just from my run at the end.

If you plan to do this event and can conveniently take the R train, might I suggest that you do so.  The registration was directly outside of the exit (so the west side of city hall).  Super easy.

That was the week!  Tomorrow I am going to do 7 miles and take advantage of this reasonable weather while I still can.  Wednesday, it is back to Florida.

In response to my question

Running Times--the much crazier running magazine (compared to Runner's World)--has investigated the question of just how nasty hills are.  Of course, this being Running Times, they then give you tips to prep for nutty marathons.  Enjoy.