Today’s run: 3.6 miles, 43 minutes. My first run starting from the new place took me up Rivington, through the Baruch Housing complex, into East River park, up Catherine Slip, and down Bowery. This run was a little slow because the route had me stopped at quite a few red lights. But I worked it with leg extensions and side bends. All in a day’s run, people.
Tip for today: Look for solutions in unusual places. Today due to my new location I did something I never thought to do, by accident – I ran down Rivington without detouring over closer to Houston and discovered….. I can run through the Baruch housing project!!
You wouldn’t think discovering that you can run through the projects would be a life improvement, but in fact, it is. Is allows me to bypass the bane of my run, the ugly, smelly, sunlit stretch of Houston directly before the East River. Instead I ran through the shady, tree-lined sidewalks of Baruch, smiling at welfare mothers and their adorable children and nodding at the elderly in wheelchairs.
Hurrah! And I love my new apt!
Today’s run: 3.5 miles, xx minutes. I actually only ran 1.5 this morning; 90 degree heat, no air, and the noises of a new city block made for a sleepless night. The other two miles I logged this weekend but didn’t have time to blog it. For today’s run I took Rivington into Chinatown, to the Manhattan Bridge entrance then back down Bowery. Many smells, much activity. But I enjoy dodging pedestrians.
I signed my name on the dotted line and am now an official renter in the borough of Manhattan. (When I signed up for electricity, “What borough?” was the first question she asked, with a strong accent that I’m not local enough yet to identify.)
Some “before” pics of the new apartment. “After” shots may take a while because it’s hard to unpack when you don’t really have furniture yet. All I have is the bed, which is held together with three screws and a wooden peg. The first time I sat on it, the mattress fell through to the floor. No joke.
Today’s run: 4.01 miles, 45:02. YT: 402.57. The morning streets of Chelsea are ruled by runners and delivery men. “Good morning track star!” one of the latter greeted me with just as I took off.
Getting back into the groove. Still couch surfing, though I’ve upgraded to sharing a bed at a friend’s. (Thank you thank you!) And on Sunday, I’ll move into a new apartment, hurrah!
Today’s run started at Union Square Park, took me up 17th St. to the waterfront at Chelsea Piers, along the Westside Highway running path, then back down with a return on 16th.
My geographical perspective is still that of a Los Angelino. In other words, I’m slow to comprehend how small this island is. I was shocked when I hit the waterfront just a mile into my run. Shocked and pleased.
Today’s run: 2.95m, 32:35. Not a bad run considering I hardly slept last night.
I’ve missed the past several days of running. Thanks to problems with my sublet so unbelievable they’re almost hilarious, I’ve been couch surfing. All weekend I wasn’t sure where my next shower was coming from. Therefore, running in the steamy New York heat didn’t feel like such a good idea, especially when I had big problems to solve. More on all this later. I have an application into a new apt!
Today’s run: 4 miles, 43:48 minutes. YT: 395.61.
The first mile of this run, my body felt BORN to run – which is rarely ever the case when I’ve just started moving. I congratulated myself on having found a truly magical night-before-run tonic: OJ mixed with beer.
Think of the article I’ll write for Runner’s World!, I thought. Think of the pitch I’ll make to Bud for it’s next big campaign! THINK OF ALL THE RACES YET TO BE WON!
Then mile 2 hit and I felt suddenly sluggish and crampy. Ah well.
PS: Workmen update. After falling out of my bed half-naked this morning before remembering they were there (someone hit my buzzer at 7 a.m.; thank you), and then photographing them with my Iphone and staring at them as much as possible, one of them finally got the bright idea to do me a solid and cover the windows with trashbags. My privacy is restored!
Today’s run: 5.01 miles, 55:44. YT: 391.61. Decided to do a nice and easy 5-miler. The East River was steamy and beautiful today – greener than I remember, with blooming trees that smelled like honeysuckle.
Guys: I moved to New York! I feel the need to take a little blog moment to celebrate that. Interspersed with (temporary) goodbyes, in two weeks I sold upwards of 20 furniture/household items and a car, held a yard sale, boxed, lugged and shipped 16 boxes, and ran 18 miles – while working full time.
I do feel more *here* now that there is only here – just my sublet. It’s a strange, light feeling.
There were some surprises the awaiting me here. Among them: Ernie and Martha’s two sills, instead of being on boarded up windows, are now open spaces exposing the gut renovation that’s going on next door. (I wonder if the old lady really did live there, and her falling episode was the beginning of her moving out process.) So now I have new workmen friends doing their thing about 4 feet away from where I sleep and where I dress. And I don’t have blinds. Hello workmen friends! I’ll get a better pic next time. Incidentally, Ernie and Martha were on the sill this morning before the workmen showed up, but it’s hard to say what this development means for their own construction (nest).
Now that the moving’s done, it’s time to rack up some serious mileage in the next weeks. If I were on track, I’d be at 500 miles by the close of June. That’s not going to happen, but let’s see how close I can get.
Today’s run: 7.06, 1:15:05. Yay – awesome awesome run!! My training called for 7 miles easy, but I took advantage of my usual energy peak at miles 4 and 5 to run them race pace, and I definitely finished strong at race pace as well, with good attention to form. So enjoyed this run – rich with mental wordsmithing.
Driving on Culver toward the beach, everything changes after the stretch of warehouses when you cross Lincoln. A two-lane road cuts through the tall grasses of the Ballona Creek Wetlands. Today, in middle June, the grass is rippled with patches that are tawny with thirst and dotted by small yellow buds.
Since I got back in LA, I’ve been saying that it has been like a return to the womb, a respite from unrelentingly unfamiliar stimuli in New York. Today no metaphor seems more apt as I drive into the amniotic soup of salty, wet ocean air. I truly feel like it’s feeding me. There’s nowhere I feel more relaxed than at the beach – except maybe in the ocean itself. It’s the place where I feel comfortable with living and breathing, and comfortable with not breathing too. Like I could so easily, painlessly be reabsorbed into what made me. I got it when Jeremy Blake waded into the ocean at Rockaway and never came out. Not the desire to self-destruct, but the chosen method.
It’s so easy here in Los Angeles to settle into the cool breeze of an uninterrupted season. That’s probably why so many people wash out. The status quo, even for those who show up in their Toyota Tercels with a suitcase and never trade up, is pretty damn amazing.
Today’s run: 5.48 miles, 1:02:15 min. YT: 379.54. More speedwork today: .5m RP, .75m RP, .5 mile SP, .25m x 2 SP, .1m x2 SP, with jogging between each interval, and warm up and cool down too. I really, really had to fight to crank these out, and wasn’t as fast as I would have liked. I did scare quite a few squirrels. Hurrah.
Today was my first run in my new Nike Free Run+s. I had a pair of Frees years ago and loved them. Love these now too! And I love that kicky charcoal ‘n pink. Yay!!
What was funny about this run is that the new placement of my Nike Plus, now that I finally have a pair of Nikes built to accommodate it in the heel, meant that I got much more accurate mileage and paces from the device. For months I’ve had to take .1 mile off each mile of distance at the end of the run to make it accurate. (Too lazy to calibrate…)
I didn’t realize this shift until at least halfway through the run. Instead I thought that I was having the FREAKING SLOWEST RUN EVER because I felt like I was doing a pace that it would normally tell me was a 9:30. Instead it was telling me it was 10:30. So I gnashed my teeth and felt mortified by how much I was clearly beaten down by my move, by nights of light sleep, by mental anguish and constant go go go…
Hello, NO! This run was damn hard because I was constantly trying to go faster than I normally go. I’m just fine, people! Slow as ever, but no slower! :-) I gotta tell you, I’m a little proud of juggling work, running, moving, and goodbyes this week and last. Got a little Superwoman complex going. Don’t worry: I’m sure something’s coming to tamp it down.
Today’s run: 5 miles, 56:19 minutes.YT: 374.06. 2 miles easy, 10 min tempo run, 2 miles slow. All I could think about tonight was the moving mess awaiting me. But I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. And in it was the stocky outline of a great, big dumpster. Full of my stuff.
Endeavoring to bring some focus back to the blog, I’ll be giving a beginning crash course on some basic running terminology over the next few weeks. If you’re not a beginner, it will probably bore you to death!
Today, since I ran one: Tempo Runs.
A tempo run is a continuous pace at 90% of maximum heart rate, which corresponds to a speed that’s maybe just a little bit slower than your race pace for a short run, or at your race pace for a longer run.
From what I can tell, 10 minutes, what I did today, is a little short to be considered a real tempo run. Twenty minutes seems to be more common.
Why would you do one? To improve cardiovascular health. I imagine it’s gotta help improve your pace as well.
Today’s run: 1.41 miles, 17 minutes.
I quit my run 1/3 of the way in this morning – low energy and didn’t feel so hot. Hoped to get back and try again tonight. I didn’t. Moving got the best of me today.
