The First Gate, The Last Gate

This is the gateway @59th and Columbus Circle. It has a name, so do all the gates in our lives.

After the rain

So, last night it was drizzling rain when I left work in Queens. I decided to go home instead of running four miles in Central Park. Maybe it wouldn't be raining by the time I got home though I don't mind running in the rain. Besides......(TMI information ALERT) I felt like I needed to use the bathroom.
Not that I mind finding a facility in the Park, I know where all of them are. Given the right um, motivation, I could probably tell you, from any point in the Park, how far in actual distance/tenths of miles a particular restroom is.
And their condition:
The ones at the old Tavern on the Green site, wonderful.
The ones by the tennis courts? You could let your baby-child play on the floor.
The ones by the Belvedere Theatre any time after 10AM, toxic waste site.

I took the train(s) home. I had been wrong on both counts; I didn't have to 'go' and it was still raining, but just a drizzle. Not even enough to wet my glasses.
So, I set up the Podrunner music, I set up the CharityMiles (Nature Conservancy, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, Global Fund~~one mile each) started my watch and headed off. I just trotted, down the hill on Bennett through the bottom of Ft. Tryon Park, noting that I was at the top of the hill before I noticed I was on a hill, across Riverside and down Payson to Dykeman then West to the Hudson River. Raining, raining, raining.....but that wasn't stopping the crowd at the new place on the river~ The Marina~ they were doing valet parking and business, it seemed to me, was good.
I ran out to the end of Manhattan. There's a tree encircled by the path there. There was a couple fishing, they had tackle boxes, four rods and, I haven't a clue why, a radial tire standing up next to where they were sitting.  It's .75 of mile from the Marina to this spot.
Did they take the wheel off the car and roll it all the way over here so that no one could steal their car?
Did they just spot it floating in the river?
Will a radial tire float if it's mounted to the rim?
~~These are the types of question which become distractions which is why I was running so slow.
Right.
I headed back South, up the steps to the River Trail and on towards the George Washington Bridge. Suddenly I realized it wasn't raining anymore and over to the West, the sky began to brighten. Just short of four miles, the sunset burst through and gave the world this:

This is why I don't mind running in the rain.

Joe(going for 100 miles this month)Nation

Long Training Run #1

 This was the morning light, just right for running.

                                                    The runners group themselves into running time groups. I choose 10:30 per mile.

 That knot back there is the 11:00 group...

 Here is the part where I was way behind the 10:30s and still ahead of the 11:00s

Cool Running

This was one of those ideas that doesn't arrive as planned. How few do, but still... .

The idea was to go to the track at 137th Street because the streets were icy. At least, that was my excuse was for not going all the way down to Central Park.

And I wanted to re-calibrate my Garmin, that's my new toy, uh, training tool.



um

It's a watch,
it's a timer,
it's a speedometer,
it's a pace keeper,
it's a heart monitor
AND it takes all the data it gets from the sensor on your shoe and the band around your chest and puts it on your computer.

But of course, the track was frozen solid. Really solid.
I did a lap like the guy above on the inside rail on the crusty snow.
Parts of it on tippy toe.
That should be accurate.


It was so cold that no one in their right mind would be...hey...here is someone who REALLY likes to paint.

I watched him for a moment getting set up. There would be three hard parts I think: 1) keeping the easel from flying off with the geese into the river below, 2) keeping the paint from freezing on the pallet before it froze on the canvas and 3) using your bare hands to draw anything like a fine line.

I did meet a couple of people, the guy running in the picture is actually a personal trainer who was waiting for his client to show up. (Best of luck with that, I said.) And a woman runner who wanted to know more about the Garmin after I mentioned I was there to calibrate the thing. "Does it measure distance?" she asked. "Down to the hundredth of a mile, " I replied, "and it will tell how many steps you took to get there." I love stats.

While I took off to do my lap I saw them head North up the river. I thought about just packing it in but ... if they could do it..... so I headed North too, thinking I would just run the three miles or so home. The path was icy and covered with water at points but mostly clear. They passed me coming back at about a mile and half and yelled that it wasn't any worse ahead. I chugged up the hill at the George Washington Bridge. The path in the woods was a solid sheet of ice and snow making the going very tough uphill. (At one point the chart shows a dead stop, but I was moving the whole time, I just had to dig the edges of my sneakers into the crust. I met a biker on a road bike, think very skinny tires in that icy stuff, coming down. He was walking his bike astraddle. I told him that after the big water at the bottom of the hill, he'd be okay. Cold, but okay.

The re calibrated thingy says it is exactly three miles to the house from the bottom of the stairs to the track. A good thing to remember for next Spring.

The Great Gatorade Debate

Or

The Committee in My Head Does Twenty Miles

When you are running for four hours,( okay, three hours and 57 minutes give or take,) you have a lot of time to think about things or let the committee in your head debate. Do you have a committee in your head? I do. They constantly talk to and at each other. There's WatchOutBoy, also known as EEKwhat'sThat! and BigCoach who calms him down. There's TrueRunningMan who is mostly silent. He lets PumpIt&JumpIt do most of the rah-rah talk while he stays steady. Of course, there is TakeCareDear who is more concerned with comfort, but also likes to chime in with WatchOutBoy if there is chance of danger. And there are any number of others who pop up, speak up, speak out and freak out. So me and this crew of brains and minds headed out to do a long run on Friday morning. They kept me company the whole way.

You try to remain aware of your surroundings, especially in the beginning miles downstream from the George Washington Bridge, because the commuters on bicycles zoom by at tremendous speeds. They must ride this route at this time of the day (9am) everyday because they cover the ground with incredible accuracy. I've watched a lot of bike riders, (I used to teach long distance cycling), these men and women know their machines and the territory they are traversing. I saw two of them cut between a Parks Department truck and a fence with only an inch to spare on each side and neither one of them appeared to have touched a brake handle. Still, even knowing what good riders they are, I keep to the far right side of the path and listen for their approach, but once you get into the rhythm of your surroundings, at about Ten Mile Park, (that means it's ten miles from the south end of Manhattan) about three miles or so into the run, you can finally slide into musing and amusing yourself. I leave the awareness to WatchOutBoy and start thinking.

One thing that struck me on Friday was I think in larger chunks of ground now. When three miles was my limit or my goal, or both, I thought about getting to the next corner or the next painted telephone pole, sometimes my marker would be just the next traffic light. Now, on a twenty mile run, I break things into five mile blocks or six mile loops. I had to keep reminding myself, as I planned what I was going to do at Mile Eighteen, that I was still only at Mile Seven and to take it easy, but PumpItMan, kept saying, "Hey, we're visualizing success here. So, get with the visualizations already." Then I'd say, "You're right." and Take Care,Dear, would say "Oh good, only two miles to the water stop." Onward all of us go, me and PumpIt and TakeCare and all the others. Two miles is now just a hop around the block.

There's some music on my player that I no longer like to hear. When the opening chords come on, I reach over and fast forward past the song and promise myself that I am going to delete that song before the next run. I never do it. So freaking "Six Days till We say We're Sorry" is still on the player. For Christsakes, says BoredandIrritated Brain. He doesn't really speak much. I'm glad.

There is a point at which you think you are going a little nuts. For me, it happens when I try to add together the 45 minute intervals between the gels. (Gels are these little packets of goo that replace the carbohydrates you are burning.) I twice added 45 and 45 and 45 and got two hours and twenty five minutes. (It's difficult to think in the base 60 while trying to suck the rest of the Gatorade out of the PowerBelt Bottles) Apparently, I forgot to to take along CalculatorLobe. Then, from out of nowhere, I had a thought about stopping at the stand on the hill in the Park to buy a bottle of Gatorade. (I really didn't need more Gatorade, I think some side of my mind was trying to sabotage the operation.)

There was a great debate. You should have been there. I mostly listened as the committee deliberated.

First, one side of my mind, I think it was TakeCare, said "Great! Let's do that!"

BigCoach said : "You are out of your mind."

"Why can't we just get some?" whined SaboteurBrain.

"We only have a twenty dollar bill."

"So?" says saboteur brain.

"So, by the time you stop, find out if he's GOT Gatorade and if it's cold and get it and the change and put the change in the little bitty pocket of your belt, it will be really, really hard to get going again."

Saboteur brain had to stop and think about that, but he was joined by EvilProvocateurBrain.

"I'm getting hot and I bet TakeCare, Dear, would like a nice cold drink. Right?"

"Um," said TakeCare, Dear."Will it be really cold?"

"No Stopping!" cried RunningManMind.

Evil provocateur cheese brain ignored him, "Maybe. and maybe we can we get two."

"How will you open one if both your hands are filled?" BigCoach asked sarcastically.

"We'll think of something." sulked Saboteur Brain. (Like Stopping.)

"No Stopping!" shouted RunningManMind.

"Maybe, " (I swear this is what my mind was saying at the time.) "We could just give him the twenty and get the Gatorade, ,,,,mmmmmm cold,,,,, and then tell him we would pick up the change on the next loop."

Saboteur and Provocateur both nodded vigorously to agree with DumbAssBrain who always speaks up at the wrong time.

As it turned out, the pure of heart brains won out and we did not stop for anything except to gulp some water at the fountain at the North End and at the fountain by Coach LeBow's Statue.

Here's the map:

http://www.runningahead.com/maps/1870bd2680ed4f18b31003cab958173d

A word about running up Fifth Ave: It was the right thing to do. It allowed me to see the actual course we will be finishing on and get a sense of how far it is from the edge of the Park to the Gate into the Park. (A million billion miles plus ten steps.) There is, despite my coach's admonition NOT to run in the street, plenty of room to run in the street. There is almost half a lane between the parked cars and the lane where the moving cars are. (All of them are coming at you from behind and not all of them are as good at driving as the biking commuters are at riding, but there were no problems.) The only thing you have to watch out for is the buses.

Those open places on the curb are where the buses pull in to stop for passengers. I learned to look at the faces of the people waiting for the bus. If they looked bored to death I continued to trot along, but if their eyes were getting wider by the second and some had the look about them that said "Christ, the bus is going to smack that idiot and I am going to be late for work." then I would burst into a sprint crossing past the open area just before the bus swooped in. (I only had to do that twice in the mile and a half, but as Rugged Warrior Brain said afterward, "Sprinting at 17 and a half miles is really tough to do.")

I came into the park at Mile Eighteen (my previous long distance record) and looked forward to doing two more miles plus a little more to the end. I had a slug of water, I took a gel, I swooped off down the broad expanse of parkway towards the finish. The rain that had threatened all morning completely disappeared and the bluest sky was above and beyond me all the way down Cat Hill and around the South End and up the two little molehills to the Tavern on the Green. 20.3 miles.

When you run that far you are supposed to keep walking for at least another twenty minutes. I did.

I walked back to the vendor on the hill and asked for a cold Gatorade.

He only had lukewarm Snapple.

No one on the Committee said anything.

At Sixty, I Finally Reach Middle Age

I think I was thirtysomething until I was well past forty eight, maybe forty nine. It was probably getting that AARP invitation that finally jolted me through the forties in a instant and slapped a restraining order on my age awareness. I was suddenly shy around younger people and started having odd thoughts like : "Gosh, I wonder if this is the last baseball game I will ever see." And that was when I was fifty.

Then I realized that I hadn't reached middle age, I was beginning to believe that I was past it, that, worse, I was at the end of my life. It's very difficult to enjoy a ball game when thoughts like that are coursing through your synapses. It slows everything down and speeds everything up only at moments when you want the opposite to be happening. "Hey, you repeatedly and pathetically say, where is the freeze frame button on this life?"

Then, one day after work, you decide to walk a little farther to the subway and two years later, sixty pounds lighter and averaging twenty miles a week running, you find yourself right back where you were - moving along with all the thirtysomethings and the forty-somethings and the fifty-somethings even though you yourself have reached your middle age.

It's Official: Entry #106357 Has Been Confirmed

4:45 AM
The early morning light is charcoal gray flannel. It must be the snow, the little bit of it that we have finally gotten, that makes it look and almost feel as if you could wrap yourself in the blanket of dense air. Of course, at a quarter to five in the morning, I should be wrapping myself in a bit of sheet and a couple coats of comforter, but instead I am on my way to the Merchant's Gate of Central Park to start my NY York City Marathon training.

Yes, 'tis true. Entry #106357 has been duly filled out, zapped across the Internet and been has been graciously received and approved for a confirmed spot in the 2007 ING NYC Marathon. November 4th at about this same time I will making my way to the New York City Library where about ten thousand of us runners will be loaded onto buses for the hour long trip to Staten Island and the West end of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

It seems like a very long way off, and it seems to be zooming at me like a rocket. When I started running on that week long July Fourth Holiday two years ago, it seemed like there was an immense amount of time to get ready. Now I have to start running in earnest.


Or do I? Running for me now is just fun. I really love doing it. I am still as awful at it as I ever was but I have such a good time chugging along that I can't imagine ever not running.

The cold weather has kept me inside for the past three weeks. I tried jogging on the treadmills at the gym and I can hammer out three miles in thirty minutes or less but I don't have the same feeling for it as I do when I am just trotting along the path at Central Park.

Sunday, I got up early and headed down there determined to run even if it was freezing cold. It was freezing cold but I headed over the hills and down past the Boathouse and up Cat Hill and around the reservoir. I was in heaven except for the part where the dirt road by the police station was all chunky icy, that was tricky. I kept wondering if I was going to fall and break something on my first day out in a month.

Wind chill this morning was minus three F, I got off the train and stood on the street corner for about three minutes before deciding to taxi over to the gym for more treadmill.

I love running. I just am not stupid about it.

One Loop in the Cold

The December sun was shining with all the power of a 40 watt light bulb as the 5,000 or so folks made their way down the paths to the New York Road Runner's Holiday Five Mile on Saturday morning. The mood of this race is festive, you see a lot of reindeer horns and Santa Claus ( or his representatives) is seen in various garb. I was taking the morning off of work to do this one, it was my insurance race. A runner has to do nine races in 2006 in order to qualify for next year's NYC ING Marathon and I entered this race in case I had failed to finish in one of the others in my list. I didn't. I'm in. I did my ninth race a couple of weeks ago.

So why was I here? For the fun of it. Which makes it a transforming moment, doesn't it? Up until now it was all about the training and getting ready and wondering if all the training and getting ready were actually training and getting me ready for anything. This was a lark. All I had to do was trot around the park once and then go and sip hot chocolate with the other 4,992 finishers.

And it was fun. I bopped along at my ten minute a mile pace until the last mile when I tried to pour it on a little AND succeeded. I did the last mile in the underwhelming time of 9:17 and met my goal of beating 50 minutes.

At the end there was a bunch of us all huffing and puffing and pushing each other to finish strong. Yea us! This has happened to me twice, right at the end of a race with about a half a mile to go, someone says "Hey, you're doing great!" and then we run together to the end just as if we had been best buddies through the mornings. I think I could have run another five at the end which is a good thing because the next race is Sunday.

It's the 6K Joe and it's kind of the anniversary race for me, it's the one where I really felt like I had passed some kind of marker in the change from being a huffer trying to lose weight and (dare I say it?) a runner.

Marathon Day 2006

It didn't occur to me until I got to Northeast corner of Central Park (110th Street and Fifth Ave.), but it is the perfect spot to watch the ING New York City Marathon. Why? Because right about at that point, twenty-three miles into the race, Fifth Ave makes a slight angle upward, just a couple of degrees of incline and about a mile long, a little grade that probably doesn't even register on people walking by, but for someone who wants to get to the turn into the Central Park, the last major transition in the run, it is a very long, long hill.

I haven't watched a race in a long time. It is like watching the opening of a floodgate, first, besides the obvious runners in the lead, there are the little knots of men and women, followed by bigger knots and then the scattered left behind runners.
Mixed in with the early leaders were the last of the wheelchair racers. These are not the rollers with the three thousand dollar chairs with the grinder handles and the sleek tilted wheels. Those guys and gals are long gone ( the winner finished in under an hour and thirty minutes.) No, the last wheelchairs are wheelchairs, regular blue and black, footrests in the front, straight wheels and push handle kind of chair you see in the front hall of hospitals. Making that kind of chair go 26 miles is a major effort. Major.

The hill makes this last stretch of roadway very tough. The crowd was tremendous, yelling the name of anyone who was smart enough to put it on their shirt. It must be a great boost to hear your name shouted in cadence at this point of your marathon. "You look great, Joe!" "Wow, Diane, Diane, Diane , go for it now!" Yea, Bill, the top of the hill is the turn into the Park!!" They flew up the hill, not everyone did. There were more than a few who stopped and stretched a hamstring, or an instep, or massaged a shin splint.

As the runners came on in greater numbers the noise the crowd made got even louder. Bells, horns, plastic noisemakers filled the air.


The blond lady waved her sign at every runner while she waited for her husband to come by. He was supposed to be in the three and a half hour finishers and as the time clicked by she got more and more excited, waving and looking and waving and looking. When he finally did arrive arrive, he STOPPED to say hello to her. "Why are you stopping???" she gasped! "Just wanted a kiss, hon."he said and with a little burst of energy in his step, he took off up the avenue.

He had some company.

I'm doing this next year.

Opportunity Knocks, Rationality Answers

A friend writes in regard to the Staten Island Half Marathon:
Great PR!!! I am still working out what PR means but please don't help me, I'm sure I can come up with something. AH, Personal Record - just tell me if I'm wrong.

Skip

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It could also stand for Particular Reason as in “Do you have any particular reason for standing out in this cold in your shorts?”

Or Personal Renewal which is a lot like Urban Renewal, there is a lot of dust created and eaten and when you are finished no one remembers what the original looked like.

Or Pathetic Raison d'etre. Never mind.

======================================================================

I was hoist by a personal dilemma these past few days. A friend of mine has an entry in THIS year’s marathon, but he is injured and cannot run it. So he offered to pick up his chip (the thing we wear to monitor our times) and bib (the number we wear – it was going to be like number 20331) and give it to me to wear IF I wanted.

What a temptation! I know I could do twenty miles, but I haven’t pushed past that.

Aside from the fact that you are not supposed to transfer any entry and I could be disqualified for next year if I was found out, I was really psyched up and ready.

I got out the maps.

I looked up the ferry schedule.

(The busses were full so I would have to walk trot miles to the starting area. No biggie)
If I ran sixteen miles, I would be back in Manhattan and I could quit and take a taxi home… …. …. I started packing the old sweatshirt I would abandon at the start when a question bubbled up from somewhere deep in my medulla oblongata, “What part of your plan is this?”

UH.

I gave the ticket back to him.

I’m going to Marcus Garvey Plaza to watch this morning.

Hey…… want to see what a truck looks like on a downhill at ten miles into a thirteen miler???

Running on the Edge

The Staten Island Half Marathon was Sunday morning starting at 9:30AM. The NYRR's website had warned everyone that the last possible ferry to take over would be at 8:30, so I headed out early to catch the 7:30. Good thing, because if there is one thing that New York City does really well, it's screwing up any plans you have for travel on the weekends. I got to 59th Street on the A and ran upstairs to take the 1 train to South Ferry and there was a No 5 train sitting there. Now, the No 5 train does not run on the 1/9 line, but hey, it's a train, it's here and it's headed South, so myself and several other runners got on only to hear an announcement that the No 1 train would not be running to South Ferry that morning and would be stopping at 14th Street blah blah blah take a shuttle bus from Chambers Street from the No 2 ~~~~~~ as if.

I got off at 14Th with everyone else and at my elbow was a tiny woman runner. "I'm going upstairs to catch a cab, "I said, "and you are welcome to join me. I'm Jonathan. " She nodded enthusiastically and introduced herself as Alice in an Australian accent so thick you would have thought it was a Vegamite sandwich. We counted what little cash we had on us as we ascended the stairs. Turning quickly on the sidewalk I raised my arm to hail a cab when a voice from another cab that was sitting nearby shouted, "Are you going to the race?" "Yes, yes" we said and after the cabdriver moved a pile of stuff off the passenger seat, Alice and I joined the two strangers who were imploring the cabdriver to step on it to South Ferry. Our fellow travelers were the very talkative Kevin, an Irishman from Brooklyn who likes to run the 59Th Street Bridge (the bane and horror for many NYC Marathoners) and Brigid, who was on her way to meet a bunch of folks who were going to do seven miles before the 13 mile Half in order to get in their twenty mile training run. The cabdriver drove like a maniac with Sufi music blaring over the voices of the Aussie, the Midlands man and the two Americans.

Bridget found some of her running companions and left us at the terminal. Kevin and Alice and I had a great trip over on the ferry, talking about where to buy and what to buy in running shoes, reviewing races that we've been in and what was the best food ever given out at the end of a race - Popsicles was the favorite.

I said my goodbyes to them after we reached the starting area, I knew I was going to be keyed up a little and wanted to go do a little pre-running myself. What I did do was stretch and then go stand in line to pee, then I jogged a little, then I stood in line to pee some more. I swear I am the most hydrated person on the planet, I had a cup of water, I went to go pack my baggage bag with my sweatshirt and then----- I had to stand in line to pee again and I peed about the same cup of water.

(By the way, runners don't line up in front of each porta-pottie like they do at rock concerts, they form longer lines that have four or five porta-potties under their watch. It's better the runner's way because you don't have to hope that the one you are in front of doesn't contain the guy with the bashful bladder.)

It was pretty chilly, about 45F, but not a lot of wind. I took my sweatshirt early and was toying with the idea of running with my jacket on but open, but at the very last moment, I took it off, went back into the baggage area, found my bag and stuffed it in. As it turns out, that was a very good thing. By the top of the first hill I was plenty warmed up and only twelve and a half miles to go.

The race itself was very fast, pretty hilly and a lot of fun. My splits were a minute faster than in training, I hit 1 mile at 9:49, 2 miles at 18:something and did five miles in 47 minutes, that's six minutes faster than I've ever done that, I hit six miles in one hour and one minute and was very happy being swept along by the crowd. This bunch of runners were all here to tune up for the marathon in three weeks so for me it was like being one of those leaves on the highway as the big truck zooms by, you just get sucked along by the draft. We did a U-turn at the midway point and you got to see just how many sloggers there were behind even the likes of someone like me. It looked like a thousand, maybe more.

At the eight mile mark with five miles to go, I tried picturing in my head where I would be in Central Park, one mile further would be that first water fountain north of 79Th Street, two miles further would be near the crossover etc, thinking that instead of concentrating on where I was in the unfamiliar landscape of Staten Island warehouses, I would be able to imagine just how much farther I had to go. So I started looking for the Nine mile marker, but it never seemed to show, I ran and ran and ran and ran and began to believe that mile was the longest and slowest I had ever run. I kept recalculating my time for the 15K (9.3 miles) and was dismayed as my best time for that distance came and went and still no sign of the sign of Nine.

~

That's because there wasn't one.

~

The next sign said 10 miles and my relief was incredible. I felt like I had been given a free mile. Yea!! Only three to go, not four!! And the best part was that those two miles were supposed to have been the hardest of the run, so now they were behind me too. I chugged along chasing after a couple of people with Brazilian flags on their hats and jerseys because they seemed to be going along at about the same speed as me. I passed them on the last sharp downhill and then floated the last half mile to the finish. 2 hours 16 minutes and 23 seconds. Nearly five minutes faster, yes, faster, than the NYC Half Marathon so that is my new PR for 13.1 miles.

I learned a couple of things:

Always take enough money to take a cab both ways if necessary. (The subway took two hours to get me from South Ferry to home. I could have run home in the same time.)

Bring my cellphone.

Pack some Advil to take at the end of the race to help reduce any inflammation.

Also, take the camera.

I would have loved for everyone to see the folks at this race, Kevin, Alice, Bridget, the bunch of folks who were determined to do a stretching routine while heavy rock and roll blared out from the podium. The leader kept having to scream things like "Okay, now relax your right leg, BENDING your knee and keeping your FOOT flat on the ground!!" Everyone was laughing and trying to stretch.

This was not a picturesque race course, but I would have shot a few pics of the runners trying to find just the right apple or bagel at the end. There were no Popsicles but it was too cold for that sort of thing anyway.

Oh, and keep in mind what you get to have once you get home--- a nap and this:

yum.

Traipsing, slogging, Your call.

Traipsing. Is that faster or slower than slogging? I think it's faster and it has a happier sound to it. So, yesterday, in preparation for the Staten Island Half-Marathon (Motto: This is only halfway of the real thing, you dope.) I went to the Park and traipsed over to the New York Road Runners office to pick up my number (Four Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety Three) and the very understated tee-shirt for the race, then I traipsed around the rest of the five mile loop as if it were nothing more than a walk in the park.

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time it was taking me a hour to get from 59th Street to the subway station at 110th (about three miles) and I was very happy to get there. That's a quickie 30 minute jog for me now. What a difference not lugging around the extra 52 pounds.

But, so as to not bring down the god's wrath upon me, I am still just motivating along. No big theatrics, no sprints, no charging down hills (Although yesterday I did just let it roll out a little on the downhill by the theatre.) I stretch my hamstrings and knees and get warmed up before heading out. I have a headset full of hot songs and I put them on scramble so I never know what's coming next.

I was surprised to see so few people in the park yesterday. It was about the same number I see at five in the morning. The weather was perfect, clear skies and just a little wind now and then, but instead of seeing a lot of folks getting ready for either tomorrow or the Marathon itself (coming up in the first week of November). I took the camera along and tried taking a few while in motion (Uh,,,, no, doesn't work well.) and looked for the first tinges of fall color.

More tomorrow after I ride the ferry home.