Training Log Archive: piutepro

Red course in Central Park. Beautiful weather, millions of people in the park, have to dodge dogs, bicyclists and slow moving bi-footers. Nice running, with the most trouble when I have to locate the tiny paper flags around a boulder or another object. One never knows in this park, if the controls have legs and move around or over by a mysterious hand of a stranger.
It is fun and I miss taking some splits, I am so busy not to run in people and/or to watch out for the bag. There are a lot of runners in the park, so that most people don't even realize that we race here.

Sprint in Central Park. Not much energy left after red. Actually not much energy in both races. I have not really found a good speed since overworking at the A-meet. If I am lucky I find some secret back-up energy, otherwise I just bungle along and see that I stay on the map.

Stretching to get over the pavement running in CP and also the intense garden crawling while weeding @ planting some bulbs, seeds and cleaning up. It is late this year for the garden. At least the weather is absolutely gorgeous for dirt crawling. Just the right thing to mull over some big decisions getting the plants underground.

Easy run to the island loop. Yesterday evening I saw a car parked at the 'neck' of the peninsula, in an area which has normally no car traffic. Kind of weird, so I turned around. Today the car is still there, a rental with police officer's business card on the dashboard. Weirder. A vehicle track goes around the foot path. Looks like they are either hunting rabbits at night or maybe mysterious pirates anchoring at the island. Can't figure. Will need more investigation to figure out the incident. First it is off limits because of the bald eagles and now the island is under police surveillance.

Pre-central specific relaxation program. Visualize dog ditching, people slalom, body checking baseball players and outrunning bicyclists and rollerbladers. Practice road sprinting and bushwacking across the Great Lawn in my mind.

Easy run in the evening. Still quite warm. Get hungry during the run and slow down. Guess more lunch would have helped.

Stretching is more fun when it is warm. The muscles are relaxed and flexible. But I think I have trouble to get used to the sudden relative heat in the 80 degree range. Definitely need more fluids now. Enough sleep would be helpful, too.

Wow. Excellent timing. I stopped the watch exactly at 1:00:00, down to 1/100 of a second. What a great accomplishment. The perfectly timed run. Never mind that I was running quite slow to achieve this precision timing. Celebrate what we can celebrate.

Includes 4 x 3 min. almost tempo runs on the island.

Stretching. It is hot, really warm and we just had the first real cool thunderstorm. Can't believe it is almost summer. Spring comes and I am surprised that it happens. Kind of forgot about it. Which makes it a real discovery. E.g. these funny green things winking from the trees and sweat flowing freely and no hat and no gloves, another wow.

Two speed training session in Central Park orienteering at Bushy Ridge/Pelton Pond: First an ultra slow trail run with constant overly detailed map reading on trails. Then a break, stretching and relaxing in the middle of the woods and a run back at full speed while reading on the fly.
The first part should cure the bad habit of cruising on trails while forgetting to read the map or overrunning because of the speed. Plus running on trail needs side navigating, meaning I use elements left and right of the trail, because the trail itself doesn't really give me any information. Bends are often unreliable, so I look for little hills and point features on the side.
The second part is navigation at full speed, glancing at the map very quickly and see what comes. I find a good rhythm of checking what comes in the next 100m or so, run full speed and only check when I reach the end of the short distance. If I read too much I waste time by slowing down a little bit. Very scientific, everything. Or at least a mental game to make things interesting.

In the middle of the woods near a tremendously huge old maple. I stretch, breathe, do some martial arts and soak in the perfect and warm and sunny and crisp moment in the woods. A piece of art, right there. Just being there is a fine moment of being in the moment of a moment while knowing about the moment.

Post run stretch and breathe. Kind of exhausted from doing not much. Maybe rather from not sleeping much.

Easy run to the island. I hear a weird splashing noise in the river, like a herd of zebras crossing the water. Well, it happens to be a school (a herd? a congregation? a flock) of water deer, happily racing in the shallow waters. The world is really out of wack. I have seen moose grazing under water, but not deer. Next things I see them swim across the river.

Stretch and balance the unbalancable. - It gets late and at 1 AM, when I am about to close down the shop, I see a weird blue light blinking outside. Looks like a firefighter car. I turn my head. A neighboring house is in flames up to the sky. It is the drug house, a place with troublemakers and a resident drug dealer. (Quote of the Beacon police department: "We can't do anything when there is trouble in the house. The owner is in jail." Weird logic).
I grab my camera, take a picture out the window. Walk out and take a closer shot. Guess my old photographer habit pops out. Shot first, think second. Around the house is a collection of fire trucks. The fire is down within a few minutes. The owner stands there, bloody from climbing out through the broken window. The neighbors come out of their houses. Nobody feels sorry, even though everybody is concerned about the people in the house. But the drug dealing and the 'customers' have pestered the neighborhood so long. Someone suggests a block party to celebrate when the house is being bulldozed in a few days.

I call the local paper, sell them some pictures. Not that I want to be a news photographer again. But I have the material and can as well have it published. Not without an agenda: I tell the writer the background of the house and its owner. They have shot at my car and shot rocks through the window of Mario's room. And a lot more stupid moronic white trash behavior. I think the city of Beaon had nothing than excuses not to intervene in an otherwise fine lower middle class neighborhood. So I give the journalist some of this stuff. I am not surprised though, that on the next day not much of the background is in the story. I guess the paper didn't want to get in trouble. Where would we get when a newspaper would go deeper than just crime and fire stories. E.g. ask how can it be that a known drug dealer keeps doing business for years out of the same building?

Down to river and two laps on the island with 4x 3min. tempo runs on the trail.

Reconstitute, recalibrate and reconditioning.