Al Gordon 15K - TEN MILES!

Ten miles yesterday (Sunday)! I am still feeling the effects.

The Al Gordon 15K was held on February 13th in Central Park. The route consisted of an almost full Central Park loop (cut off at the 102nd street crossover) and then a shorter 4 mile loop (cut through at the 72nd street crossover and finish at the 102nd street crossover). The total distance for the race was 9.3 miles and my warmup jogging was intended to get me up to a total of 10 miles for the run.

I very nearly didn't make it on time. After waiting for the R train for 15 minutes, I decided to skip it and hurried home, jumped on my bike, and arrived at 90th street to park with about 20 minutes to spare. 10 minutes to jog up there, shed my outer layers, drop off my stuff, 10 minutes to find the portapotties and take a leak, then just as I was headed back to the starting line, the horn sounded. No biggie, of course... with the chip system, your official time is based on when you actually cross the start and finish lines.

The warmup was great, the first three miles weren't terrible, but about as difficult as I've come to expect them to be. But I just couldn't get into that groove, where my body is finally in tune with the running. This whole run was a moderate struggle, easing up only about a mile from the finish. This was in stark contrast to last weekend's eight miles. I think part of the problem was that I'd left one of my asthma medications in NJ and didn't have it in my system...so after a few miles, my lungs closed up a bit.

Nevertheless, the day was sunny, 38 degrees, and the park was beautiful with all the orange flags of the Gates project. Truly fantastic. It was not lost on most of the runners that the orange of the Gates is the same orange as the Marathon - at least, New York's Marathon, sponsored by ING.

Despite my perceived difficulties yesterday, the run seems to have turned out to be one of my best, since a) I never stopped to rest or walk, and b) the race results say I completed the 15K in an hour, 38 minutes, and change. My per-mile time was an astonishing (to me) 10:19. How in the hell have I managed to drop nearly a whole minute from my pace in one month? (The seven miler I ran in central park, my per-mile pace was 11:something. And I didn't walk during that race either. On the other hand, it was much colder then, too!) Something is screwy with these statistics. All my other runs, I have been running steady 11 minute pace; maybe a few seconds faster, but no more. I'll endeavor to run more precisely measured courses and guage my time more accurately...see what's up. Incidentally, I came in number 2224, out of 2581 runners.

I'm not obsessed with the time... but it is of interest and its a clinical indication that I'm getting better at this.

Time for a new stopwatch. I killed mine in the washer. :(

Somehow, I'm not as on-top-of-the-world about this 15K as I was about the 7-miler. If I felt like Rocky, I felt like Rocky after taking a beating. Well, maybe not that bad. But the numbers are encouraging; my breathing pattern also has changed for the better.

3 miles tomorrow, maybe 4. I have to check my calendar. As long as its not icy-slick, shouldn't be a problem.