I am an urban runner

Got my regular Wednesday night run in tonight, though I had to cut it short. I had planned to run all the way home again, but just couldn't do it. My legs actually felt pretty good, but my lungs were having trouble. I just could not stop coughing and after a couple of miles that turned to dry heaves. I had to just stop several times to get nausea under control. So much for corned beef and cabbage for Wednesday lunches.



Just look at that run! Fast, slow, fast slow... ridiculous. Fortunately, I broke the 100 miles mark with the Nike+ system. Yay, me. That only took two years.



The culprit may have been the air quality today. Take a look at this neat little chart, courtesy of weather.com:



Sure, weather.com says the air quality isn't horrible...but I beg to differ. I could barely see the world financial center from two miles away through the haze. It has been warm and humid all day and I'm thinking my lungs just couldn't handle the ... well, the smog. It might have been wiser to have put off this run, but I didn't think of that. In fact, I'm still coughing - I sound like my dad! (just joking, dad)

4 and a half miles, one hour. A pace of almost thirteen minutes per mile. Ugh. What happened to the days of just going out and doing seven miles at 10 min/mi with no walking? The running has not been rewarding lately; this needs to change soon.

So besides breathing shitty air, what makes me an urban runner? The fact that one of my best running paths is a tiny, thin little strip of asphalt squeezed between a highway and a river and despite it being crowded by bicyclists and dog-walkers, I'm thankful for it. What else makes me an urban runner? I think the cross-country part - the running along streets and sidewalks dodging bicycles, pedestrians, and taxis. It's actually great fun and keeps the run interesting.