I just realized that my previous post was completely focused on the "mudfest" part of my weekend, when in fact, it was only about half a day that I spent there at Liberty State Park. In fact, the rest of my weekend was also quite adventurous. As we were heading to the festival on Sunday, Rachel was getting really excited - she gets REALLY excited about music festivals - she said something that at the time, in my half asleep half trying-to-wake-up state I almost missed, but couldn't agree with more: that while the event in itself is really exciting, the truth is that trying something new, traveling on a ferry, going to New Jersey (wohooo), getting out of the routines are really what make these days so exciting. So true! Sometimes, just going to a place I haven't been before - even if it's to run an errand - taking a subway I haven't taken before, can be exciting among the routines of the weekdays. So, in fact, taking a ferry across the Hudson was almost as exciting as it was to see Coldplay. Ok, maybe not so much, but nearly (shows how exciting being in lab all day can be).
So along these lines, my Saturday crack-of-dawn training run was almost as exciting as seeing Coldplay. The New York Road Runners club organizes 2-3 long training runs in the summer/early fall just in time for marathon training. I had missed the first one of these earlier in July, but at the time, I was still on 6-8 miles for my long runs, which is a little short for these group runs. The point of these is that you can run with a bunch of people without having to join a regular running group or being pressures to run at a specific pace. They provide pacers, water along the park drives and snacks at the end. You can run anywhere from 6-20 miles, start all together in pace groups and then finish wherever you want to. They start at 7am, which is another great thing: it gets me out of bed and running before the heat of the day. Lately, I haven't been able to get myself out of bed on time to run in the mornings on the weekends and I have been more busy than usual on the social side :) which means that evening long runs - which can take as much as 3 hours out of my day - were out of the question. As a consequence, I have been doing 8-10 miles in the midday heat in July, which is really stupid. No wonder I hadn't had a good long run since I ran on the treadmill in Kansas in air conditioning.
Saturday was the perfect day in all kinds of ways. The humidity of last week finally gone after some big storms on Friday night, perfectly sunny, not a cloud in sight, some breeze, what else can we ask for? I had a good dinner on Friday, slept very little (which somehow always helped me when it came to sports), got up early enough to eat, have coffee, stretch, get to the park without rush, go to the bathroom, etc. Everything was perfect in a way. I started with a slow group (10:30 min/mile) that I passed after the first big hill and ended up catching up with 2 other groups (I think they were both 10 min/milers) and finished around 13 miles mostly on my own, which is actually how I prefer it. The biggest help were the water/Gatorade along the course, the mile markers, and the bananas in the middle (I ran the last 3 miles or so with a banana in my hand, since I knew I wasn't gonna finish at the same spot as most people). I felt great the whole time, with a little soreness towards the end, but all in all, it was a great run and now I feel ready for the NYC Half Marathon in 2 weeks!
By the way, I am so excited about the Half! It'll run through the middle of Manhattan (from Central Park down to the Southern tip of the island, Battery Park), which should be a nice preview for the marathon. I also have a friend from Boston who's coming to run and hang out and it's the day after my birthday, which is sort of a bummer, but I decided to have a party after the race, which will be celebration for all different reasons.
Which reminds me, one of Rachel's friends who's also running the half and happened to come with us to the festival yesterday, was born on the exact same day as I was. Year and month and day... never met anyone else before who was born on the exact same day! So as we sat eating pizza, we started wondering what the chances of meeting people who were born on the same exact day were. It turns out that on average, 216 thousand babies are born each day in the world (according to Wiki answers). So, I guess, considering that there are over 6 billion people in the world, it's not so likely to meet someone who was born the same exact day. Then again, most of my friends and their friends are around my age, and so that would increase the likelihood. Also, most babies apparently are born in August. Hmmm, do people really have more sex around the holidays?
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