Central Park

Whew! What a day!

Didn't hear the reassuring jangle of my alarm. Started awake anxiously and late. The beginning presaged how the day would unfold, albeit in a more benign way than the crazed start might have indicated.

Tantalizing rejection letter, followed by a mad scramble to meet the Speedy Blonde. Like my day, my run started frantically. Damp clung to our skin as we started towards Central Park. The rain had agreed to a temporary cease-fire that it would later violate. Puffing our way up the first hill, with the Speedy Blonde in the lead, we encounter none other than Story Finder, hooding it in the other direction!

After our offer to run with her was waved off in the cloud of dust raised by her furiously spinning feet, the Speedy Blonde and I looked at each other with relief. "Boy, was she going fast!"

The return of the rain added a child-like and delightful element to the run that helped ameliorate the pain of the backside of Cat Hill. Wow. If we keep this up, the Speedy Blonde and I will be doing hill workouts every week. Maybe we can persuade Ivy League to come and do some lip-to-lip repeats with us.....

Knowing that the Chestershire Cat had already started her training, I felt like I shouldn't be a total slacker and ran with the Speedy Blonde up to the Museum of Natural History, before panicking about the time and rushing back to get to another meeting, which got me a bit over seven miles or so. My training for New York doesn't officially start until next week but I don't want to have to stare at the backside of the Chestershire Cat during the half we'll be running because she trained more than I did.

I am not, however, a bit competitive.

Still worried about my quad, as it doesn't seem quite right, but I'm hanging in there. I might have changed my stride a bit, as both my hamstrings and flutes have been sorer and tighter than they should be, even considering that the small number of miles that I have been doing is more, sadly, than I am currently used to. Is this stride change a bad thing?