Training Log

Distance: 3.94 m
Pace: 10:04 min/mi

Day one of training for the half (my first half that is). Back still twitchy, so taking it slow. The distance and pace numbers are a bit misleading as it includes the 9 flight of stairs of my building (at the start and the end), and the traffic between the house and the west side. Uninterrupted running was 2.5 miles at a pace between 9 and 9:10.

The stairs at the end are a good addition.

Back to Yasso

Distance: 3.39 mi.
Pace: 8:47 min/mi

Did Yasso 800 again with a goal time of 3:30 for 1/2 mile. I wanted to do 5 sets, but my time started to get off target at the third so I decided to settle for 4. My times were:

Split 1: 3:31
Split 2: 3:33
Split 3: 3:39
Split 4: 3:39

Cadence for one foot is between 100 and 106. My speed on the rest intervals was quite a bit faster than the first time I tried, that might explain why I had a hard time keeping the pace.

Easy does it

Distance: 4.06 mi
Pace: 8:23 min/mi

Back from Austria. Still easing back into exercise. Went down to Battery park. Felt OK. Should start pushing pace and distance again soon.

Trying RunningAHEAD and Strava as alternatives to GarminConnect to look at my running data. So far I have not found many important differences. RunningAHEAD's website feels a bit 1980s, Strava is slightly annoying because it clearly wants you to get to upgrade to the paying version. It does track your "personal best" in all sorts of category which is nice.

New gadget

Distance: 8 mi.
Pace: 8.54 min/mi
Cadence: 89 spm

Bought a footpod to analyze my cadence and track distance indoors. Not sure yet what to make of 89, will need to reed a little. Certainly was almost no variation in cadence throughout. Running felt hard, legs felt stiff. Could be because I did not stretch after the last run or because I climbed yesterday.

Its not leisure if you sweat

Distance: 6.4 mi.
Pace: 8:38 min/mi
Flat

Back in NYC. Ran on the west side. First time I do this on a Saturday afternoon. Its a bit hard at that time on a sunny day. Too packed. But I am actually happy: I finally ran under 9 min/mi for a longuish run.

There's hope.

Did my 29 burpees earlier.

Where's the beef?

Perhaps to try after BkB some day:
P&B
Fresh-n-Fast

Slacklining

Central Park:

Brooklyn half-marathon

Woke up bright and early Saturday morning to catch the train out to Brooklyn for my first half-marathon (the drunken bet to run this was made May 14th, 16 days earlier). I was pretty chill (barely awake actually) for the start of the ride, but by 59th street, the train was filling up with runners. There was a lot of nervous energy in the air, so I tried to tune out with the iPod, but by the time we got to Prospect Park, the train was jam-packed with twitchy runners. I quickly checked my bag and headed for my corral. That took awhile, cause it turns out I was in the catch-all corral, which meant that I walked past roughly 10,000 other runners. A few minutes of warming up, 20 minutes of walking and I was finally past the start gate. The course looked great on paper, half in Prospect Park, after which it was a straight shot down Ocean Parkway to Coney Island. My very simple strategy was to run a 10 min/mile the entire way. I did pretty well maintaining pace, exiting the park at mile 7 in 1:06. At this point, I was in new territory, never having run this long before. Despite this, I distinctly remember feeling pretty upbeat at this point, thinking, 'This isn't as bad as I thought.' n00b, halfway does not mean you are almost done.

The next few miles went reasonably well, although the monotony of running down a long straight road got to me very quickly (running in the park was much more pleasant despite the hills). At mile 10, I remember feeling some funky twitching in the quads (I later discovered that these are called fasciculations). I kept running, reminding myself to try and drink more fluids at the next water station. I passed the 11 mile marker at 1:46, and BOOM, my quads cramped up. Both legs were locked in rigid extension, and I must have looked like Frankenstein trying to get off the road while dodging runners. I leaned against a tree until my legs unlocked (got to see a guy with a huge tattoo of a guy screwing and angel on his back pass me). I spent the remainder of the race running/hobbling between cramping episodes. It must have looked really sad cause two people stopped to ask me if I was ok. At this point, an older blind runner and a guy born in 1938 passed me.

By the time I made it to the boardwalk, the cramps had spread to my calves, shins and worst of all my adductors (not my hammies though!). The last quarter-mile or so was surely the saddest looking, and I'm positive that they took my race photo in there somewhere. I crossed the finish line at 2:23, met some co-workers who also ran the race, and promptly grabbed a burger & beer (post-race recovery beverage of choice) and went to dip my legs in the ocean. All in all, I had a great race despite the disappointing finish: beautiful weather, a nice course ending on the beach and of course the fact that I did not die.

What did I learn? Well, I don't think I'll ever love running, although I think that under 7 miles or so is still pretty interesting. Also, I'm terrible at running, which just has to do with the fact that I almost never run (see graph from training log below); it wouldn't hurt to work more short distance running into the programming. Finally, I seem to be predisposed to cramping. The sequence of events this time around sounds most like cramping due to low sodium, but from the little I read, exercise associated cramping is still poorly understood. Maybe I'll drink some pickle juice next time.

Central Park running

Chloe, Joana, Scott and I met in front of the Met to run the 6.1 mile main loop in Central Park. It was a gorgeous day, and there were tons of people running/walking/cycling. Except for Chloe, none of us had run further than 3-4 miles before. I think we were all a bit nervous, but with Chloe's helpful pacing in the first few miles, we all finished just fine (Joana having first walked 80 blocks to meet us at the Met!). Chloe picked up her pace in the last few miles to actually get a workout, and the rest of us finished in just over 54 minutes. That is a bit faster than what I will run next Saturday, but I have a decent sense of how to pace myself now. Rewarded ourselves with a little Shake Shack action, where Chloe ate the equivalent of four burgers!!! I have the receipt to prove it!

Getting the reps in

Warm-up:
Burgener warm-up
overhead squat

19x1 snatch (2x88,99,5x110 [f3],7x121 [f2,3,5],2x132,2x138)
1x(1+3) clean + jerk (132)
4x2 clean + jerk (2x132,143,154)

3x8 RDL (154)
3x8 glute-ham situps

All weights assuming the bar was 20kg.

Another day at Equinox. Lifted with a Yoon, who I met over at LBH (also the creator of the map below). Lifts felt ok, especially after I turned around so I wasn't facing the mirror. Got some good advice from Yoon regarding the first pull; I may try some snatch pull + snatch complexes tomorrow. Gym is real nice, got to do the situps on a real GHD. Got big boxes too, gonna max out on the box jumps tomorrow!

Ever wondered where all the gyms with bumpers in NYC are?
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40 what?!?

A climbing themed day with JKoll. Started by installing her new hangboard. It's an awesome piece of gear, but seeming as Joana has no studs, it's mounted in drywall only. This means that none of you guys is allowed to use it without cutting some weight! We proceeded to Rat Rock in Central Park (where Bon Jovi was puttin on a free concert), and met a nice guy named Ari who showed us a tough slabby problem with tiny holds on the north face. Worked on that and a nice traverse in addition to the same move I get stuck on in the Polish Traverse. Ended the day by walking down to MPHC to meet Kenway and his brother for some indoor climbing (the meetup was ultimately foiled by NYC traffic). You'd think we would have been exhausted after all of this, but Joana ended the day by running 40, that's right 40, laps on a 5.6! WTF?! (Oh yeah, brunch, sprinkler soaking, tree climbing, fence jumping, fence breaking and Pinkberry eating occurred at various times between the climbing.)

For future NYC bouldering trips:
www.climbnyc.com
upstatemanhattanboulderer.blogspot.com
scottsnelling.blogspot.com

Is that Brian?

Photo (c) Fox News
When I first saw this new story I was sure all those longing looks that Brian gives buildings around the city had finally driven him over the edge... but then it became clear that the climber wasn't sporting pants anywhere near as cool as Brian's chinos. Interestingly the idea of climbing the New York Times building apparently became a fad. Alain Robert as the first. Renaldo Clarke couldn't help following. Of course the real reason Brian wasn't third becomes apparent when you look at the interior shots: this climb isn't even a 5.8 but it is sustained.

Central Park Bouldering

Perfect day to climb outside, so despite some lingering jetlag, I met up with Joana to explore some boulders in Central Park. I'm surprised we never made it to CP to climb, but I guess maybe the weather hasn't been conducive for awhile. Either way, today was perfect and my fingers have been itching ever since climbing in Cascais. We started off at Rat Rock, where we met up with Dave. Tough to figure out what constituted a problem, but there was good stuff on all the faces. I especially like a problem on the West face (thanks for pointing it out Dave, although that heel-hook wasn't working for me), and there is a fun flake on the East face. We then decided to find Cat Rock, which we arrived at through a rather roundabout path (if it weren't for the map below, I doubt I could find it again). Problems here were tougher, more vertical, crimpy and had committing topouts. We spent a good while trying to find problems we could get more than a few moves into. After 45 minutes of this, we all spontaneously decided that burgers were necessary. Off the Stand we went for burgers and beer!

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I hope that's dog sh*t

A short evening bouldering session with Joe in Morningside park. Started off traversing on man-made walls, where we had a bit of an odd exchange with some guy walking his dog, who asked us rather casually, "Do you smoke weed?". We went off in search of problems down by the pond. This first one tucked away just below the dog park. Nice and easy with big holds that topped out after 3-4 moves (starts on the little flake by the tree).
The next was just across from the baseball field (might actually be NYPD Goo as mentioned here). This time the shrubbery was trimmed, and we had a nice clean landing. Travels up the crack, with the right hand on slopers the whole way. Feet are really bad, so neither of us managed to top out, but it's definitely worth trying again.

Watch that tuna intake

You may be surprised by the mercury levels found in tuna in NYC. Seem to be a bit higher than I expected. Gotta start shopping at Fairway!

Climbing gyms in the area

the list

Morningside Park bouldering

First try at some bouldering in Morningside Park. I started at a nice easy face, which for a lack of creativity, I've labelled Rock I on the map below. There's a nice easy traverse to warm up on. No sign of climbing (eg, chalk) so I just climbed a couple of obvious corners. Real rock is sharp, and I need a brush to clean some dirt off some of the holds, but I had a lot of fun! Just the tip of the iceberg too, I've spotted at least 3 more good problems. I'll update this map as I make progress.

Update: Turns out I was climbing on the east face of Crackpipe corner. I had a look at the south face where you can find NYPD Goo (V2), and it looks like fun (although the landing isn't nearly as nice).
View Larger Map

Adventure Racing, Oct. 21st

So it seems the urbanathalon that we were thinking of doing is scheduled during neuroecon, so we won't be able to do it. Looking ahead, the next viable race seems to be this one in southeastern PA.
Approximate distances include.....
5 miles of running, trekking, orienteering;
10 miles of mountain biking
5 miles of flat water canoe paddling plus fun team challenges.

Race Registration fee: $65 per person

Team Categories:
Single gender team of 2 or 3
Co-ed team of 2 or 3

They give you 6 hours to complete the race. Looking at some of the images, I think this may not be that challenging, but it shouldn't be too bad for our first one.

I think Kenway and I are interested, but Eric will be unable to do it. You interested Brian?

Up for climbing?

Who is up for climbing at City Climbers this Saturday around noon?

Kenway, seems like the basic gear is included in the 15$ fee. Anything else we should know about?

Who's game?

NYC Urbanthlon (September 29, 2007)
The race starts at the Band Shell area in Central Park and exit at 72nd Street and head west to Riverside Park. Participants will then go south down the West Side Bike Path to the skyscraper climb at 7 World Trade Center, 52-flights up and back down. Racers will then again continue south to Battery Park City, the Financial District and then the finish at Battery Park.

Urban obstacles will be encountered in the parks, on Piers 84 and 54, at other sites along the course to be determined, and at the finish.

The race is 7.6 miles long (8.1 including stair climb) and can be executed as a solo or as a 3-person relay.

Entry Fees
Solo: $90.00 (register before midnight 8/31/07)
$110.00 (after 8/31/07)
*Team: $135.00 (register before midnight 8/31/07)
$165.00 (after 8/31/07)