Second Chances

I woke up at the crack of 5am to the sound of rain against my window. This, as usual, brings out agonized deliberations on whether or not to run in the rain, which I am more averse to than the average bear. I finally decided that cold, dark, and rain on a relatively easy week was too much and I rolled over and went back to sleep. I woke up an hour and a half later and heard the conspicuous absence of any pitter patter on glass.

This led to tortured recriminations on whether I did the right thing. Words that I wrote in this blog, like running Boston occurs on cold January mornings, came back to haunt me. And then I remembered a quote I once read from local triathlete and meteorologist Cecily Tynan (yes, I get inspiration in strange places) that you can fit in a workout just about anywhere.

So I thought, I drop Tony off in West Deptford at 8 and have to be at a meeting in North Philly at 10. If I cut out going back to West Philly in between, I have an hour to workout. West Deptford Park, a huge expanse of soccer fields and baseball diamonds, was close by and I remember from taking Tony to soccer games that I had seen people running on an asphalt path around the perimeter. A plan was born.

I headed out to south Jersey in my running clothes, with work stuff and a stick of deodorant packed in the car. The first lap was to get a feel for the loop, and it timed at 9:10 - likely close to one mile. From then on I made it a ladder workout, where the object is to have each loop around be faster than the last. Now you can bull your way through this workout and get down to insane speeds fairly quickly, or you can finesse it and cut as little time off of each lap as you can. This is alot more mentally challenging, as one of the rules I have is that the only time I can look at my watch is at each mile mark.

Today I did pretty good on the finesse, as witnessed by my splits:

Mile 1 - 9:10
Mile 2 - 8:17
Mile 3 - 7:58
Mile 4 - 7:54
Mile 5 - 7:31
Mile 6 - 7:13
Mile 7 - 6:54
Mile 8 - 6:32

I'm proud of this workout, as it got me from warmup to the max I wanted to do, 6:30, in regular intervals.

A little backstory here. Many of you know that in the last two years I had gone through separation and then divorce, with the result being that my two kids split their time between my house and their mother's house in south Jersey. The current arrangements have me taking Tony to school out in S. Jersey every other week, which basically entails that I have something I have not had in over a decade - a (albeit part-time) commute. I have many thoughts on this, which I'm still processing, though it has strengthened my urbanite's bias on the god-forsaken nature of suburbs. The park, however, is nice, a product of the large amounts of open space around there. Though with all that open space, its beyond me why anyone but a displaced urban dad would restrict themselves to running around a park.

Anyway, for today it worked for me and I got a workout in. 8 miles in 61:34. Cecily would be proud. And her husband should watch his back, as I'll be gaining on him.

(***note - so I don't get suspected of stalking or making terroristic threats, fellow master Greg Watson beat me by a few seconds in the 2006 PDR).