Long Run, Pushups, Money

Ever wish that you could just start running and never stop? I do. Often. Yesterday was one of those days. I did stop of course, but not until I had run over 15 miles. I ran for two beautiful, quiet, peaceful, snowy hours around the edge of Manhattan. It was my triumphant return to distance running that I had expected the week before. Everything just felt right. The weather was perfect (light snow, just starting to stick, not windy at all), I was pain-free (even though I had felt like crap all day Friday because of Thursday’s races), and I didn’t even get that hungry (I made it with no food or drink stops at all). Pace was a little off (7:22/mile) but we can blame that on the snow. All in all, a perfect run.

Oh, except for the part where I almost got run over by a car. I was headed up 1st Ave (there’s a stretch of about two miles where you can’t run alongside the East River) and came to an intersection. There was a long line of cars going through but there was a little gap after the blue one. So, I started running towards it and would have crossed the street right behind the car with no problem if the driver didn’t decide to slam on his brakes when he saw me. I almost hit the side of his car. I give him a What the? look, shrug my shoulders, and keep running. He rolls down his window and starts yelling at me. I turn around (still running) and flip him off. So, he turns right onto First Ave and is driving at my pace and yelling out the passenger window. I didn’t catch everything he said, but the general gist of it wasn’t too friendly… I just flipped him the bird again and kept running. Eventually he finished his rant and sped off. Crazy drivers… I resolved not to let the incident ruin my run. And I didn’t let it ruin my run. I only include it here as an amusing story.

Let’s see, what else? I’ve decided that 2009 is going to be the year that I finally start paying attention to my upper body again. I’ve been doing Perfect Pushups every other day or so, but am really struggling with them. I’ve been forcing myself to do 3 sets of 20, but it is just brutal. I feel like such a wimp. This was made even worse last night when I was chatting with my friend (an ex Navy Seal) over dinner about them and he told me about the Perfect Pushup Challenge on YouTube. My buddy did 70 the other day and is working on getting more to put a video response up. I tried today: 24. Yikes. I’ve got some work to do…

I’ve also decided that 2009 is going to be the year when I finally stop being such a dumbass with my money. With that in mind, I think that my plans to run the Chicago Marathon are going to change. Registration opens February 1st so I still have time to decide for sure, but I’m thinking that my fall marathon(s) is/are going to be closer to home. I’ll still enter the New York lottery (I don’t qualify even though I ran the 9+ NYRR races last year because I didn’t become a member until February). Plus, I feel like I have some unfinished business in Philadelphia that I need to attend to before I go jetting off to Chicago…