Long Run, Brooklyn Style

My goal for yesterday’s run was to make it hurt. I succeeded. Far too often lately, I’ve been hanging inside of the comfort zone instead of pushing to the limit. Yesterday, I rectified that.

My original plan was to just do six laps of Prospect Park, but Helen convinced me that we should run to Red Hook instead. I’m glad she did. The route led us to an amazing vista point of the Statue of Liberty out in the bay. Beautiful. From there, we headed back to Prospect Park. The run had a much more focused feeling than ours have in the past. It was good to be out having fun but still maintaining a solid pace. Before finishing a full loop, we made a stop for Gatorade and cake, and then ran up to the top of the big hill, where Helen left me to finish up my long run. We had run 11.31 miles at 7:28/mile pace, a perfect start to a solid long run.

I sped up a bit after we split up, but it wasn’t until my next trip up the big hill that I really started to push the envelope. I had been steadily passing people throughout the park and continued the trend going up the hill. Well, until I got to the guy in the blue t-shirt. He wouldn’t let me pass him. I’d get within a yard or two, then he’d accelerate and break away. I should have let him go, but I didn’t want to. I kept ratcheting up the pace steadily and finally caught him when we were about 200 yards from the top. I looked over, saw his stride break, and as he fell back, he called out, “Nice work.” I responded with a thanks and some encouraging words, then kicked it up another gear and zoomed off. I was running sub-6:30 up the hill when I glanced down at my watch. Wow.

I took the next lap as a breather, but still running just under 7s. It was an uneventful lap. I was feeling pretty drained as I finished it up and started on the final one, but I sped back up in order to finish strong. A 6:33 mile led me to the base of the hill for the last time and I was on fumes. But, I dug deep and ran strong. It was an amazing feeling. When I got to the top I was feeling so good/bad that I almost started another loop. Luckily, my rational brain talked me out of that, and instead I just did a quick cooldown back to Helen’s and called it a day.

My overall pace for those last 10 miles in the park was 6:55/mile, which brought the average for the whole 22 down to 7:14/mile — considerably faster than any of my long runs have been lately.

I was completely destroyed. And, as only you other crazy runners out there will understand, it felt amazing.