Saturday Long Run

Today I had to sit down and put on my mathematician's cap to figure out how many miles I did this morning, having broken it apart into many different segments with a lot of different people.

I'll start, though, by saying that I almost didn't make it out the door. In fact, at 8:00 AM, I geared up, locked my apartment, and stood in the doorway of my building, staring at the cold outside, contemplating turning around. Unlike the previous two days, though, I stepped outside and began, albeit sluggishly, to run. The mileage broke down as such: .65 miles to the park, 3.4 down the west side and back up the east drive and 72nd, plus one 1.7 mile loop at the bottom to back to the same point, where I met the Flyers for the 9:00 AM group run. after lingering for a few minutes, we started south and did 5 miles of the 6 mile loop. I ran with our Flyer cartoonist, and enjoyed some good conversation about Flyer dynamics and relationships before I broke off at Engineer's Gate, where I met up with Miss Antarctica. Since we had a few minutes to spare, we ran about 3 minutes out and 3 minutes back around the icy, snowy reservoir. Back to Engineer's Gate, where we met up with a group of Flyer's for the 10:00 AM Round Two: another full 6 mile loop, clockwise. staying with the group for much the run, I attempted to sell everyone one writing articles for the newsletter. Oh, and by the way, if you have enough time to blog, you have enough time to write an article. Hehe.

Again, at Engineer's Gate, or as Antarctica apparently wants to call it "Gold Head" (at first I thought she said Goat Head, which didn't make much sense to me, but whatever), we went our separate ways. I turned around and headed the 2 miles back to the apartment in Harlem.

Figuring out my mileage felt like I was doing my taxes again (by the way - Yay for refunds!). I finally settled on 18.75, but had forgotten the little stint on the reservoir, so I'm calling it a cool 19. I had only planned on 18. The pathetic part is that this is almost half my mileage for the week. I am really looking forward to a warming trend next week (Yay, 40 degrees!) so that I'm more enthusiastic about getting out the door.

Anyway, I napped for 2 hours at home, and just happily lollygagged the rest of the afternoon away. Now I'm off to a friend's birthday in West Orange. Should be a fun, fun night.

Feel the Love

Better late than never... Happy Valentine's Day!!! Hope all the couples out there are keeping each other warm on this blustery evening.

Me, I kept myself warm by doing just short of ten miles in Central Park after work. I psyched myself up all day for the run - thinking of it as a challenge! The next two days may be similarly challenging, given the forecast of wind and cold. I have to say the footing in the park wasn't great, but not as bad as I expected, and the nighttime scenery was picturesque, with the covering of fresh, white snow. This was unlike the rest of the city, which has quickly turned into a slushy grey mess.

But slushy mess or not, I'm in a good mood, and with good reason.

I've always held the rather cynical belief that wherever you (or I, as it were) work, there's always going to be someone you just don't get along with. This has been true at the last three places that I've worked at. Some of these people are better than others, but regardless, when it comes right down to it, they always bring a dark cloud into the office and rain on everyone else's parade. That person, in my current office, is the a*shole I spoke of last week.

Anyway, there's also an offshoot belief to the above one, and that is this: That person will never leave. S/he always seems to stay at his/her job forever, a constant pain in the ass.

But those beliefs were turned upside-down this week: the a*shole gave her two weeks notice. When she announced it, my colleagues and I could barely keep from jumping for joy at the awesomeness of the news, while sitting there saying, "Awww, I'm so sorry to hear that you'll be leaving us." I truly cannot tell you how happy I am, after having to work with her for the past three years.

Now granted, my colleagues and I have also discussed the "be carefull what you wish for" phenomenon. That is, there is always the possibility that someone far worse replaces her.

But for now, I'm just focusing on the positive. Good riddance to her.

Feel the love, kids. Feel the love.

From Half to Full

Yesterday was the Bronx Half Marathon and, as I'd already mentioned, I was determined to do it. My first race since December, first Half since Staten Island, and the first Half that I actually raced since Queens, last spring, before I got injured. Plus, the last time I did the Bronx was a year and a half ago, in the heat, and I wanted to see how I'd fare in the cold. And I was much slower back then. My net time in July 2005 was 1:43:32.

Despite my hatred of the cold, it was better running this race yesterday at 10ºF than it would be at 90º. The first couple miles were brutally cold and I honestly didn't think I could handle the entire 13 mile in that weather, but eventually, I warmed up, and the fear of frostbite subsided (I've had genuine frostbite before, and it's not pretty).

But I went out too fast. I went out at my Queens Half pace: sub-sevens. I held on to this pace through until about 6 or so miles, and then gradually started to fade on the Grand Concourse. By mile 8, I slowed to 7:11, and at 10 miles I was down to a 7:23 pace. My last mile was a veritable crawl at 7:38. I averaged 7:12 for the race and finished nearly as well as I hoped, with a 1:34:34, if I recall correctly. Then I jogged out back a bit over a mile and a quarter into the course and back, so that I finished the day with about fifteen and two-thirds of a mile.

Back at the finish area, I caught up with runner26 and chatted while waiting in line for bagels and hot chocolate. She told me about her running the race as a tribute to the memory of her dog, which I thought was very sweet. We parted ways and I ran into another west side Flyer on my way to the D-Train and we rode down to 125th St. together, where I disembarked and trotted home.

The results of this race were encouraging, and I sat down today to work out a training schedule for the New Jersey Marathon. NJ is 10-11 weeks away, and that still gives me some time to ramp up for a marathon. This week, with the upcoming snows (but yay for snow, anyway!) might be a little difficult for running. I'm hoping to cover 45+ miles by week's end. Wish me luck!

The cold, the month, and the races.

Today seems absolutely balmy compared to the last week. I revel in the heat of above-freezing temps! On Monday morning, the temperature was a -24ºC (-11 F) with the windchill. That was nothing though. My brother e-mailed me to let me know that in Canada, it was -40ºC, which is also -40ºF, the temperature at which both scales meet (I will never understand why America uses such a nonsensical, outdated system). This is as rare in Winnipeg as our ridiculously cold temps here in NY this past week. They occur on occasion, but not with the frequency that most people tend to believe they do in Canada. And with that, I will also reiterate that Winnipeg sees 100ºF in Summer (39ºC). Both extremes happily happen in an extremely dry prairie climate, which makes them, albeit marginally, not as bad as the humidity that burdens us in New York City.

February has, for a long time, been my least favourite month, possibly because of having endured the cold of winter and the darkness of the season for some time at this point, but also because, for some strange reason, I historically have had just a whole lot of crappy luck in February. I acknowledge that it might be the aformentioned cold and darkness that have me put on my grey-coloured glasses and thus enhance the bad luck feelings that I have, but nonetheless, it's still the way I feel. Case in point - after my very intense month of work, you'd think things would look better. Instead, I feel a sore throat that I've had since earlier in the week evolving into something of a minor chest cold. Ugh. The one redeeming aspect of the month is of course how short it is, and I rejoice in knowing that, as of today, it is well over a third of the way over and, after only this coming Tuesday, half done.

Today, despite how nice it is outside, I'm not running. Oh yeah, did we forget that I run? Seems that I haven't posted about running specifically since well before the New Year. Anyway, today I'm resting up for the Bronx Half Marathon tomorrow, which will be my first race since December. I'm very interested to see what this course is like in winter as opposed to the heat of July when the event has traditionally been held, but I don't expect any personal records to be broken. I'm still not to the performance level that I was at Queens last April, when I was intensely focussed on 60-70 mile weeks in preparation for my marathon in Vermont. My weekly mileage is probably about 5 miles shy of where I want it to be, due to how extremely busy I've been with other things lately and, to a lesser extent, my aversion to recent weather trends. That said, I've kept my mileage for the last month between 35-40 miles, but only through running typically three runs during the week of 7.3 miles each, and a long run on the weekend. Normally I prefer to run 5-6 days total.

Tomorrow's race starts at 8 a.m., and despite my potential cold coming on, the early start, and the forecast of -12ºC with the windchill (10ºF), I am determined to make it to the starting line. I just have to look at my subway schedules.

At any rate, the weather can't be as bad as last weekend at Nyack State Park, where I went with Jonathan, our Flyer of the Year, our German Rockefeller expert, and a few others. I did two out-and-backs with the German for a total of 18+ miles. It wasn't all bad, as much of the trail was sheltered from the wind, except for about 3 miles, where it was nearly unbearable. I do recommend the paths there, if you've got a ride to get you out of the city.

My target now, should I be able to increase my mileage to at least 55 miles per week within the next month, will be the NJ Marathon at the end of April. Some time ago I was thinking about running Atlanta among others, but taking a vacation in the immediate future just isn't in the cards for me.

We'll see how the training goes.

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!

The last few weeks; the last month, has been unbelievably busy. It all culminated with 3 deadlines this week, on Wednesday and Thursday: two projects at work and the Flyers' newsletter.

It has been harried, to say the least. For the last week, particularly, I've been getting 6 and a half hours sleep a night, max. This has been partly due to time constraints, but also due to that stress I've been feeling over the deadlines.

At work, my Wed. deadline was for a seriously boring project: the redesign of the Belt Parkway Bridges for NYSDOT. Our part was basically the construction documents for the planting along the highway exchanges. The project has been entirely uninteresting, but subject to an intense schedule as of late that resulted in all the aforementioned stress. That said, in a few years when you're driving along Rockaway Parkway and notice the lovely Crataegus crusgalli and Quercus Rubra out there, well, that's all me. Part of my stress level can also be attributed to my colleague, the the project manager, who is a real a*shole. Really, she just has absolutely no people skills whatsoever. Everybody hates working with her.

The other project, which was due the following day, was not as extensive. It was just a progress meeting for the redesign of a park & ride in Staten Island, also for DOT, and we just brought in a few sketches that the client hardly looked at. People tend to think that us landscape architects are all busy all day designing creative and artistic parks and gardens. Then they hear that I'm doing a highway right-of-way and a park and ride and it pretty much blows 90% of the romanticism away. The other 10% disappears completely when they find out how little I make.

Okay, so maybe that's not all quite accurate. I have also been working on the Bronx River Greenway, and that has been an interesting project, along with the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, which we were working on awhile back. And the work I was involved with on West Street last year was also interesting and somewhat enjoyable. So it's not all bad. Unless you look at the paycheck.

Anyway, the meeting with DOT on Thursday went alright, especially considering how little time we invested in the project, since we'd been so busy on the Belt Parkway Bridges. However, the next couple of weeks on that project look like hell, so we'll see how that goes.

I do realize that writing about work is a risky business, but given the size of my income, getting fired from my job could be a blessing. Don't get me wrong - I do acknowledge that my current position/company has some serious advantages over other firms, which is why I'm still there. However, I just don't particularly care that much, and if someone gets a bee in their bonnet about the general crap I write, well then I'm just happy enough to move along.

The last deadline this week was a self-imposed Wednesday night deadline. I had promised myself that I'd get the Flyers' newsletter out within the first week of February. Being as finicky as I am, I ended up putting way too much time into the redesign of the layout, not to mention that my two final submissions came in on Feb. 1st and Feb. 5th. So getting it out on the 7th was a lofty task indeed. I attempted to proof-read the thing myself with much failure. Not only did I miss a lot of grammar and general spelling mistakes, but I spelled over a half-dozen members' names wrong in the document; two of them both the first and last names. I did tell a fellow club member that I'd use her as a proofreader, and have had offers from two others whom I will totally use as backups (thank you very much!). The proofreader is a former newsletter editor and club secretary and I connected with her on doing the March issue today.

The redesign, as far as I took it, seemed to go over well. Most people gave me very positive feedback. That said, negative feedback, in my experience, tends to come either after someone's had a few drinks, or when you specifically ask for an opinion. I'd say the best compliment I received was from a fellow architect who said the layout reflected that I was a designer. This sort of surprised me, since I really didn't feel like it was finished. The awards page and calendar still look like hell, so stay tuned for some graphic improvements next month... if you do actually read the thing, that is.

I also changed the name. It used to be called the New York Flyers Newsletter, until the last couple of years when editors have changed the name - first, to News on the Run, and then to On the Fly. I called it The New York Flyer to give a nod to the original name, and also I liked the play on words... "flyer". Of course I had to explain the double meaning to someone already, so I think it might be lost on readers.

And so my last couple of weeks have basically been going to work at 7 AM until 6 PM and coming home to work on the Flyer until midnight, sometimes with a run and some eating in between. Even when I went to bed, my mind was still spinning over what needed to be done.
And technically I did miss my Flyer deadline, as I finally sent it off to be posted on the website after midnight... so, the 8th. Oh well. At least the template is done for future issues, so that they won't be so labour-intensive.

And at least one of the benefits of editing this document is that it guarantees that my photo will not appear in it this year, and I'm sure we can all appreciate that. Don't all thank me at once!

Having those deadlines out tof the way has left me with an unusually unplanned weekend, which is nice. I stayed home tonight and watched a DVD after grocery shopping, mostly for beer and junk food to accompany the movie. I was going to go to the Flyers' impromptu happy hour, until they put forth the venue. Take note: do not let Flyers women decide on happy hour venues... I'm only teasing! I'm just not fond of the bar they selected, and it's a bit out of the way, in Manhattan geography, for a Harlemite.

So it was a quiet evening at home, and hopefully a quiet weekend to come, ahead of the maelstrom of work that will hit me once again this week, and the March Flyer production later in the month...