Marc's Public Blog - Biking, Running, Rollerblading and other Exercising

Current Music: Awesome Trance Mix a guy gave me on a CD while waiting in line at a club
Current Mood: Worked out physically and mentally, but ok

So, I was curious to know how long the Central Park loop really was as I wasn't quite satisfied with the "about 6 miles answer" when doing mile/mn calculations. I found out that it's actually 6.3 miles, which significantly improved my last times (7:48 and 7:28mn/mile).
Those weren't too hard for me though, my body is geared for sub-hour intense and potentially sustained efforts, but not for anything much past that.
Now, the real challenge for me was doing two laps, which turns out to be really close to a half marathon (just a tiny bit short of the distance). Since Central Park had somehow somewhat motivated me to run (not sure why because I really wouldn't go running by myself otherwise), I made it fit into my schedule to go today around 17:30.
The first lap was not a bit deal. I was somewhat slower than my last two previous times since I was trying to keep a little energy for the second time around (hence 50mn18s or a 7:59s mile) and my second lap started ok until I reached about the 8th or 9th mile, and then my legs started showing signs of fatigue and it became increasingly harder to continue. The pain and general fatigue in my left calf and my right quad significantly slowed me down, to the point that instead of passing people throughout my lap, people started passing me left and right on the last 4th of my run (i.e. 2nd half of 2nd lap). I think the fact that was not going to come back to attempt this again anytime soon (if ever) was probably the only thing that made me finish the 2nd lap, but my end time was pretty poor: 8mn45/mile. It's kind of vexing to lose your muscle capacity when your body/heart/breathing still has a lot of stamina left, but such is life I guess.
However, since I got a better time on the first lap, I'm still ending up with a 8mn22/mile average for 12.6 miles, which considering that I'm not a runner/jogger is decent I guess (eh, I'm happy because I "beat" one of my coworkers' time on his half marathon, and he trained 6 months, while I had never run that distance before :)
But this all confirms that I would never last a marathon without serious training, and that even with good music in my mp3 player, jogging is incredibly boring for me, and I wouldn't stand doing that on a regular basis, not even counting the fact that you're not supposed to do anything silly like increasing your training distance by 6 mile chunks :)
(so it would probably take excruciatingly long for me to train to get there, and I just don't have the interest, sorry :)
The good news is that while my legs felt a little bit tired while I was climbing stairs double time in the subway, they didn't actually hurt, nor did I feel any serious lactic acid.