Brooklyn Bridge Park - Sunday Paradise on Flickr.
A favorite Sunday post-workout pastime - grabbing a cortado at Cafe Iris and reading in the Brooklyn Bridge park. Very lucky to have such as spot close to home!
“I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.” — Patti Smith, Just Kids
(Source: books.google.com)
…is the motto of NYC Endurance, whose regular class/workout I joined for the first time Tuesday evening. The group’s approach is to combine a holistic, functional fitness regimen like CrossFit with limited, targeted endurance workouts in order to prepare an athlete to excel in marathons, triathalons and even ultras. The endurance workouts, no more than three per week, include sprints, longer intervals and tempo runs of not longer than 90 minutes.
Tuesday’s workout consisted of six 200m sprints with 90 seconds rest between them. In aggregate, that’s six minutes of work broken up by ten minutes of rest. When Brian, the NYC Endurance Coach described the workout, I wondered why I had bothered riding the subway all the way from Brooklyn just to exercise for 15 minutes! As it happened, most of the hour was occupied with drills to reinforce proper running technique. CrossFit endurance advocates rapid stride cadence, striking the ground with your forefoot, and leaning forward to maximize straight-ahead propulsion. You never think that you to study how to run, yet it turns out to be hard work.
My own training log for the first part of the year reveals mileage of not more than 11 or 12 miles per week which most of my running friends would consider crazy for someone preparing for a couple half marathons in the spring and the NYC Marathon in November. There are also tough CrossFit workouts which I have been doing 3-4 times/week. Results so far have been mixed: generally, my running times are slower than when I was running 35 miles/week two years ago. However, there have been some promising races and I haven’t yet completely absorbed the new technique.
On Sunday, I ran the 25th Annual Leatherman’s Loop - a 10km trail race that takes place in the beautiful Pound Ridge Reserve in northern Westchester County. There are a number of unique things about the race:
I was hoping to have a photo to post here to demonstrate the last point, but unfortunately it’s inaccessible and will have to be added later.
One thing about trail races that those who are used to running on the roads must get used to is slow times. In fact, there is a lot of walking in trail running and I am learning that it should be used strategically. My time at Leatherman’s was 1:08:43 compared with 58 minutes for a trail race last month in Van Cortlandt Park and 51 minutes for my most recent road 10k in Central Park.
Nevertheless, the weather was PERFECT (sunny, 50s), the trees were covered with a fresh, light spring green, and the experience was sublime. Hope to be back again next year!
A lot of my running friends and teammates don’t know what CrossFit is. Since it is an integral part of my fitness regimen and preparation for road races including the NYC Marathon, I have decided to blog some of the workouts I do at CrossFit South Brooklyn (CFSBK, for short).
Today’s workout was more running oriented than usual: it was a combination of a workout called “Cindy” (as many reps as possible of 5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 squats in 20 minutes) combined with running around the block (535m). So while my workout partner ran around the block, I performed the exercises; and while I ran, she did them. We completed 12 plus circuits in 20 minutes. I ran 4 or 5 times around the block: was really sucking air the final lap. The best pair in our group finished something like 24. If you want to take a look at the official description of the workout and some pictures of folks running around the block, click on the headline above.
For me, this was a warmup for tomorrow’s Leatherman’s Loop trail race in upper Westchester County - one of the highlights of my spring racing season.
Lilacs - Union/Gowanus on Flickr.
Lilacs blooming in the Union/Gowanus garden! Photographed today following CFSBK “Cindy Around the Block.”
For reasons I am not open or public enough to blog, April has been a difficult month for me. How I would have managed it without the pillars of running and CrossFit, I do not know. I ran two 10ks, one on the VCP trails and one in Central Park, posting decent times and feeling very strong. My CrossFit practice improved despite constantly being on the road for work. My weight hit its lowest point in over seven years! And, yet, I spent much of my workout time thinking about the issues swirling around in my life, rather than feeling, focusing on and reveling in every breath, movement and effort.
Late in the month, I started reading the best-selling book, Born to Run. The author, Christopher McDougall, writes about the Tarahumara tribe of northern Mexico and a group of American ultra-runners who travel to the Copper Canyon territory to learn their approach to running. One of the Americans, a young Ultra star named Jenn Shelton put into a few colorful sentences the aspiration that many of us have for our exercise -
I never really discussed this with anyone because it sounds pretentious, but I started running ultras to become a better person. I thought if you could run 100 miles, you’d be in this Zen state. You’d be the fucking Buddha, bringing peace and a smile to the world. It didn’t work in my case - I’m the same old punk ass as before - but there’s always that hope it will turn you into the person you want to be, a better more peaceful person.
Here’s hoping for more Zen and less “punk-ass” in the coming months!
Union Street Garden - Gowanus on Flickr.
Here’s the garden mentioned in the previous post. Though it has been a long and cold winter, spring is evident. Physical fitness is also more or less on schedule. Have run relatively little, but managed some high-intensity interval and tempo type workouts. Raced reasonably well on one occasion. Have kept up with the CrossFit workouts despite much travel and some turmoil in the workplace: dropped 10 pounds since New Year’s Day and am feeling strong.
Walking across Gowanus last week with A, we passed my favorite urban garden in NYC. I remarked how pathetic the garden looked (pointing at the wilted sunflower stalks). My wife, who prefers winter said, “You don’t get it! The garden is working hard now gathering strength for the spring growing season.” Or words to that effect.
It wasn’t so cold that evening and gazing around at the austere beauty of that industrial neighborhood, her words made sense to me. You could say the same thing about my current training cycle. New York is still over nine months away. I’m running very little, but doing work at CrossFit, building strength, learning new skills and laying the foundation for an ambitious racing season ahead. This is the year my blog tells the truth: I am running an actual Autumn Marathon, my first. It’s very exciting!
I still don’t care for winter (at least not in the northeast US) and am writing this en route to a week in Florida. Still, seasonality is a very important concept in sports as in life. It’s one of my core training principles. I will post further updates in spring, summer and fall.
First winter run of the year. 35ºF, windy, clear around NY Harbor. Did the PPTC Saturday morning group run for the first time in ages: I am hoping to become a regular again. Group consisted of about six fast runners, Mike Ring and myself. Ran in Inov8 flats - still working on forefoot strike technique. Am feeling good about this, but am running slowly because the new stride requires a faster turnover than I can manage at the moment in order to run the same pace I ran before.
Ran 10.13m in 1:51:30 for an 11:01 place. Slow, but still have 344 days until the 2011 NYC Marathon. It was beautiful running over the Brooklyn Bridge and around the Battery.
Photo Copyright & All Rights Reserved - Gary Burke