Tough Race

I've kind of fallen out of the whole Long Island race scene these past few months, mostly for financial reasons... Most races are like 20-25 bucks, and for some time I was doing one or two races per weekend.. it all added up. But there are certain races that I make a point to run in... The Great Cow Harbor for instance, and this weekend was the Kings Park 15K, a race that for lack of a better word kicked my ass last year. In my opinion, and from what I overheard at the race, the Kings Park course is the toughest road course on Long Island. Most of the race is run up long, gradual hills, making it great practice for the Providence Marathon. I don't have much of a problem running up hills... It doesn't put any extra strain on my body, but it does slow me down a bunch, so thats something I need to work on. I also need to work on using the momentum of running down hill to give me extra energy. Besides being a really tough course, the weather yesterday kind of sucked. The torrential rain on Friday left the course a mess, and about 50 minutes into the race the rain started up again. It was the perfect air temp though, so that was good. Despite the weather, the turnout was more than double then last year... I think like 600 people finished the race. My time of 1:41:34 was good enough to put me in 508th place. I'm not too concerned about that though, I killed my time from last year and this race is also a Long Island Track Championship Race, so it attracted the most elite runners.

The marathon training is going really good. I did somewhere around 51 miles last week. During the race yesterday, I was running alongside an older gentleman, and we got to talking.. I was telling him about my training program and also about the streak, and he reiterated something that I've been kind of concerned about. After a long run, it's recommended that you take a day off to give your body the proper recovery time you need. I've been running 2 miles the day after a long run. I feel fine doing it, but it may be doing more harm than good, so I'm just gonna keep it at one mile for those two days a week. A really slow mile actually.

Today I attended the Huntington St. Patricks Day Parade. I got absolutely tanked. I am writing this at 930pm on a Sunday and I am disgustingly hungover. Whomever had the idea to start St Patricks Celebrations weeks before the actual day should be given a medal. Seriously.

If you have seen me in the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed that my hair is pretty long (refer to a few posts ago to learn more). I like having long hair, but it has taken a toll on my sleeping patterns. Between 4 and 6 times a night, my hair gets in my eyes and wakes me up. Quite annoying. I tried sleeping with my hat on, but it just fell off. I tried sleeping with a bandanna on, but the knot in the back of it bothered me. I asked a few girls that I know what they recommend, and the general consensus was to "put it in a pony tail." Now, if you know me you know that I'm a manly man, even though I don't eat meat. But I do love beer and football. And women. So the thought of me putting my hair into a "pony tail" was not only emasculating but also insulting. But after weeks of interrupted sleep, yesterday I finally decided to find a rubber band and see what I could do. I didn't think I even knew how to get my hair into this formation, but I suppose after babysitting my cousins for a few years I learned a thing or two about finagling a rubber band into hair. So I gave it a whirl last night, and I'm happy to say that I had a great nights sleep. I'm putting this out in the open because I don't want any of the jerks I live with to start spreading rumors that I have a pony tail and I'm metro. Not that theres anything wrong with that, Adam.

Talk to you tomorrow.



Talk to you tomorrow