Daily Wahnsinn

On Saturday, I met with a lovely friend who took the time to walk me around Central Park for almost 2 hours. She walks a lot in the Park and knows it like the back of her hand, whereas I’ve always been very intimidated by its size and loopy ways - especially after having gotten lost a few times. So this weekend, we took a tour and she pointed out where I could run, which landmarks to watch out for to make sure I’ll always be able to assess where I am and some nifty shortcuts for me to be able to tailor my run depending on how much time and energy I have that day.

On Sunday then, I got up around 9 in the morning and headed to the Park, ready to run the full loop. The full loop course is about 6 miles and goes all the way up to the edge of Harlem. I’d walked around that area once and I knew that it featured one Big Hill and I was ready to conquer it that day. The path for the full loop is pretty straight forward and easy to follow, which I personally thought was great because it allowed me to look for other things, like the shortcuts my friend had pointed out, allowing myself to familiarize myself with my new backyard.

I was tracking with the Nike Plus app and while it seems more accurate than Runkeeper, it’s still a little flakey and added about 0.5 mile to my run. Funny thing, it was more accurate inside the Park where you’d think the trees would block the GPS sensor. Christmas present to myself will definitely be a proper Garmin. Anyway.

I felt great when I headed out, ready to run and conquer. I fell into a good pace, not going too fast on purpose because I knew I had a couple of miles ahead of me. I haven’t really done anything longer than 4 miles since my 10k race in October and I knew that Central Park is hilly, so I tried to pace myself well.

Overall, I ran at a fairly consistent pace and even managed to increase speed again a little toward the end. (To be fair, this was not the most challenging part of the course. The challenging miles are also my slowest.) You enter the Park and then you run counterclockwise.

Unfortunately, the splits for Miles 1 and 7 aren’t accurate. I think the rest pretty much is. Mile 4 was definitely the one I was feeling the most. It wasn’t the most challenging one, tackling the Big Hill, but as you can see below, it is very hilly and builds up some elevation.

Overall, the course is very hilly, but not once did I stop to walk. I certainly wanted to. The final two miles heading back home seemed endless. I was waiting for the course to get easier but there were more hills and yet more hills. As I neared the end of the Central Park route, I just wanted to slow down, walk, collapse, rest. But somehow I ended up running the half mile back to my apartment - mostly because I just wanted to be at home. Hah. Once there, I felt great and accomplished.

Considering I hadn’t done any longer runs in a while and especially none that were so challenging, I’m pretty happy with how the run turned out. See you soon, Central Park!