A Weekend To Forget

Hi everyone. Hope you all had a happy long weekend.

It’s been a while. I know. But I have a good excuse. Have you ever had one of those days where you feel as if the whole world is turning against you and all you want to do is just hit the sack so the day could be over? Well, if you extend that to a long weekend instead of just 24 hours, that’s the kind of weekend I just had. And since I don’t like to use my blog as a venting forum, I kept waiting and waiting for my bad streak to turn so I can post about something a bit more positive. Except now the weekend’s over, everyone's back to work and the whole bad luck spell still has not yet worn off.

We’re tired of waiting. The show must go on. I’m thinking now that if I were to actually write down the negative events of the past weekend that maybe some purging of evil spirits will take place and the aura of optimism and positivity that I usually travel around with will come back to me once again. Well, it’s either that or staring at the television wondering which of the kids I saw in clinic on Friday afternoon was really Harry Potter in disguise…

Saturday – Woke up early on a bright sunny day for an 18-miler on the west side of Manhattan. It was the first long run in my training for the San Francisco Marathon training so I really wanted to start off on a good note. I ran with a friend for the first 13 miles to make sure my pace would be easy and slow. These first miles were pleasant enough, maintaining a 8:30 pace throughout. After my friend left, I tried to pick up the pace for the last 5, but for some reason wasn’t able to. I was expecting to run around 6:45-7:00 for this stretch, but only managed to average 7:15 for this stretch which annoyed me to no end. For some reason, I was extremely fatigued and felt extremely slow, even though I knew I could handle the distance. The most tell-tale sign was when I found myself checking my Garmin every quarter mile after mile 14. I usually don’t do that until the last mile or two in a long run. It was so bad I found myself doubting whether I was ready to train for a marathon during the last mile. Needless to say, it was not at all the productive LR I was expecting to propel me into marathon training.

The rest of the afternoon was spent touring the just opened Sports Museum of New York with my little brother. Although the exhibits were fun and exciting and I learned a lot about stuff I never knew I didn’t know, it still required me to spend 4 hours on my feet…which is not so much fun after a painful long run.

Sunday – Both my legs were still complaining about my 18-mile hell run the day before, but since I had an easy 6 planned for the day and wanted to use Monday as a rest day, I figured I’d run it slow and hopefully feel better about things towards the end of the run. Alas, I waited too long and only got out to run at noon. As such, the weather was hazy and just not conducive to a relaxing run. So even though I chose a path by the water (the East Side Drive over to Randall’s Island), there was hardly a breeze in the air, and it was all I could do not to suffocate in the humidity. I got my six in, again at a slower than normal 7:28 pace. (I know most of you would not agree, but 7:28 is very slow for me; as evidenced by the two guys who made eyes at me while passing by with their jogging strollers!) If one slow running day is bad luck, two slow running days makes a pattern…

After washing up and grabbing lunch two hours too late, I proceed to watch my favorite baseball team, the NY Mets, put forth another lackluster performance on the field on their way to yet another series loss. It was so disheartening to see the myriad of fundamental mistakes and general lack of interest as exhibited by the everyday players that although I had tickets to the next day’s game against the first place Florida Marlins, I was seriously debating whether I should even bother showing up.

Monday – Thank goodness for the rest day, because I’m not so sure I could psychologically handle another bad run this weekend. I took advantage by sleeping until really late and eating fast food for lunch (which I hadn’t done since last year!) Then I proceeded to watch my alma matar Johns Hopkins lose to Syracuse in the NCAA Lacrosse Championships. I’m not usually a lacrosse fan (as evidenced by the fact that I had to wikipedia all the rules while the game was going on) but since they never won a championship while I was in school there, I thought I should at least watch when they were in the finals. Unfortunately, they were just outmanned, outhustled, and outcoached today.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I actually took the time to meet up with my best friend and his family to take the train all the way to Queens to watch the Mets lose…again! In actuality, I should’ve known better and left after the second inning, because they didn’t score again after that. While I was there, the chants of “Fire Willie!” from the crowd was louder than the public address guy announcing the lineup. Disgusted doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about the team right now.

Tuesday – It was a tough day today at the hospital. It almost always is the first day back from a long weekend. I got yelled at by a mom who wondered why I wasn’t at work yesterday to help her daughter (Apparently, they don’t celebrate Memorial Day in Hispanic culture) and the train decided to break down on me in the middle of my commute. Still, I found myself exactly where I wanted to be at the appointed hour…in Central Park with a scheduled 7 mile tempo run to boot. I needed this today in the worst way; not only to eradicate the stench from my stinky slow runs this past weekend, but also to erase the doubts I was starting to have about my fitness and my training.

The run started out well. I ran 6:43, 6:30, and 6:34 for the first 3 miles. But then the unthinkable happened…the skies opened up. Less than 2 minutes later, I was caught in a torrential thunderstorm with water droplets the size of golf balls attacking me from all sides. I usually have no problems running in the rain. In fact, sometimes I purposely head out to run in the rain just to cool off. But at times like today, when the ground was so wet and the rain so heavy that I couldn’t see more than 5 feet in front of me and my running shoes were starting to slip and lose traction, it really was not safe out there to run anymore. So yet again, I was thwarted from my attempts at redemption and had to cut my tempo run from 7 miles to a measly 4. And as if that wasn’t irritating enough, about fifteen minutes after I had quit and started to walk home, the rain suddenly stopped and the dark sky gave way to blue clouds and bright sunshine once again. What the heck?

Anyway, there you have it, my faithful readers…a review of my misfortunes over the past four days. Don’t feel sorry for me tough, please. I realize this is just small stuff in the overall scheme of things, but uurrgghh…

I hope this purging exercise will be enough to get me out of this mega slump that I’m in. Otherwise, I might have put in a call to ask Giambi for his golden thong to wear. On second thought, isn’t he only batting something like .230? Okay, never mind then.

Hope you all had a safe and fun Memorial Day weekend!