A Day To Remember

Wow, what a day! I am happy and sad, exhiliarated and exhausted, anxious and nostalgic, and filled with a hundred emotions that I don’t quite know how to explain…

The day began with some exciting news. Now although I have mentioned this to only a select few before today, I decide to make my big announcement here because most of my close friends already know, and outside of them, my bloggy pals are my closest buddies anyway, and anyone who isn’t a close friend or doesn’t read my blog, well then, they really DON’T need to know. But, after endless hours spent with realtors, lawyers, mortage consultants, and the like over the past several months, yours truly closed on a spanking new condominium today. Wahoo! Although the process was long, and I’ve signed so many legal documents this morning that I felt as if I was signing my life away, I’m proud to say that I’m finally a new homeowner! It’s very exciting, but a bit anxiety provoking at the same time. It’s a two-bedroom condo on the top floor of a medium size building out in Queens with a balcony and a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. I’ll write more about the new place once I’m a bit more settled, but suffice it to say that although I’ll be moving out of the city and away from Central Park, it’s definitely an upgrade from my tiny studio on the Upper East Side where I’ve been living for more than 6 years. And in case anybody is worrying about my running, Flushing Meadow Park is less than two blocks away from my new home, which means that marathon training will continue as scheduled even after I move out of the city sometime next week.

Speaking of marathon training, I arrived back home in the late afternoon and decided to head to the park for an easy tempo run. Since I’m in base building mode and not racing anymore, I figured it’d be good to reacquaint my legs to doing tempo runs in the middle of the week again. During the racing season the past two months, I had skipped out on way too many of these because I figured my weekend races would substitute for speed training and my time would be better spent running midweek long runs at a slower pace. Just to get back into the swing, I gave myself an easy task of running just 4 tempo miles under 6:32 pace after a warmup loop around the reservoir. Maybe it was because of the great weather today (75 degrees with 70% humidity and a cool late afternoon breeze), maybe it was because of the great news from the morning, but I had a truly glorious tempo run in the park today. My mile splits for each of the four miles was 6:14, 6:16, 6:14, and 6:16 and I ended my tempo run running my best four mile time (25:22; 6:15 average) ever outside of a race. The weird thing was that during the last half mile coming down the home stretch, I told myself NOT to push hard, but just keep the pace as steady as possible. Wow! Considering my 5 mile race pace four days ago was 6:14, busting out a 4 mile tempo run one second slower (without even trying so hard) was quite unexpected. Just for reference, my previous best for 4 mile tempo run on the same course was 25:50(or 6:21 average pace) during marathon training last year. Needless to say, I’m tickled by the prospect of what pace I could actually sustain for 4 miles when I am at the peak of training…

Finally, feeling generally happy but a bit tired after my run, I came home to the shocking news that one of music’s biggest icons, Michael Jackson, had inexplicably suffered cardiac arrest and passed away. Wow. Although I know he was a bit psychologically unstable towards the end of his career and had been accused of some nasty things, the fact remains that he was a brilliant singer/performer and for a period of time while I was growing up, was the biggest pop star in the music industry. I am saddened by the news because I feel as if he never really got the respect he deserved. He was so many things to so many people all around the world that I don’t think the world today can truly appreciate the significance of his contributions back in the day. C’mon, Thriller, Moonwalk, Billie Jean…they are so iconic and typified music and culture in the late 80’s. I can’t help feel that with his passing, a bit of my youth also died with him today. R.I.P. MJ, you will be missed!