Friday, June 12, 2009

Live from D.C., Part II

So it turns out that Susan was right. Washington D.C. was billed as the nation’s fittest city in 2008, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. (New York is only #22? Seriously? Boo!) No wonder I haven’t been able to walk down one whole city block without seeing another runner. They are literally everywhere! Whether it’s 7:00AM on Wednesday morning, 8:30PM on Thursday night, or 3PM on a Friday afternoon, there ware always people out running. If I wasn’t a runner, I’d probably be very annoyed by these people, but since I am, I’ve felt somewhat privileged just to be among them for a few nights this week. In my self-guided running tours around town, I’ve found so many perfectly paved roads, lush green parks, picturesque riverside trails and open dirt paths in full view of the historical monuments that I’ve come to the realization that it would be more unnatural to be surrounded by all this goodness and NOT run. Now that I’ve totally immersed myself in all this positive running energy, it’ll be depressing when I'm back in NYC tomorrow night and suddenly realize that I’m once again back in the minority as a runner in the city. Urrgghh!!!

But…before I hop on the bus to travel back up the interstate, I have a little score to settle with the locals in the form of a 10K scheduled bright and early in the AM. I don’t have high expectations since I haven’t kept up with the speedwork and running just base miles for the past couple of weeks. I’m intrigued though just to compete among all these freakishly fit people who run here everyday. Was all that running I saw the past week just a show or were they all secretly training for this 10K without telling me? Will the hometown folks teach this visitor a thing or two about roadracing in the nation’s capital or will I hold my own and show that running well knows no state boundaries? We’ll soon find out. Wish me luck!

9 comments:

J said...

Good luck with the run! I bet you are running right now or at least going to run soon! After reading your post I remembered I didn't take any pictures of my runs here in Florida! and I am leaving today :( oh well. I saw no runners out while I was running...how sad is that!

Running and living said...

Good luck! I smell a PR:)
If you want to see runners everywhere come to Boston. It's so inspirational. I wonder what number did we get?
Ana-Maria

B.o.B. said...

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Hope the race went well this morning.

Question for you. How often should one do interval or speedwork?

Irish Cream said...

Wooo! Hope the race went well and you represented NYC-style! Can't wait to read about it :)

Run For Life said...

I hope the race went well! I always think it's fantastic to visit another city and explore it by running.

Lindsay said...

no worries, south carolina is too busy eating fried chicken and drinking sweet tea to work out so i think i'm more of a minority than you :)

hope the race went well, though i'm sure you ran super fast as always and probably won the whole thing ;)

The Laminator said...

Hey...just to answer some of your inquiries...

Ana-Maria - Boston was ranked #4!

D10 - I suscribe to doing speedwork once a week when I'm not training for anything specific. If I am in training, then it can be twice a week or more depending on my goal objective.

Thanks for the comments and questions as always.

Susan said...

Wayyyy behind on blogs, but thanks for the mention! My two cities I have called home rank #25 (Chicago) and #27 (Philly)...yikes! I need to spread the running bug, although I like to think that the miserable Chicago winters play a role in a non-fit city.

 
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