Lactic hit the lottery a few months back and won entry to the NYC Half Marathon on Sunday, July 27. The course starts with a six-mile loop through Central Park before routing runners out of the south end of the park onto 7th Avenue for a jog right through the heart of Times Square, then west on 42nd Street before turning south on the highway adjacent to the Hudson all the way to the finish at Battery Park on the south tip of Manhattan (near a convenient subway station to zip you back uptown). A pre-race rain shower created almost sauna-like conditions in Central Park, but the streets brought a slight breeze, making for a much more comfortable second half. Needless to say, the entire course has its share of spectacular scenery, but it’s hard to top the surreal feeling of running through a shut-down Times Square. The race is very well organized, with the start corrals (and the start itself) easily the most comfortable we’ve ever experienced. Except for a cancelled Sunday night flight and a resulting 14-hour drive home on Monday, it was the perfect trip.
Marriage counseling and your iliotibial band
You and your body is a union based on trust. You promise to put in junk miles, stretch sporadically, and do too much speed work. Your body – according to you – promises to stay fresh, limber and responsive. And then the injury comes, an aching hip Jezebel ruining your long-term cardiovascular honeymoon. And your counselor (who looks suspiciously like a sports med doc) bucks every tenet of impartial therapy and points a finger straight at you. Bastard. Even though you’re convinced he’s wrong, you begrudgingly follow his plan. And, slowly, the spark returns. You start to remember what first attracted you to your legs in the first place. It’s good. And then a sexy 36 x 400m workout turns your head again. And you fall. But that’s over before you know it, leaving only the jilter and the jilted forced to live together once more in a crumbling house going up in flames. And inflammation.
