what can you do in 24 hours?

Some folks run a hundred miles (or more) in that amount of time while others run far less. Some buddies of mine decided to do a spontaneous 20-miler in Queens last night so I was peer-pressured into joining (three months before Yonkers, anyway, so I need to get on this, pronto) and our twilight renegade run turned from a pack of three to double that number and we killed it! Peck Park to Kissena Park to Cunningham Park to Alley Pond Park, looping around all of them the loooooong way, before hitting the long route to Fort Totten along Little Neck Bay and finally returning to the starting point. A few people knocked off at 14 miles, I held on for about 19-1/2 and two other guys went an extra mile; crazy! The worst part was that I had a sunburn on my upper thighs and all that running around in soaked shorts gave me a nice chafe.

I got home around midnight after biking back and knocked out for a few hours before waking up to make it to Riverbank Park for a track meet put on by The Wannabees (and former) Track Stars, a low-key (yet fast and competitive) group that I’ve seen around; they came out to our track meet last weekend and when I heard they were doing their own the following weekend, I figured I’d show up. I had done a crazy rainy speedwork session on Thursday so I when I woke up this morning to pouring rain, I was really tempted to sleep in but then I knew I could handle the wet so I made my way uptown. Most of the team was down in Central Park either racing or volunteering in the NYRR Mini 10K, a race (for women only) to commemorate the spirit of Grete Waitz, a legend in the running community so I was the only Whippet who showed up in the beginning; Scott came after the first event (the mile) was over and Mwangi joined us at the very end after all the events were run.

I did every single event (covering 3200 meters) because I figured, why the hell not? I certainly wasn’t going to win any of them and I just wanted to get a good workout in. I was very happy with my times for each event though and I now have some numbers to work against:

Mile – 6:04
800 – 2:52
400 – 1:14
200 – 0:32
100 – 0:14
4×100 – 1:05 with Scott and two ladies from the Wannabees, Marie (NTC!) and Asari

So my 24-hour total was just over 21 miles. Compare that to whatever insanity a friend of mine was up to: she sent an email early yesterday drafting people for an overnight run that would wind all over Manhattan with time slots like “2am to 4am” and “6am to 8am” so I imagine she is training for something big; not sure what her final mileage was for the entire 8-hour run but bless her big athletic heart for whatever she’s up to; truly impressive.

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