I had every intention in the world to complete two runs while in the NYC but unfortunately for me, my blood sugars got in the way. When I awoke to the intruding sun beaming through the apartment’s windows and the car horns blasting from the streets of the Upper East Side on Wednesday morning, Mario was already in the shower, and normally I would have stuffed the pillow over my head for a few lasting minutes of shuteye, but a run was on the brain. I got up, pricked my finger, and waited for the five-second count down: 5-4-3-2-1. The number that shot up from the screen, though, was not a happy number. 2.1 – YIKES! I grabbed some orange juice, wrapped myself in a blanket, and lost all motivation for a run.
Thank goodness Thursday was a much better day. I woke up with a BG of 4.8, which is a bit lower than where I like them to be for a run, but I was running out of days, I had to go for a run. So I chowed down on a Brazilian Nut Taste of Nature Bar (16 carbs) that I didn’t bolus for because of the blood sugars, and I inputted a temporary 50 per cent less basal rate on my pump, and by 7:30 a.m. Mario and I were out the door heading towards Central Park.
I felt a bit of a bruise forming on the upper part of my left foot from my so-called “great-for-walking” Hush Puppies – right where the laces sit. So as soon as we hit the park, I re-laced my shoes, loosening up the laces a bit, which seemed to take the irritation away.
I didn’t do the full loop around, just 7.57 km, which was about two kilometres less than the full loop. I was a little unsure at how well I’d do, as I’d been sick the week prior and hadn’t been running in about a week and a half. But I felt great. My legs at first were a little fatigued, which I suspected was due to all the walking I’d been doing, but after the first three kilometres, they were fine … or I had just forgotten about them, as I was too busy checking out my new surroundings.
I was surrounded by other runners, and cyclists with their fancy schmancy bikes, and cars too. And the whole time I kept thinking, wow this is so much easier than running Vancouver’s seawall which is almost always packed with runners and walkers and cyclists and roller bladers, and chit chatters, and yappy little dogs on extendable leashes (which was the cause of one of my injuries) and teens walking arm in arm, five by each. Central Park’s path, though, is nice and wide. Yes there were lots of people to share the path with, but they were spaced out quite nicely. I only saw one near mishap where an oblivious runner jetted across the roadway right in front of a cyclist, resulting in horns and yelling and a surprised, shocked look on the runner’s face. Now, that all being said, I went out on a Thursday morning, not a Saturday morning, which I hear can be quite chaotic.
The great thing that I discovered on this run is that while I may have lost some of my speed demoness, I didn’t lose my kickass hill climbing skills. People who had passed me earlier, I so smoked on the hills!
Today, I decided to run around Burnaby Lake, but unlike my Central Park loop, I was tight and heavy footed and fatigued. And it didn’t help that I got lost on the trails (or at least thought I was lost on the trails) and had to call Mario up on the cell, which slowed my time down massively as I ended up walking and talking for about 10 minutes, hoping that he would be able to help me find my way out of there … mind you, when he asked what I was around all I could tell him was “Trees!”
TODAY’S RUN:
- 9:30 a.m. BG before: 10.0 (temporary basal rate of -50 per cent)
- Distance: 9.38 km
- Average Pace: 6:58
- 11 a.m. BG after: 4.3
Where are your favourite places to run?