Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Contest 1 Results, and Training Begins Apace

The latest editions to the Fred's Team Hall of Fame:



CARL TAIT
SANDRO SEGALINI
JILL BC DuBOFF
JAMES ROSENFELD
MICHAEL CLARKSTON
ROBERT MUFFOLETO
ALEXANDRIA SAGE
GLORIA GUIDO



Total as of today...

hold onto your hats...



$2,515



I am awed by your faith in me, and your commitment to fighting cancer in all its forms.



Without futher ado, let's pick the winner for contest #1, the fountains of Central Park. The question was, how many real fountains (not drinking fountains) are there in the Park, and as a bonus, name them.



The correct answer is... EIGHT!

Sophie Loeb Fountain
Bethesda Fountain
Burnett Memorial Fountain
Cherry Hill Fountain
Conservatory Garden Fountain
Untermeyer Fountain
Honey Bear Fountain
Dancing Goat Fountain


(everyone forgets about the Dancing Goat Fountain, which is a little thing by the cafe and not noted on many of the Internet sites.)

There are three fountains outside the Park; the Pulitzer Fountain (opposite the Plaza,) the Columbis Circle Fountain (between the Park and the Time Warner Center, in the traffic circle) and the Maine Monument Fountain, the one right outside the Park on 59th St.

My source: Central Park 2000, http://centralpark2000.com/touring/learning/fountains_home.html

And the winner is...

HOWARD SHIAU!!

Howard wins the t-shirt of his choice, plus a bonus prize of my choosing (don't get too excited, I'm not very choosy when it comes to prizes!) Let's hear it for Howard!!

Contest #2 will post on Friday.

So let's see, since Bares I've been getting back into training with a vengeance. We had a 9-mile run on Saturday AM, and I did very well in my speed workout at the gym, as you can see from the sidebars to the right of the posts. I already feel like I'm getting faster. Well, we shall see soon enough -- I signed up for my next batch of races, which are shorties (6 miles and under.) I prefer longer, slower races -- I'm built for endurance, not for speed. But I'll push myself a bit on these races and see where I'm at. Being that they're coming up fairly soon I probably won't have to put in a huge number of miles before the race, and one of them is on a Sunday.

We had our first Team hill workout yesterday. Ahhh, Cat Hill, the bane of my existence. The biggest problem with Cat Hill is that every charity team in NYC does hill work on Tuesday nights. And they're all at Cat Hill. It can get really crowded. It's like a crazy, sweaty assembly line of runners plodding up and down the hill. One group kept stopping halfway up the hill and standing in the middle of the rec lane (I'm not being snitty, it was part of their workout, even their coach was stopping there.) Supremely annoying. Since the Park was still open to traffic when we began, the bicyclists also needed to use the rec lane. So I could either veer to the left and crash into the runners, or veer to the right and get hit by a bicycle. Such options!

Anyway, six repeats at a constant pace, with a minute or less between to rest (because it was hot and muggy.) This is why I have to train for the training! Exhausting, even if we only did 25 minutes. Eventually we'll build up to multiple sets of repeats, and also train on the Great Hill (that's the one at the northern end of the Park.)

Thursday is the first infamous step workout, at the new and improved Belvedere steps -- they closed the area for renovations last summer and just re-opened it a couple of months ago. It's beautifully done, all repaved and scrubbed up. And it wouldn't be Fred's Team if it wasn't threatening to rain Thursday night. Our motto last year was, "You can't TRAIN without RAIN." Actually our motto was "Strong Like Ox, Stubborn Like Mule" and there may have been one more in there, but I'm old and don't remember things anymore. My mental hard drive is full of '70s song lyrics. Anyway, last summer it rained every single day we trained for a month. Every day. From drizzles to deluges. Marathon Day made up for it by being beautiful and sunny. But it looks like we're in for a repeat. Egads!

More Friday. Congrats, Howard, and thanks and love to everyone!

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