Back in business!

If you remember my post from october 19th, “13.1 mile run to Valhalla again“, I was much slower than usual. This was mostly due to donating blood 3 days before the run. It took me 2 hours and 18 minutes to run the 13.1 miles to Valhalla, while I can normally run this distance in a little less than 2 hours. I was slow pretty much all of last week, even on my 22 mile run(or better yet, “slug crawl”) to “Little Iran”.

Shiraz restaurant in “Little Iran”, Elmsford, New York

Now, it appears my blood has mostly recovered. Today, 14 days after the blood donation, and 30 days after the marathon I managed to run 13.6 miles to Hastings and back in 1 hour 58 minutes. During the run, a cyclist acquaintance of mine tried to pretend he was juggling while cycling after he passed me. It was really funny, and I gotta say, he shows a lot of potential to be a good juggler-cyclist! Besides this, I felt like I was in top form during most of the run(even when running up hills), and didn’t feel totally exhausted afterwards. Right now I still feel very energetic, compared to how I often felt last week.

While the main reason I donated blood was to do a good deed, I was also interested in experimenting to see how much slower I would get and how long it would take to recover. Just as I suspected, it isn’t a big deal and I encourage all healthy people, athletes and non-athletes to donate whenever possible.

Now I am almost back to the way I was before, thanks to eating a lot of iron rich foods and supplements, and can work on improving my speed again.

Joggling to Valhalla

The red line going north was my 13.1 mile run

Yes, it is true, I joggled to Valhalla. I don’t mean the place Norse heroes go after they die heroically in battle. I’m still alive and juggling, and joggling certainly isn’t heroic. And I’m not of Scandinavian or Germanic ancestry.

At 13.1 miles(21 km), this run wasn’t remarkable by any means, but it is the farthest distance I’ve run that that didn’t involve a return trip since I got a ride in Valhalla(no, not by a Valkyrie). It took me 2 hours and 13 minutes to complete this yesterday, and the temperature was just below 80. I took one water break during the run and juggled 99% of the way up to the Kensico Dam in Valhalla.

A very weird thing happened to me near the end of my run in Valhalla. I was running through this wooded area when all of a sudden I spotted a mysterious wolf-like creature just off the trail looking at me in the distance. I thought to myself “there are no wolves in New York”, but as I got closer it became apparent that this was a coyote.

It did nothing except stare at me and I just ran right by it without incident. Since it was kind of small, I wasn’t scared of it. Then a strange thought occurred to me: I’m in Valhalla, and I saw a wolf-like creature for the first time in my entire life in the wild – It’s FENRIS WOLF!

Fenris Wolf by Dorothy Hardy

Fenris Wolf, the monstrous wolf that lives in Valhalla according to Norse mythology. It is such a coincidence since I use “Fenris” as a username in another forum. Granted, this was almost certainly a coyote, but coyotes are so close to wolves that they can interbreed. Too bad I didn’t take a picture.

This was a very strange encounter. I’m not superstitious or anything, I don’t believe in Norse or Germanic mythology(I do use the names of their gods for the days of the week, but so does almost everyone), but if I had a coyote encounter in any other town of Westchester county, it wouldn’t have been as interesting.

This makes me wonder: If I were to run with a woman named “Athena”, would this increase my odds of seeing owls(owls were frequently used as symbol for Athena) on my runs in wooded areas? I don’t think so, but it is interesting to contemplate.

Great, now I can’t get Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” out of my head.

What is the weirdest thing that happened to you on one of your runs?