A cold breeze descended upon Central Park this past Thursday, and reminded everyone that winter still had a few legs left. While the snow flurries from earlier in the day had all but disappeared, the cold temperature remained. Even if it didn’t feel like April, before the workout everyone still talked about the two most famous April rituals: opening day and the Boston Marathon.

Although Coach Tony arrived a few minutes early (and was dressed for success in a new pair of shoes), the pre-race announcements did not begin until 7:08. The big announcements revolved around two masters runners. Stacy Creamer unbelievably set a 10 mile PR at age of 47 on Sunday’s Cherry Blossom run, and Tom Phillips led Team Google to victory at the Relay Del Sol, a 187 mile relay race through the Arizona dessert. It was at about this point when the self proclaimed ‘World’s Greatest Hopper’ (WGH) decided to interrupt the announcements. The guy even put his hopping abilities on display, as he easily hopped over a small barrier. After the WGH announced to everyone that he could hop over anything, Coach Tony suggested that he hop over a horse that was coming through. By this time, any CPTC member even remotely near WGH slowly moved as far away from the guy as possible. Fortunately, the WGH did not attempt to clear the horse, and left us alone for the workout.

And what a workout it was. Simple in design, but difficult in execution, the workout was a traditional five mile tempo run around the lower loop of the park. The way Tony structured the tempo run, runners would go against the wind and up the tough hills during the first mile and a half. Hopefully those two elements would be enough to keep paces in check for the first few miles.

After a quick warm-up, the 41 runners started the workout at 7:22PM. One of the advantages of a loop run is that you never run by the same place more than once. Of course, the disadvantage is that as a spectator or coach, it is difficult to view runners multiple times during the workout. Fortunately, everyone treated the tempo run as a workout and not a race, which allowed groups to stay together for nearly the entire run. As the old saying goes: ‘if you can’t run in groups during a workout, how can you expect to run in groups during a race?’.

After the workout, the cold didn’t feel nearly as bad as beforehand, which encouraged numerous CPTC members to stick around longer than usual. But as the daylight slowly disappeared, everyone slowly started to scatter about as well.

Note, with the Brooklyn Half Marathon on the horizon, I will not be present at next week’s Thursday Night Workout. So while next week’s workout will go on as usual, you’ll have to wait an additional week for the next workout report.