Old Man Winter decided to show up to yesterday s Thursday Night Workout, as the coldest Thursday of the year descended upon Central Park. But that didn t stop 36 resilient runners from meeting at the statue. While the weather was cold and crisp here, everyone felt thankful that Mother Nature spared us from the 100 inches of snow that Oswego, NY received over the past seven days. Only Alan Ruben decided to don shorts for the workout, while everyone else ran in pants or tights. Speaking of tights, several women in the club secretly admired Stuart Calderwood’s running tights. For better or worse, few people paid attention to Coach Tony s announcements. It didn t help that a corpulent raccoon waddled aimlessly about nearby, grabbing everyone s attention.

The workout itself was another good one, a four mile tempo run at half-marathon pace with a twist (the twist being two 600 meter speed bursts over two uphill segments). An interesting thing occurred during the run, as for the first time in my memory the three fastest groups all finished the tempo run at the same time. It can be argued as to what caused this rare event to occur. Was it due to Tony s excellent group spacing, or was it possibly caused by Stuart Calderwood acting as coach, motivator and a wind-breaker for his group? Either way, it allowed all three groups to do the one mile cool-down together. After the workout, yet another raccoon made an appearance nearby, which possibly encouraged CPTCers to call it an early night. Hence, everyone rushed home, presumably to watch the epic League Pass match-up between the Bucks and Hornets.