A walk in the woods

Running path

Sometimes it takes a walk to find a good run. I'd allowed myself to take a week to recover from the NYRR Staten Island Half. I've been biking instead and I've been allowing ideas of what's next to tumble freely in my head without coming up with a specific plan.

I'd been experiencing loop fatigue. It's a common ailment among city park runners and its most dangerous symptom is a reluctance to run.

I'd managed to avoid this last year while training for the ING New York City Marathon by staying away from running the main Prospect Park loop. Instead I'd come up with a variety of street routes. This year, as I work on developing a smooth pace, I've running most of my mileage on loops that don't include multiple corner stops, hopping over supermarket crates and dodging live chickens.

Unidentified mushrooms

Yesterday I went forging for mushrooms with Jess and though we didn't find what we were looking for, as we walked through Prospect Park exploring the ground I found myself seeing the park in a different way.

Everyone knows the Prospect Park time-space continuum expands when you're running through its backwoods. It turns out the same thing happens when you're walking. Though at first we didn't see any mushrooms. After  while space expanded and we started seeing them everywhere and we found paths I'd never taken before.  I was jealous of the runners on these paths.

Other unidentified mushrooms

I went out for mushrooms and came back with a run. I'm looking forward to finding that path by the water again on my run tomorrow. Wish me luck!