Indigestion, The Weekend and Park Attempt #2

The end of last week was kind of a bummer because I had some digestion problems that manifested themselves in unproductive ways. I can deal with feeling gassy or crampy, but what I cannot deal with is the sudden, immediate and mind-consuming need to use the restroom. At work it's fine (usually), and at home there's a plethora of bathrooms to choose from, but imagine you're two and a half miles away from your apartment, running, and wham! Call of Nature. I guess there's always employee restrooms you can semi-illegally barge into, which has definitely happened in the past, but it's still a pain in the butt. Pun intended.
Anyway, so I narrowed it down to the noticeable increase in soda intake for that week. We'd gotten a case of that "throwback Pepsi", aka they make it with real sugar (gasp!), and I had had one a day for maybe 3 days in a row when I started noticing it. Being the good scientist that I am, I stopped for one day, noted a positive change, then had another soda on Friday... an action which proved my theory but caused me to be moderately incapacitated that afternoon, as far as exercise goes. As to the soda: not really sure why that was causing it. I don't generally have soda that often (maybe 2-3 times a month?) so maybe bubbles, sugar or pH change was getting to me. Either way, my run on Friday was cut short at a mile and I suffered some stomach pain that seemed severe at the time but in hindsight was just annoying due to the fact I had to scoot a half mile back to my apartment while doing some serious mental cartwheels to ignore the fact that I might vomit all over unsuspecting passersby. Which I didn't, thankfully, but it was still unpleasant.
Saturday passed quickly as we did a whole bunch of fun things, including an early breakfast at The Silver Spurs, getting myself some real running shoes, as the other ones I've been using are actually crosstrainers, going to this sort-of-secret watch sale where they didn't let you get in without checking coats and bags and showing your ID, then going to a wine and chocolate-paired tasting and THEN a visit to the new dumpling place down the street called Mahjong Dumpling which was fantastic! Now that I think about it... Saturday was really busy!
Sunday was more relaxed, with a walk in the park with Chewie:

I ran afterwards, the 3.2 mile loop, but I started out too fast and I hadn't really gone in three days, so it was difficult. I had to stop a couple of times. Sad face.
I made up for it today by heading into Central Park again. I was shooting for distance, not necessarily speed, so I chugged my way to the 85th street entrance, up the main road to the 97th street transverse, and down the west side... to... what I thought was another transverse to take me back to where I started? Bah! Foiled again! Signs saying "W 72 St" are, while helpful, not appreciated. This time I turned around right when I realized it, because I really didn't want to run the loop all the way down to the south end of the park and back. I saw some movement heading across the park towards the east side and followed the people, until I realized that it was a couple and I was following them up to the "Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater"... which is a bit too creepy, even for me. There was even a sign saying something like "Magical Puppet House!" Ahem. I took a different path a little to the north, which put me on the round-ish thing around the great lawn, of which I was gratefully familiar. I made it to the other side and, when I couldn't find a path to the main road, forged my own across the ice and really, really wet mud. Yuck. But I made it, and kept running north, until I saw a sign saying "E 90 St" - which meant I STILL didn't know where I was going. I escaped at this point and just ran back on the streets. It ended up being around 4.29 miles, and minus all the couple-puppet-stalking and getting-stuck-in-the-mud, I rounded it off to about 40 minutes, which translates to a 9:21 pace. All in all, eventful.