Question about running in Central Park

Count me as another guy who's run in the park for 30 years - this has happened to me at most 5 times. I've seen guys speed up to run with fast women though. Every time I remember the guy got crushed.

OP,

The answer to your question is very easy.

They are Yankee Fans.

It's a pre requisite to be a douchey douchebag.

It's much better to run in the bridle path in Central Park than the roadway. You'll have fewer of those silly challenges there, and it's much nicer on your legs.

David Monti, NYC runner since 1990

First lap of the reservoir winter '56-57 as a preteen.

I doubt the locution preteen existed then.

in order to avoid this from happening, you need to run early in the morning like before 7am. Any running done during midday and early evenings especially on weekends is when these types of things happen. anyone who says this rarely happens are probably morning runners.

I've run in Central Park a lot and something like this has happened to me a number of times, but it was much less aggressive than what the OP describes. Usually, just after I've passed the guy (actually sometimes a girl), I'll notice that their breathing gets heavier and they start to close the gap. A few times they might pass back, but usually it's a half-hearted effort and they fall back again to their original pace. Honestly, I think it's mostly subconscious and the person doesn't even know they're doing it. I will sometimes speed up myself in response to the other runner speeding up without realizing it at first.

One time that stands out was when I was doing 1 min hard/1 min easy around the loop. I passed this guy on one of the hard intervals and then when he passed me back on the next easy interval, he was running quite a bit harder than before. This went on back and forth for some time and I swear the guy seemed like he was getting angry. But maybe this was all in my imagination and we both happened to be doing fartleks. He was probably thinking, geez this guy and his ego! ;).

Central Park is one of my favorite places to run. It can get crowded on the weekends, especially on the lower part of the loop, but I kind of enjoy the people watching unless I'm doing a workout. There's always the bridle path, which even on busy days is pretty much clear.

Thats central park for yah... I personally like to slowly squeeze down the trigger at a rate almost unnoticeable until the feel self conscious about their breathing and fall off the back. lakefront is nice but the bigger problem is that one section with all the people barbecuing, which isn't really much of a problem. NYC will have plenty of runners year round. try the extreme times of the day, earlier the better.

while op's post seems a bit exaggerated (i used to live on the uws and run in cp all the time), this definitely does happen from time to time. thing is, i love when it does. how much fun is it to slowly increase the pace on these jokers until they are just totally on the edge, and then increase it a little more so they totally break? one of the pleasures of being a decent runner i think, and a good way to add a little tempo when just out for a run.