As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, I originally saw the training schedule and wondered if I could do the long runs. I have to shout out to Sharon Hoffman, Traci Osborne, and Jim Mossman for the leadership and mentoring through this process.
Today is the peak of the training – a 11mile run. From here on out, the runs are all less distance, starting the taper to lead into the half-marathon on Feb 5.
I was hoping for a pleasant sunny day in NYC when I landed this morning. The sun was out, but it was about mid 30’s temperature. No worries, I got this, with some layers, some cotton gloves, and a good solid windbreaker shell.
The overall run was pleasant. I’m staying in midtown on 42nd street, so I was able to run over to the Javits Center (where my event is this week), and catch the Highline for the first section of the run.
The highline is pretty cool! It’s an old train trestle that has been reworked to be a trail and park. It would be awesome in the spring, summer, fall, basically any season but winter. It was fairly crowded with walkers, but made for a nice jog without having to deal with street traffic. I’d like to come back and run that again during more pleasant weather. There were many people stopping for pictures of views and scenery that I wasn’t able to appreciate. However, the route was great, and took mew a few miles south of midtown, to around 15th street.
From there I cut west to the Hudson, which was less than half a block from the end of the Highline. This is a great park! there is greenspace all the way up and down the west side of NYC, with separate bike paths, walking/running trails, and car access. I ran from near the financial district up to 90th street along this path, passing piers, sightseeing helipads, and many cool looking bars, restaurants, gyms, and activities.
It started getting a little colder and windy at this stage, but the run was still pretty pleasant.
There was a nice gradual incline around 85th street to take me up to street level (Riverside Ave) with awesome homes, and a huge structure to commemorate war heros. I ran through the upper west side, dodging doormen, dog-walkers, and passersby on the city streets. I started to miss the Hudson River Trail!
Made it to Central park and entered at 90th street. This is when the flurries started. Made for a pretty view, you couldn’t really see the city, and there were many active walkers, runners, and families in the park. Very cool to have such an awesome place in the middle of the city. I was at mile 8.5 here, and knew I just needed to head back towards midtown, but suspected I’d need to exit the park to finish.
I hit mile 10 as I got to Columbus Circle. This is at the Southwest corner of Central park, and has a traffic circle about 500 miles wide. Of course I exaggerate but not much. I think everybody in NYC decided to go to Columbus Circle to cross the street around the time I got there. I dodged traffic, pedestrians, pedicabs, and dogs to get across the street, and decided to cut over a block to avoid running south through times square.
The snow was getting heavier, and the wind was picking up. While I had been doing 4min runs followed by 1min walks, at this stage, I just kept running to get this part over with more quickly!
I ran south on Columbus and hit 11 miles around 45th street. 5 more blocks to go, then cut over for a few blocks to get back to my hotel.
I rewarded myself with a gyro and fries from a street truck. AWESOME! and I can justify it with the caloric burn of 11miles over a 2.5 hour run.
So I cap off my peak of training with a great experience in the big apple. I found some cool places to run, saw some cool parts of NYC I never would have walked to, and I feel really good about this upcoming race.
Thank you for reading, and THANK YOU for your support! It’s all downhill from here, until I get to the Big Easy for the full 13.1 miles on Feb 5.
Cheers,
ET
Originally posted at CCFA site by Eric Thorsen on Sat, Jan 14, 2017 @ 10:38 PM Cross posted here after successful completion of the race