I'm not sure why I've lost some blogging momentum. It's been a busy week. I'm back in Florida now and the return trip really knocked me out for some reason. No idea why. Here's a tip, though: New Jersey Transit is not fun when there is a downpour. Try to avoid it.
I did a bit of rearranging for this week too. I have two long-ish runs: 7 miles and 8 miles. Both are shorter than last week's 10 mile and this is a taper week. Yay taper week is all that I have to say. I was very much ready for one. Anyway, I decided to run at least one of the long-ish runs before I returned to Florida, which was likely a very wise decision. Then I had to move some stuff around because I was completely knocked out upon return. However, I am on schedule (sort of) to finish this week, even if I'm pretty sure that the 8-mile run will have to be more of a run/walk deal.
TUESDAY -- 7 miles and farewell NYC
After doing the 5K Brooklyn Bridge run, I came up with a crazy scheme to do some seriously tourist running for my final NYC outing. My motto for this run was, 'If it is scenic and in my neighborhood, then I am running past it.' I started with Fort Greene Park. There is one really stupid thing that I did not anticipate: probably they built a fort there because it was an elevated location to provide a good outlook in case of marauding...well, whatever was marauding (I thought maybe Southerners but a little research reveals British). I then decided to run across the Manhattan Bridge, take a left, and head back via the Brooklyn Bridge, finishing things off with the Brooklyn Heights Promenade (remember the motto of this run).
If you are a person who often runs bridges in urban settings, you probably already know why this was a bad idea. Alternatively, if you are a person who knows New York well, you can probably deduce why this was a bad idea. If you take a left after the Manhattan Bridge, forget about running, Jake, because it's Chinatown. And there are approximately one billion people milling around at any time. That's right. They all moved from China to New York and hang out only in the Lower East Side (okay, not really. I exaggerate. But the streets are quite crowded). It's really hard to pick up anything even approximating momentum and you wind up walking quite a bit. The Brooklyn Bridge was also not my best idea since there were approximately one billion tourists seeking to cross it (New York gets very crowded in the summer). However, I wasn't the only person trying to run it, so I didn't feel like a total newbie.
The Brooklyn Heights Promenade was probably my best plan for this run. I liked it so much, I ran it up and back. And again, I cannot laud the New York drinking fountains sufficiently. There is one approximately every five feet on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade--and this time, I am not exaggerating.
WEDNESDAY -- The best laid plans can still be thwarted by NJ Transit
I was ouchie and tired. I decided to take a day off. I don't want to point fingers at the fact that I had to stand from NY Penn Station to EWR on the commuter train because they were only running half of the normal trains because apparently when it rains, half of the trains get scared or something and refuse to come out and work. Also, my flight was delayed (see 'Rain'), so I got home relatively late. My hips were crazy tight. I did make it to yoga class, which helped, but still wasn't ready to run.
THURSDAY -- Florida being Florida
After much, much putting off of running, I finally did don the shoes and get out. It took me until almost 8pm to reach this stage, but hey, I got there. The plan was to run 6 laps around my condo complex to approximate 4 miles (I think that it would be closer to 4.2 miles, but okay). There was only one flaw with this otherwise brilliant plan: apparently I still can't do this at night without needed to walk. Blah. Florida, you win. Honestly. It's just too much with the heat and humidity!
The good news is that I still finished, even though some walking was required. But it was still irksome.
Upon further review: yesterday was one degree off of a record high for temperature. Adding to that, by the time I got out (around 8pm), Weather Underground informs me that it was not only still 84F, but the humidity was 79%. This is over the threshold of ick. Add in a dew point of 75F. The Real Feel temperature (according to Weather Underground) was 95F. Around 8pm. With the sun down. Dude. Come on.
FRIDAY -- The Best Laid Plans Sometimes Don't Work on Fridays
I had a great plan in mind: do some errands and running around in the morning, go to yoga, run 6 x 0.5 miles on the treadmill. Except that on Fridays, my gym closes at 5pm, which is after yoga is done. So instead, I did this outside, which was less successful from an 'actually running fast' stage. However, it was somewhat ingenious from a 'dealing with Florida' phase since I took a break between each interval to recover. Sure, I had to slow down significantly from the first two half-miles. But it's the principle of the thing.
Remaining this week are a 3-mile and an 8-mile. I am kind of already accepting that I will have to walk in parts of the 8-mile. This may hold true for the 12-mile next week as well. It is just too oppressive otherwise.
Showing posts with label Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Show all posts
Friday, August 12, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
New York. And Brooklyn, which is also part of New York
I missed writing about a whole week's worth of runs. Oops. Things have been busy here in NYC. Things I have done apart from running: been to the Ghostbuster building, stocked up on semi-useless kitchen items at Zabar's (because you know you need a shrimp deveiner), seen 'Master Class' and 'Book of Mormon,' watched one hundred million people run in Central Park (only a slight exaggeration), ate Montreal smoked meat, and started to discover a whole new part of New York that they call 'Brooklyn.' This trip marks the first one when I have spent any time in Brooklyn, making this exciting. Admittedly, I did not actually feel like I was in NYC until I spent time in Manhattan; I sort of felt like I had discovered some kind of neat, new city that just happened to be near New York and was connected by subway. Sad, but true.
Here is a quick summary of the past week's runs, all of which were completed, even if I forgot to blog about them:
Tuesday: 5 miles. For various reasons, I had to move my runs around this week, the most important of which was the fact that I planned to run (or maybe walk) a 5K on Sunday. So I opted to do 5-5-10-rest-6-5K instead of the normal schedule, which usually starts with the smallest number of miles. This was tiring, but I got through everything. For my very first run in this place they call 'Brooklyn,' I went down to the East River waterfront and ran there. The city of New York deserves some kind of prize for the quantity and placement of their water fountains. Although I got off to a late start, it was only a bit hot, and not killer 'I am going to die' hot. I survived. Parts of this run were slightly annoying, though, because there was a lot of waiting at lights and such. These are the hazards of actually running in a city, though, and that's okay.
Wednesday: 5 miles. Thanks to great advice from a friend, I had already decided to run my long run in Prospect Park. I decided to give it a test before the actual long run in case there were unexpected surprises--I learned a lot from my challenging long run in San Francisco last fall. Prospect Park is great for running. There is a handy loop with some pretty good scenery, numerous water fountains, and only one downside, which is a rather long hill right near the end of the loop. But this one challenge is conquerable, even if it is kind of annoying. The loop is, by my estimation, around 3 miles, which means that for long runs you wind up circling around it several times. However, it is not a boring 3 miles, which is important (as I also discovered while marathon training last year).
Thursday: 10 miles. 10 miles means that we are almost at the end of the long runs. Only one more to go (plus the actual race). Cool! I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan to run slightly less than 3 loops around Prospect Park, engineered by getting off at a different subway stop. For some reason, I thought that the loop was 3.5 miles. It's actually 3. However, backtracking is not so bad there because there is oodles of space for running. Other than that, I got going too quickly at times, which came back to haunt me during the uphills. Overall, though, I thought that it went quite well. I had a designated place where I stopped each loop to get water, which I think is a good idea. It cooled off and was less humid, which just added to the fantastic-ness of this run. And most importantly, now it is over!
Friday: I slept in and boy, did I need it. There is a reason that we usually do long runs on Sundays: so that we can rest afterward!
Saturday: 6 miles. I ran to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which is that place featured in Brooklyn-set movies that has the scenic view of lower Manhattan (you know it from Annie Hall and Moonstruck...and if you don't, you should really see both of those movies). They aren't kidding about the Heights: I did wind up walking after a futile attempt to run up the hill on the way back. A bit too much for me. Other than that, the run went very well. I even managed to get out before 8am, which is nothing short of a miracle for me.
Sunday: Keith A. Ferguson 5K. This run takes place across the Brooklyn Bridge. It isn't the best run to try and PR since it's kind of narrow, but it did provide some great scenery on both sides. I did this event with someone else and we opted to walk. Truth be told, my legs were pretty tired, so I was okay with that. We ran the end, by which I mean I was kind of a bad person and left my companion behind. Bad. But we both finished and got t-shirts. The whole event was very enjoyable and brought a lot of different participants, even if it was Florida-level humid (not Florida-level hot, thankfully). I got super sweaty just from my run at the end.
If you plan to do this event and can conveniently take the R train, might I suggest that you do so. The registration was directly outside of the exit (so the west side of city hall). Super easy.
That was the week! Tomorrow I am going to do 7 miles and take advantage of this reasonable weather while I still can. Wednesday, it is back to Florida.
Here is a quick summary of the past week's runs, all of which were completed, even if I forgot to blog about them:
Tuesday: 5 miles. For various reasons, I had to move my runs around this week, the most important of which was the fact that I planned to run (or maybe walk) a 5K on Sunday. So I opted to do 5-5-10-rest-6-5K instead of the normal schedule, which usually starts with the smallest number of miles. This was tiring, but I got through everything. For my very first run in this place they call 'Brooklyn,' I went down to the East River waterfront and ran there. The city of New York deserves some kind of prize for the quantity and placement of their water fountains. Although I got off to a late start, it was only a bit hot, and not killer 'I am going to die' hot. I survived. Parts of this run were slightly annoying, though, because there was a lot of waiting at lights and such. These are the hazards of actually running in a city, though, and that's okay.
Wednesday: 5 miles. Thanks to great advice from a friend, I had already decided to run my long run in Prospect Park. I decided to give it a test before the actual long run in case there were unexpected surprises--I learned a lot from my challenging long run in San Francisco last fall. Prospect Park is great for running. There is a handy loop with some pretty good scenery, numerous water fountains, and only one downside, which is a rather long hill right near the end of the loop. But this one challenge is conquerable, even if it is kind of annoying. The loop is, by my estimation, around 3 miles, which means that for long runs you wind up circling around it several times. However, it is not a boring 3 miles, which is important (as I also discovered while marathon training last year).
Thursday: 10 miles. 10 miles means that we are almost at the end of the long runs. Only one more to go (plus the actual race). Cool! I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan to run slightly less than 3 loops around Prospect Park, engineered by getting off at a different subway stop. For some reason, I thought that the loop was 3.5 miles. It's actually 3. However, backtracking is not so bad there because there is oodles of space for running. Other than that, I got going too quickly at times, which came back to haunt me during the uphills. Overall, though, I thought that it went quite well. I had a designated place where I stopped each loop to get water, which I think is a good idea. It cooled off and was less humid, which just added to the fantastic-ness of this run. And most importantly, now it is over!
Friday: I slept in and boy, did I need it. There is a reason that we usually do long runs on Sundays: so that we can rest afterward!
Saturday: 6 miles. I ran to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which is that place featured in Brooklyn-set movies that has the scenic view of lower Manhattan (you know it from Annie Hall and Moonstruck...and if you don't, you should really see both of those movies). They aren't kidding about the Heights: I did wind up walking after a futile attempt to run up the hill on the way back. A bit too much for me. Other than that, the run went very well. I even managed to get out before 8am, which is nothing short of a miracle for me.
Sunday: Keith A. Ferguson 5K. This run takes place across the Brooklyn Bridge. It isn't the best run to try and PR since it's kind of narrow, but it did provide some great scenery on both sides. I did this event with someone else and we opted to walk. Truth be told, my legs were pretty tired, so I was okay with that. We ran the end, by which I mean I was kind of a bad person and left my companion behind. Bad. But we both finished and got t-shirts. The whole event was very enjoyable and brought a lot of different participants, even if it was Florida-level humid (not Florida-level hot, thankfully). I got super sweaty just from my run at the end.
If you plan to do this event and can conveniently take the R train, might I suggest that you do so. The registration was directly outside of the exit (so the west side of city hall). Super easy.
That was the week! Tomorrow I am going to do 7 miles and take advantage of this reasonable weather while I still can. Wednesday, it is back to Florida.
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