Kicking It Up A Notch…Plus a Trip to Governors Island

This summer has been, thus far, one of the coolest on record. According to The New York Times,

“The daily average last month was at or below normal every day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York — one more day than in Fairbanks, Alaska. Depending on Friday’s high, this was the second or third coolest June and July recorded in New York.”

Essentially summer in New York has looked like this: gray and rainy, cool and muggy.

That said, yesterday I endured a very fun long training run in Central Park with the New York Road Runners. The groups did 4 loops of the park adding up to 20 miles, and you could drop out after any of the loops depending upon your training needs. Now, thanks to an imprudent night out with friends on Friday, I showed up late. I managed to join the 10:30 pace training around 1.5 miles into the first loop, and that proved to be a very comfortable pace for me to maintain. I went with them for 16 miles, which for me was about 14.5 miles. I admit I felt like an impostor getting my ice packs strapped to my legs, but I just wasn’t up to doing the last 4-mile loop and I decided that running farther than I ever had before was a pretty decent accomplishment for the day. I took my Utz pretzels and my banana and, feeling perfectly serene as the bags of ice strapped to my thighs melted in rivulets down my legs, wandered in the direction of the subway.

At some point it occurred to me that I was, at that moment, one of those lunatics people are talking about when they shake their heads and say, “only in New York” with a huge sigh of disgust and/or annoyance. I had become the person to whom rational folks give wide berth when walking along the sidewalk. And I can see why: my shirt was thoroughly soaked, and I do mean that there was not a single millimeter of dry cloth on my body. My hair looked gray from being covered with salt from my dried sweat, and I had plastic bags of half-melted ice Saran-wrapped to my rather wobbly legs. And I was walking around eating pretzels like this was completely normal behavior. For runners, it is: for anyone else, call the guys with the straitjackets and the white van.

In short, I had become a Runner of the Living Dead. A shuffling post-long-run zombie, mindlessly gobbling every carb within reach.

In any event, I’m proud to say that I made it 14.5 miles. I am fearful of doing the remaining 11.7 miles in a few months, but I think I can get there from here. I’ll probably sign up for some longer runs just to make getting out there a bit easier. Mentally it’s pretty challenging to cover the same few miles over and over again, so I’ve been trying to get out of the Financial District and the eternal pleasures of Battery Park City a little more often. One place that has proven to be a wonderful haven is Governors Island. (The name is plural, not possessive.)

The New York Times’ Roving Runner recently did a brief article about the Island. It’s as good as he makes it out to be. The views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the big orange Staten Island Ferry boats are all amazing, and I am very grateful to Brian Fidelman (the article’s author) for identifying the bizarro recording that plays over loudspeakers at the far end of the island. The first time you hear it, it’s weird and kind of wonderful. By the fifteenth time you’re hearing it, you begin to understand why the comfy free hammocks within hearing distance of the loudspeakers are the last to fill up. Maybe the recording doesn’t need to be played constantly, you know? I’ve been out on numerous occasions, and sometimes it seems to be going constantly and others it seems to kick in every half hour or so. I find the latter arrangement much preferable.

The entire island is like a really interesting 2.2 mile track. You can also run in the interior, although that’s where a lot of the arts and culture events take place, so it’s more crowded. By crowded, I mean amply spacious by New York standards. This is where I’ve started doing hill work.

I only have two complaints about the island: the ferry schedule doesn’t run often or late enough to accommodate clockwatchers like me during the week, and there are no drinking fountains on the island.

This, to me, is a huge oversight in Brian’s otherwise excellent piece. I asked a guard about a non-functioning fountain near the ferry terminal, and he explained that there’s a problem with the water system on the island and that the water is thus non-potable. If you are looking for hydration during a long run, be advised that you’ll either have to pack it in or buy it from one of the vendors in bottle form. Or, you can always hit the new Water Taxi beach for a post-run beer. Just bring a change of clothes or something, lest people run in terror from the invasion of the Running Zombie.

Happy running!

All Systems Go!

Today was my last appointment with my physical therapist! Sniff. I mean, yay! While I will miss his metaphors, I am very happy to get the PT seal of approval to run again – without pain, this time. I also have permission to do the Brooklyn Half Marathon at the end of May. Since I’m the cautious sort, I’m going to get my real orthotics and go for a run before signing up, just to see how it goes, but I’m psyched!

My secret twin – fraternal; sadly, we look nothing alike, and she is much prettier than I am – told me that this year the course is going to be reversed. For those unfamiliar with the race, this means that instead of starting in Coney Island and running to Prospect Park, we’ll be running the opposite direction. I plan to imagine myself as Jean-Pierre Léaud in Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), running from his unbearable life to the ocean, where metaphysical enlightenment continues to elude him. (Oops. I pulled a Brittney Spears and did it again. I’d make a terrible film reviewer. Sorry.)

Last year when I ran this race, it was quite the cultural experience. Living in Manhattan it isn’t uncommon to see Hasidic Jews around town, but even when you read about enclaves of Jews one tends to forget that they exist right here in New York. Or maybe that’s just my myopia. Anyway, it was quite something to be running up from Coney Island through Ditmas Park and be surrounded by these soberly dressed families who pretty clearly did not approve of Spandex-clad runners thundering through their streets. Actually, Fred Lebow, one of the founders (the founder?) of the New York Marathon was from a conservative Jewish family, and this is part of the reason that the marathon goes through heavily Jewish neighborhoods. Also, I have to imagine that those routes just make sense, but there’s an interesting account of Fred’s sometimes fraught reltationship with the Orthodox Jewish community in a book entitled Anything for a T-Shirt. It’s a pretty good read; I recommend looking for a copy at your local library.

My favorite marathon book, however, is Liz Robbins’ A Race Like No Other. Not only does she have a great writing style, she seems to have a good way with people and a lot of sympathy for the rigors of training. I’d recommend this book to anyone even considering the New York Marathon.

Last year’s Brooklyn Half hurt. My green goodness, did it ever hurt. It was quite a scene trying to get home: I was one of probably twenty or so people clinging to the railings and limping with great difficulty down the stairs into the subway. There was not one single part of me that wasn’t seriously in pain last year. I was shivering so hard on the subway home that I nearly shook the train right off its rails. I spent the rest of the day in the bathtub in very hot water, and then I fell asleep in the midafternoon for a really long time.

Here’s hoping that this year that happens again, minues the cripling knee pain! You’ll just have to picture me holding up my glass and toasting yours.

The East River Park is actually pretty nice. Honest.

To spare you the pain of reading another rehash of my tabloid reading on the treadmill, I’m going to take my lovely loyal readers on a tour of the East River Park. (My knee was not much better today, and I am embarrassed about my lapse into self pity yesterday evening, so I feel like I owe ya.)

The West side has a very nice and very popular greenway that reaches all the way from Battery Park City to Inwood, which is the little spit of Manhattan that extends further north than the South Bronx. It’s popular with cyclists and I hear tell that in nice weather it’s practically impossible to bike all the way up there because people bring their grills out and cook on the pathway. The City offers a videos from a cyclist’s view of the greenway, which I think are kind of neat. While theoretically the path is supposed to extend all the way around Manhattan, and indeed the city’s website cheerfully claims that “The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway is a 32-mile route that circumnavigates the island of Manhattan,” allow me to reassure you that this is not, in fact, true. There’s a pretty big chunk near the UN that has no greenway, and large stretches of the East River Park are actually crumbling paths next to fenced-off construction equipment:

Construction equipment, East River Park

Admittedly, that is not so nice. However, there is a beautiful section of the park between the ConEd plant and Peter Cooper Village/Stuytown called Stuyvesant Cove. This section is of the park is a knockout: landscaped and hidden away, it has rarely been crowded during the years I’ve been running there. The views are just fantastic:

Stuyvesant Cove view

Apologies to the random jogger; I have no idea who you are, and I’m sure you had no idea you were going to make it onto some complete stranger’s blog. Let this be a lesson to us all on the danger of leaving the house. Anyway. It’s pretty hard to be mad at the world when you get to wake up and go look at a vista like that. Up ahead a little ways there’s some picnic tables and a planting area that’s a gorgeous place to take a breather in nice weather. Stuyvesant Cove is one of my favorite places in Manhattan, and I’m really going to miss it when I move.  Happily, I can always come back. Currently I like to run up here, and then down to Wall Street, but there’s nothing preventing me from doing the reverse once I move further downtown. That’s comforting.

Once you turn around and head south again, there’s an ongoing landscaping project that I hope will eventually be finished in spite of the current economic climate. The poor ERP never quite seems to get the funding it needs to live up to the expectations that led to its creation. When Robert Moses was planning the FDR, he recognized that the residents on the lower east side needed park space and set about creating it. Unfortunately, during the budget crisis of the 70s the park fell into neglect. The public works that are going on now in the park were planned during the recent asset boom, so my only hope is that they finish, because I happen to think it’s a great park. Needs some work, but still very enjoyable.

One more picture showing the recent work:

View of bridge in the ERP

I really hope that it never becomes as popular as the West side. I like it just as it is, populated but not crowded.