Not Nearly as Cold as You’d Think

In fact, despite the 23 degrees temps that weather.com said felt like 13, I had sweat through my first layer by the time I’d crested the bridge at 9am, which was only about 1.5 miles into yesterday’s 8-mile run.  Yesterday was my first official long-ish weekend training run since the Disney marathon, since other weekends had been filled with margaritas, Grand Prix halves, and icy Pocono road conditions.  And yes, once again I’d turned my shoulders on Long Island, and ran towards the brown East River, the sparkling Chrysler Building, and the avenues of the East Side.

I have something about running east from my home, and that something is: I just won’t do it.  Running east from Sunnyside sends you into Woodside, Jackson Heights, Maspeth and, if I were to keep going, Jamaica and Flushing.  I’m not casting aspersions, these are all fine Queens neighborhoods full of what I love most about my borough.  But, I can only figure that to get there, I’d have to run along Roosevelt Avenue, Queens Boulevard, and Broadway, all of which are packed with noisy automobile and pedestrian traffic, and smell (and look) like something from last week’s dinner. Granted, as a city-street runner my idea of scenic is much more loosely defined than someone from Berkeley or Boulder, but I still cling to a romantic idea of what running through the city should be.  Unfortunately, Queens Blvd does not qualify.

And so, I plotted my 8-mile course over the bridge with the soothing familiarity of its hills, and into the Upper East Side.  The “there” in this there-and-back was Park Avenue and East 84th Street, and what a “there” it is.  I love running through the Upper East Side on weekend mornings.  I love passing the women in their fur coats walking their dogs, with no makeup on and their hair all pokey, since their appearance always triggers a reflective moment: if I had a fur coat and a doorman at the front of my building, would I opt to pick up poop at 9am on a Saturday?  I love how I can run for blocks and not even one car will drive by.  I love how I know Central Park is just over there, but I can keep running right here.

I only passed two other runners during this workout, both were women, seriously geared up.  I passed one guy leaving his building in basketball shorts with a gym bag slung over his shoulder.  (Can someone please explain to me about basketball shorts?  They look so flappy and uncomfortable.)  But, beyond that, no one else seemed very interested in exercise that early in the morning.  Later, around 1pm, as Husband and I were driving three boxes of books into downtown Manhattan, to be sold at the Strand for $120, we saw dozens of runners out pounding the sidewalks.  Personally, I don’t have much use for the middle-of-the-day run, but am always happy to see others fighting the sidewalk crowds.

So, it was a good run.  My face tingled with the cold for the first couple of miles, but I wore my hat the whole way and my gloves about three-quarters of the way, but by the time I was over the bridge my internal furnace was firing and I was warm-to-hot.  I listened to podcasts Phedippidations #131 and The Extra Mile #17.  I stopped twice to take a picture.  (Picture #1 is not posted here because I’m having trouble getting my camera to “talk” to my laptop, and #2 wasn’t actually “taken” because my camera had lost its charge.)  And oh yeah, I passed a few rich ladies picking up after their purebreeds. Including photo stops, the 8-miles-plus run took me 1:28:53.