I’m baaaaaack!
I had a blast in NYC and am putting together a big post about the trip for Answering Oliver, but I thought I’d recap my running adventures here.
I did two runs for a total of 14 miles, plus a TON of walking around the city and doing the tourist thing. It was my first visit, so I had to!
Yes, the solo tourist must take awkward self-photos in Times Square.
(Side note: The last thing I imagined for my October trip was sunshine and temperatures over 80 degrees, but it definitely felt like summer in NYC! I did all my sightseeing in dresses, sandals, shorts and tank tops. No complaints here.)
My big goal for this trip was to do my 10-mile long run in Central Park, and I was thrilled that Theodora of Losing Weight in the City didn’t think I was a complete weirdo for asking her to run with me on Saturday. The great thing about doing a long run with someone you’ve never met is that there’s so much to talk about! Our conversation, paired with the lovely, new-to-me scenery, made the run fly by.
The runners…
The route…
The post-run bagel…
Be sure to check out Theodora’s blog post about the run, too.
My other run was a four-miler on Monday, the last day of my visit. I stayed at a friend’s apartment in Queens, and he said there was a park with a lake less than a mile away. I set off on another sunny morning to find the lake…
And found that the path around Meadow Lake was quite pleasant!
The route to the lake, all the way around and back to the apartment was almost exactly 4 miles (37:54, 9:28 pace), which was what I had on my training schedule. I loved getting to explore a little bit of Queens!
I can now say I’ve trained for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon in three states (Washington, California and New York) and on two coasts! That’s pretty exciting.
Although it can be tough to exercise while traveling, running is such a great way to see a new place. Since I’ve made marathon training my priority, I’ve had no trouble fitting in my workouts. (I packed my running shoes first, after all.)
It would be nuts to attempt an 18- or 20-miler in an unfamiliar area, but I purposefully switched my training plan around a bit to move a 15-miler to last weekend so I only had to tackle 10 in NYC.
I have seven weekend long runs left until the marathon — 16, 12, 18, 14, 20, 12, 8 — all in the blustery, chilly, rainy Pacific Northwest.
Here goes nothin’.
Dev on Running 