A Brooklyn-Based Long Run

I guess I ended up taking the weekend off of posting but don't worry, I didn't take off from running. On Saturday I picked up a new pair of shoes (I'll be posting about them soon with some kind of review) so I had to give them a test drive. What was supposed to be an easy 6 turned into an easy 10 just because I was enjoying the sunlight so much. That run also brought me to 67 miles, pretty close to my marathon mileage peak.

Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza

Yesterday was a long run day--20 miles on my schedule. The Dashing Whippets do Sunday long runs in Brooklyn so I decided to head to Kings County for a change of scenery. It was a little bit of a struggle to get out of bed with one less hour of sleep but I managed to eat my bowl of cheerios and drag my butt to the subway. The group met at Grand Army Plaza in front of Prospect Park and boy were there a lot of us, probably 25 in all. Although it was chilly when I left my house, by the time I got to the meeting place it had warmed up considerably and with plenty of sun it was the perfect day for a run.

A good group of folks were looking to do 12 to 20 miles at a 7:45 pace so I went with them. The route we ran was great, taking us through Park Slope to Red Hook then along the water passing through Brooklyn Bridge Park, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, the Navy Yard into Williamsburg. When we got to McCarren Park we turned around and did the New York City Marathon route in reverse which was fun--I realized the course has more hills than I thought.

Throughout the run we lost a person here or there as folks running shorter distances peeled off to catch the subway home. By the time we made it to Lafayette Ave in Clinton Hill we were down to 7 people and by the time we made it back to Prospect Park we were down to 5. Only two of us were looking to do a full twenty so we entered the park and did a loop. I was sore at the end, but I have to say the run went by pretty quickly. All the midweek 15 milers I've been doing seem to be paying off because yesterday I felt fresh until the final couple miles. With Boston exactly 5 weeks from today it's nice to have another quality 20 under my belt and it was even nicer to run it with such a great group of people.

Track Woes

I know President's Day was last week, but allow me to invoke our founding fathers for a moment (God knows the presidential candidates have been invoking them on an hourly basis). Our founding fathers recognized that we have certain unalienable rights--the right to due process of law, the right to just compensation in cases of governmental takings, the right to religious freedom--but it's obvious none of our founding fathers was a runner.

If there had been runners in that first Congress at Federal Hall in New York, surely one of them would have included the right to a track!

What am I talking about? It can be really difficult to find a good all-weather 400 meter or 440 yard track. In New York City, there are a handful of tracks, but most of them fall into one of four categories:

(1) Weird distance - It's hard to run 800 m repeats on an unmarked 330m track!

(2) Weird shape - It's tricky to maintain speed on a track with 90 degree angles (plus, these tracks usually also fall into category (1))

(3) Limited Hours - Some of the nicest tracks are only open certain times of day, times that don't really allow people with jobs good options for getting in a workout.

(4) Pay-per-use tracks - There are a handful of indoor tracks in the city, but these require you to pay each time you want to use them and they usually fall into category (3) and sometimes categories (1) and (2) as well.

There's also a fifth category for tracks that are just too far away for me to get to on a weekday. There are great tracks at McCarren Park, the Redhook Recreation Area, Van Cortlandt Park, and Forest Park, but there is no way I can get to those places before work. There are two tracks close to me, one that's approximately 320 meters with 90 degree angles and one that doesn't open until 6am. I guess when you have Manhattan real estate prices to deal with, tracks just aren't a winning proposition.

For now, I'll continue to make due with the Central Park reservoir loop but I'm not going to stop dreaming about a day where I can live across the street from a pristine all-weather track!