How Many Miles Will I Run?

I had to do my long run on Saturday for a couple of reasons. The main reason was that I wasn't sure how open the roads would be in Lower Manhattan on Sunday, and I wanted to do the West Side route again. I always wanted Sunday to be a relaxing day in general. So, I set my alarm early for Saturday morning,even though I didn't get to sleep until after midnight.

I hit the snooze button a couple of times and then just shut off the alarm. When I woke up, it was about 8:30. I used work to procrastinate some more, so by the time I got out for my run it was 11am. The question was how many miles would I do. I was hoping for at least 10, I was shooting for 11 miles. According to the training plan, I should be at 16 miles. I'm not.

I ran across Central Park, through the Upper West Side to Riverside Park, and then headed south. It really is a pretty route . It was a gray day, and it started to rain a pit -- no downpour, but enough to cool me off.

Unlike last week, there was a lot of fun activities that I hadn't noticed. There was free kayaking! (Guess what I'm going to try and do next week!) But as you can see, I got to run through some nice areas. You can get off the pavement and run through areas like this on the left, or run up and down piers and get a great view of the Hudson, which I admit, does not look very inviting.

But I ran. And I ran. I passed by the cruise ship terminal, ran past 42nd street, Chelsea Pier, the Highline, and was well on my way to Battery City Park when I looked at my Garmin and found myself at mile 6. I thought about running all the way down and then taking the subway up, but instead I decided to run back.

I used a lookout point of old piles (columns that hold piers up) that's supposed to represent stars as my turn around and ran back.

It was fun, until I got to the hill back up to Riverside Park. I ran up about a two-thirds and walked up the rest. Hopefully, one day I will be able to run up that hill.

When I finally got back into Central Park, I realized I was feeling better than I thought I would. So, I turned south and hit mile 11. And from there I continued until I hit mile 12. It was fun, because when I was a done I was about two block from the 3rd Avenue Street fair. So I ended my run with a lemonade and a chicken chipotle taco!