Going Long in Central Park
Sunday morning we headed down to Central Park for our weekly long run. Unlike most other days during the week its pretty much a straight shot into the city early Sunday morning with little traffic and plenty of parking around the Columbia campus. The campus is located less than a mile from the northwest corner of Central Park on Manhattan’s upper west side.
As a Boston native the unthinkable has occurred over the last 18 months: I’ve actually grown to like NYC. We’ve become very familiar with not only the Columbia campus, but the streets, neighborhoods , outdoor farmer's markets, local shops and restaurants that surround the University. While Columbia has a fairly small undergraduate student population (about 7000) it has quite a large number of graduate students (in excess of 22,000) so the Morningside Heights neighborhood where Columbia is located seems to be bustling 24/7. The NYC restaurant which became famous on “Seinfeld” is located right next to the Columbia campus on the corner of Broadway and W 112th Street.
On Saturday night we (Anthony, Anthony’s friend Emilie, Cathy, Chris and I) passed on Tom’s Restaurant and instead headed a little further south to Awash, a local the Ethiopian restaurant. http://www.awashnyc.com/menus.html We love trying different ethnic restaurants although I didn’t realize that silverware is not a part of Ethiopian custom so I had a good time wrestling with my Yatakilt Alicha sans silverware.
Our run in Central Park Sunday morning was long and difficult. There was a steady drizzle most of the morning. There are several gradual but long hills in the north end of the park and the main loop is just over six miles. After entering we didn’t stray much from this main loop throughout the morning and tried to maintain just under sub 8:00 minute mile pace throughout most of our run. We were joined by literally thousands of other people in the park at the same time, mostly runners, but a fair number of cyclists, walkers, soccer players (on the interior fields), dog lovers and Beatle enthusiasts clustering around the Strawberry Fields memorial near 71st Street dedicated to John Lennon. There seems to be a type of controlled chaos at all times in the park and only occasionally did we encounter any need to slow our pace due to human traffic. At one point a lengthy motorcade with armed guards and police cars with flashing lights entered the park escorting a group of foreign dignitaries hidden behind dark glass. You are repeatedly humbled throughout the run as small groups of elite Kenyans or college teams pass you so easily they make you feel like you’re standing still…despite the fact you are running as hard as you can. Total time running: 3:06:50.
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