9/11

We were in New York on September 11, 2001.  Eight weeks later I watched my first New York City Marathon from half a block from our apartment. The pile was still burning and the air smelled of smoke melted computers.  But, the sun was shining and the runners were running and the spectators were cheering and the flags were waving.  It was the first big public event since 9/11 that wasn’t either cancelled or a memorial service.  It was a day of optimism and one of the reasons I want to run the marathon.

Central Park, New York

Central Park is an amazing place.

No matter what you do, there will be hundreds of other people all doing it too.

This morning I ran in Central Park with my Galloway group.  There were lots of runners out today training for the New York City Marathon, including several other groups of charity runners and the Achillies all on the same 843 acres as bikers and stroller pushers and inline skaters and tai chi classes and children’s birthday parties and hundreds of people waiting line hoping for one of the free tickets to tonights performance of Shakespeare in the Park (The current show is actually the Sondheim musical Into the Woods starring Amy Adams.)

Central Park became a National Historical Landmark in 1963.  I’m willing to bet it was the first thing declared a National Historical Landmark after the magnificent 1910 Beaux Arts Penn Station designed by the famous Gilded Age architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was torn down.  I’m sad it was torn down and I’ve never even seen it.  All I saw was a couple of photos of it in the Ken Burns PBS documentary about New York City, and the quote: “One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” by Vincent Scully, an architectural scholar critical of the destruction.

So anyway…We still have Central Park.

I love the variety and detail of the Victorian architectural features, bridges and fountains and buildings designed by Olmsted and Vaux, that feed the imagination.

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TWENTY-THREE MILES TODAY!!!

I am stiff and sore but I am not injured.  I guess that Jeff Galloway run/walk program really works because I ran 23 miles today and back in April I wasn’t running AT ALL!

The Husband seems proud of me.

But,

OMG Central Park was full of runners training for the New York Marathon this morning!  There were probably more runners out training today than ran the Missoula Marathon, maybe even more people (when adding in bike riders and tourists and parents pushing strollers and elderly people out for a walk and people walking their dogs, and tai chi classes, and children’s birthday parties, and hopeful theatergoers waiting in line from six in the morning hoping for a pair of the free tickets to see Amy Adams in “Into The Woods” the current show on the Shakespeare in the Park stage.

It was harder to keep up with my pace group than when I wander around by myself.  But on the other hand we were done running while lunch with normal people was still an option.

When I read the email about circling the park 3 times and then one more shorter loop to get to the 23 miles I wasn’t sure how I felt about that since I don’t really enjoy running in circles.  But, since we started running so early that the air was cool and the park was almost empty and we finished when the sun was high and the park was full of all kinds of people it didn’t really feel like we were running in circles at all.

Central Park is huge.

 

23 Miles, Getting Nervous for Tomor

23 Miles.  I can’t believe I’m going to run 23 miles tomorrow.

This is scary like opening a new show and as I do before every opening night, I am preparing by going shopping.  I almost always stop at a drugstore on the way to the theater and buy something new on the way to opening night, even if it’s just a new tube of mascara.  It seems impotent at the time and gives me a little boost of confidence.  At least my mascara won’t be clumpy.

This afternoon, was my first day back in Leslie’s class at the McBurney Y and afterwards on the take-shelf of books I picked up a copy of MARATHON WOMAN, by Katherine Switzer.  It was autographed.  I think it was meant for me.

Then, I went to Jackrabbit Sports on W 14th and bought some gels and protein bites to take with me on my long run tomorrow.  I also bought a Jackrabbit t-shirt, the black one with the circular city on the front that I admired on one of the other Galloway runners earlier this year.

23 Miles…

 

Running like a clown…

So today is our first full day back in New York after our summer vacation.

I went out for a run:

I circled Fort Greene Park twice.

Then I ran across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Then I ran through Chinatown.

I meant to come back over DUMBO across the Manhattan Bridge,

But, I didn’t see it,

So I ran up Houston until I saw the Williamsburg Bridge

Then I ran back home on Bedford Avenue past the synagogues and children and past the housing projects of Bed-Sty and back home.

The Husband laughs at me for overshooting my goal.

I think of Greta Gertz who completed her first New York Marathon because she didn’t know where she was and running all the way to the finish line was the only way she could find the people who knew who she was.

I like running in the city better than car friendly Texas and suburban Seattle.  Human scale, and passing other pedestrians goes a long way towards helping me feel like I am OK as I am (as a runner) and not in danger of being hit by a car.  Missoula, Montana however had a series of off-road trails with which I was familiar enough that I could run for miles without getting spooked.  Not like running alongside a highway in Car Culture Land where I am aware that I could be squashed like a bug at any moment by an SUV.

 

Clowns Trading Spaces

So, the New York Goofs, formerly of New York City, currently based in Dallas, Texas are at this moment teaching a clown workshop at the Flea Theatre, in SoHo, in Manhattan, while this clownmommy who lives in Brooklyn, New York, is currently hanging out in the Dallas Texas Metro Area!  Weird!

Long Run Day

I got up at 4:00 am when my alarm went off.  The Husband woke up too and spoke encouraging words as I climbed out of bed and stumbled towards the bathroom and the running clothes I’d set out last night.

I put on water to boil for coffee but then decided against it and drank some Accelerade and took a couple aspirin.  I looked out the window to see if it was raining.  It wasn’t.  I was worried about riding the air conditioned subway for an hour but I left the apartment with just my Galloway t-shirt over my running tank top and bra.

I was on the subway platform by 5:00am.  There was no train in sight as I ate the two banana’s I’d brought dipping them in the mixture of peanut butter and honey I’d put in a baggie.

When I saw flashlights and lanterns swinging along the tracks I worried that the trains weren’t running at all which meant I could miss the run entirely if I wasn’t at the designated start at the East 72nd Street and 5th Avenue entrance to Central Park by 6:00 am.

When the workmen appeared and climbed up onto the platform off the track I asked if the trains were even running, he answered in a Russian-sounding accent; “Every half hour.”  I waited till 5:30, but I made it to West 72nd by 6:00 am, the wrong side of the park.  But, I had a paper copy of the e-mail with the directions for the run so I started running across the park and caught up with my pace group who were running towards me.  I ran and talked with a lawyer who has a teenaged daughter.  We got ahead and out of sight of the others but it was fine because we were talking.  At the aid station when we met up with the others one of them told us to slow down since we were only 5 miles in and still had so much running to do.  We ran along the East River and over the bridge to Randall’s Island and around (using the bathroom in the tennis center where kids in tennis clothes with bags of rackets were lined up to sign up for a tournament or something.  We ran back across the bridge (some of us stopped to take pictures) and once again to the aid station at Carl Schurz Park.  After a snack and a drink we were off again but I needed to stop at the public bathroom in the park and when I came out I lost my group.  I ran along the river until it seemed the walkway ended and I crossed the street but then that sidewalk came to an end and I was on the wrong side of FDR Drive.  I kept going, but on surface streets,  I turned on 63rd and ran to 5th Ave at Central park and up to 72nd and entered the park to do the lower loop again to get up to 17 miles, but  the finish line for a 10K.  It was Boomer’s Cystic Fibrosis Run to Breathe, I passed a teenager with a race number pinned to her shirt, sitting on a barrier taking loud hoarse gasping breathes but not using an asthma inhaler.  I wondered if she had cystic fibrosis. There but for the Grace of God…  Symptoms of my childhood illnesses led doctors to consider a cystic fibrosis diagnosis for me when I was a baby.  I had something else, asthmatic bronchitis that landed me in the hospital with pneumonia five times.

Runners run because they can.  If you’re reading this blog, please donate to my NYC Marathon fundraiser for the McBurney Y’s Strong Kid’s Campaign in my sidebar <—-!!!

Since I couldn’t follow the intended loop I took another trail and ended up wandering through The Ramble.  When I came out I found a road to follow down and around and back up to East 72nd and 5th Avenue where the mornings run had started.

By 11:00 am I was going down the stairs into a subway station and instead of going home to an ice bath I met up with The Husband and My Kid (a fan of the reality show Toddlers & Tiaras) who were in the theater at LIU to watch our neighbor participate in her first (and, according to her father, hopefully her only) children’s “glitz” children’s beauty contest, Darling Divas Candyland Pageant –but that’s another post.