A2K Running Club

I wouldn't rule it out, but I would ask you to think dry thoughts in the meantime. I could use some sun on our next run.

Sun would be lovely. Meanwhile, results are up for the last one:
http://www.coolrunning.com/results/10/ma/Apr18_Luv2Ru_set1.shtml
Yep, I came in last.

You ran, and finished, another race. Big props to you.



Hey! lookit that George!

Thanks - I don't mind being last. It means I made everyone else a winner.

George is freakin' amazing. But he did not thank the race putter-onner guy in Latin. That was mildly disappointing.

Okay...come along on this morning's run...

0.0 --- Get Pandora started on the Talking Heads Channel, head South on Overlook Terrace, turn left and left again onto Bennett Avenue.

.75-- 1.0 Try not to be too smug about how good it feels to be running down this long long long hill. It's going to be the last long up up uphill at the end. David Bryne is singing "Flowers", it's impossible to slow down. Turn into the Ft. Tryon Park gate just barely squezzing by the girl with three dogs.

1.1---1.3 Enjoy the up and down of the path, there are no flat places in Washington Heights. Exit the park onto Riverside Drive, go left up the hill and under the West Side Highway. Turn right, go up the only staircase on this run. Turn right (South) and the really beautiful path overlooking the Hudson reels out before you. CSN&Y are beating out "Four Dead in Ohio". Seems like that whole time was a lifetime and half ago.

2.4 -- First real challenge of the day, other than getting out the front door, the overpass from the path to the bottom of 181st Street. If you take it you will have only a three mile loop back to the start, try ignoring that voice in your head telling you that with three miles you will still have twenty miles for the week. Put your head down as the bottom of the ramp passes by your right shoulder.

2.7 --- Incredibly tight hairpin turn leads to more incredibly steep downhill, fight the urge to do the kind of cowboy hop-a-long thing you did as kid as you get down it. Zoom along across the wooden planked railroad bridge just as the Northbound Amtrak train snakes below you. It moves so fast! More downhill takes you to the bottom of the George Washington Bridge. Some song I've never heard before is in the headsets. Not really digging it.

3.0 You've cruised past the tennis courts, well, did stop to grab a little water from one fountains. A father, white-bearded tough-looking guy, is playing against his kids, a girl and a boy, both are late teens. They are not having any luck returning any of his shots. Now you are on the river and with the winds out of the North, you fly.

3.3 This is where the parrots lived in the trees last year, they made a lot of noise. Their nest is still there, brown and forlorn.

3.7 Bicycle whizzes by very close from behind. Weekender, you think, only gets to ride on days like this. The bikers who ride every day to work down this path never get that close. They have better control of their machines and, if you think about it,they don't have any reason to want to have any trouble (like mowing you down) and then be late to the office.

4.1 or thereabouts The bathrooms here next to the basketball courts, big parking lot and picnic tables start off every day so clean you could bring the meanest sumsabitch GI DI in there and he wouldn't find a thing to gig.

4.5 Path gets a little weird here. It's tightly fenced on both sides for about mile. The West Side Highway is above and the Sewage Treatment Plant is to your right. Run fast to a Velvet Underground melody and the beginning of "Dear Prudence", the narrow part ends under a bridge, make a quick right and a quick left which puts you right on the river again by the new kayak launching docks and the Fairway Store.

4.7-5.25 Trot along the docks, get some water, watch the strings of bicylists heading North, go a bit farther South to the painted compass on the path. Turn around head back.

6.0 You don't really feel the wind until here. Luckily, the B52s are groaning something about Idaho and a thirty something brunette has passed you. At first you tell yourself you should let her get ahead before you try to keep up with her so she dosen't think you are some kind of stalker, then you realize that on your best day, even before running 6 miles, there would be no way for you to keep up with her. The wind is making the sweat that was behaving itself in your hatband start to flow down into your eyes.

7.1 The George Washington Bridge is beginning to loom towards you. Traffic is, as they say on the radio, moving really well on both the upper and lower decks. David Bowie is doing his best to help you with Suffragette City, a song that makes no sense.

7.3-8.1 Back up the hill, doing it one section at a time. The first hundred yards is really steep making the next uphill feel pretty easy, then back across the railroad and up the real run-on-your-tip-toes-lift-your-knees---look up look up -hill. Feeling really good as you dance by the four cyclists resting at the top.

8.5 Did you close your eyes or was it "Once in a Lifetime" that got you past the overpass to the shortcut home?

8.6-9.1 I love this section. There's wall on your left which seems to be the main highway for every squirrel in the nearby woods. Today, you could have counted a dozen or more as well as so many robins and one huge crow.

9.2-9.9 Down the stairs without breaking your neck, good. Up and around the corner of Riverside & Payson, right across traffic into the Park.

10.0-10.65 Now the up and downs don't feel like so much fun and you're glad when you can finally get on the last long uphill to home.



You reject "Gimme Shelter" and hope for something faster to finish on....you get a godsend "Burning Down the House" lifts you all the way up and around the final two turns. 10.65 miles. 1:53:35 no speed record but the idea is to finish nearly spent. You don't want anybody to tell you are looking good at the end of a run, you don't want to look good, you want to look done.

And now you are.

Joe(all done)Nation

How do you do that, you scamp? You record your thoughts or remember your thoughts right after? You note the songs and remember what was going on?

Anyway, prose poetry.

i suspect he jogs his memory

opps, meant to bump this up a few days ago; .forgot...

we are signed up for this one
saturday 5/1 @ 10:00am
artesani park

spoze to be mostly sunny & ~ 65°F, going up to 79°F...

Now's the time to reveal the pasty white legs.

we were told to arrive early, lest we miss out on the free swag...

I'm very tempted, but I'll pass this time. There's stuff around my apartment that I need to take care of. Enjoy your run!

I have a Blackberry. While playing Pandora I can switch to voice record and do ten seconds of "puff,huuf,puff huff, talking heads,,mile 5.4 " then go back to Pandora..

Joe(it was an experiment.)Nation

free schwag?

do you hafta run then?

nope.

the entry fee is twenty bucks.
for that you get a number, a t-shirt, healthy munchies, and agua...

... and, not to forget, bad jokes from the race organizer!

yup.

i forgot to include the after-race raffle above.
when he's calling out runner's numbers for the raffle, he never fails to call out 8675309...

Jenny never seems to be there to pick up her prize.

pre-race anticipation gradually building...

It's only 'cause ya wanna see mah runnin' outfit.

hubba²...