Cowboy Hazel

Today's run took me through three boroughs, to five islands, and over a bunch of bridges. It was an amazing 12.4 mile exploratory run. Even though it started and finished just steps from my front door, almost all of it was uncharted territory for me.

Yesterday, I was at physical therapy for a grueling hour-and-half session but left feeling pretty good and with permission to try for 10 miles today. That was all I was planning (I drew a quick map of my route on Google Earth and it came in right at 10) but I got mis-directed a couple times and didn't take into account how far off the big bridges you have to go to get to the pedestrian ramps.



Here's a fairly detailed account in case other people are wanted to mirror part of the run. (I know for sure at least Jake was curious as he posted a question on an earlier post of mine.)

The first bridge was the Triborough Bridge (officially RFK Bridge now). I scoped it out the other day when I was up on 125th Street and saw a sign saying "Walkway Closed, Use North Walkway." What I failed to notice was that that sign was on the back of an open gate. I stopped for traffic (my only stop of the entire run) then crossed the street only to see a similar sign pointing me back to the south side. I crossed back before the light changed and started up the ramp on the south side of the Triborough. It smelled like piss and paint and I passed 7 or 8 sleeping bums. The views were okay, but not good enough to make up for the smell.

I thought I would be able to stay on the bridge the whole way to Queens, but that wasn't the case. The path led down to Randall's Island, very near to the turnaround point for many of my island runs. A sign pointed left for Bronx and Queens so I went left. There were a whole series of signs, but then they stopped. I just kept running and finally came to a big ramp. I started up it, then saw a huge Y and had to choose right or left (this was such a cool thing, this ramp was just hanging midair under the giant bridge...) I went left, thinking I could double back at the top and head to Queens. But, when I got to the top, I saw that it was blocked off. Rather than turning around there, I decided to head into the Bronx and turn around up there, hoping that the other side of the bridge went through. It didn't. I got back to the right half of the Y, headed down it, and ended up back under the bridge on Randall's Island.

At that point, I decided to just follow at the base of the bridge and see if there was another ramp. A half mile later, I finally saw a sign "Queens Pedestrian Detour." Nice. I was heading the right direction. A note: This side of Randall's Island was the part that I remembered after my first frightening trip over there. It is almost deserted and the only people are not exactly the type of people you want to be alone with. The scenery is all rusted metal, barbed wire, broken glass. Yet, it didn't scare me the same way as it did before. I even found that it had a strange beauty to it. I kept thinking of the Rave Run feature in Runners World and decided that this might be mine.

Finally, I came to the ramp up to the Triborough. It was on the east side of the bridge, almost at the edge of Wards Island. It's completely enclosed in cage fencing which makes it seem like you're running through a tunnel. But, when you finally get to the top of the bridge (after a very long climb), the cage goes away and you are suddenly left with a 400-foot-drop on one side and a highway on your right. It's an amazing feeling. There are a couple detours which are super sketchy – they're these little welded together scraps of metal that shake and groan with every step you take. Definitely not a run for the faint of heart... The views here were, however, the best of the whole run. And, the walkway was elevated about 10 feet above the cars, so it was relatively quiet. This was my favorite of the bridges.

The bridge dropped me off in Queens which was unremarkable. I meandered through residential streets for a bit, trying to get back to the water. Once I finally did, I found it incredibly weird to be looking at the backside of Roosevelt Island. It seemed like a bizarro world or something.

This was just under an hour into the run and my knee really started giving me grief. I tried stretching it out with some high knees, then some butt-kickers, but nothing really helped. I decided to just fight through it.

Out of nowhere, I look up and there's the enormous Queensborough Bridge floating up above me. I hung a left and started following it east, looking for the entrance. It was way back there and on the north side of the bridge. I crossed under, then looped around and began another ascent. The view here was very nice and it was good to finally run over the bridge I've heard so much about from NYC marathoners and, of course, TK. The climb was great, but when I hit the top and started the downhill, my knee went from painful to complete hell. I would have just subwayed it back home if it had kept up like that, but it improved when I got back on the flat ground.

I meandered back to the East River and was greeted with a cool breeze. Ahh, it's nice to be back home. I looked out to the right at the same scenery I've seen hundreds of times while running this same path and realized that it now looked completely different than it ever had before. Rather than an being unknown far away place, that over there was where I just was. I got a great feeling seeing the Triborough off in the distance and knowing that I had just made it mine.

I finished up in 1 hour, 38 minutes, and 6 seconds, a 7:55/mile pace. Definitely not speedy, but I wasn't trying to be. And, after getting home and looking at the data, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my pace was remarkably consistent throughout the entire run. Except for a couple outliers, all were within 10 seconds of the average pace. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this whole running thing after all...