Sushi Deluxe and a Sapporo

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Three Borough Tour

Sunday (2/24) I went on another running journey with my friend Larry through New York City. We started out with a partial lap of Prospect Park, exiting through Grand Army Plaza and then down to Lafayette Street where we picked up the NYC Marathon course. The roads were a bit icy, but not too bad, although on occasion my foot would hit the occasional icy puddle and get cold and soggy. The course was nothing new at this point and we slowly and steadily made our way through Fort Greene into Williamsburg. Once in Williamsburg, we stopped for a moment at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration . It’s supposedly the most beautiful cathedral in Brooklyn. Either way it made for a nice picture so I stopped and snapped a photo. We then ran into McCarren Park for a quick stop at the comfort station. Normally at this point we would then head for the Williamsburg Bridge, but today we decided to go for the 59th Street (Queensborough) Bridge. To get to the 59th Street Bridge, we picked up the NYC Marathon course again and headed towards the Kosciuszko Bridge for our trip into Queens. The Kosciuszko Bridge is the half way point of the NYC Marathon and in my opinion one of the more difficult parts of the course. The view from the bridge is spectacular though. We were fortunate to come across someone walking over the bridge at the same time we were crossing it and asked this person to take a picture of us. Here we are on the bridge with the picture looking southwest towards midtown Manhattan and the Empire State Building. The Newton Creek runs below the bridge and separate Brooklyn from Queens at this point. I also took a picture of the skyline alone so you can get a better idea of the view from here. Once over the Kosciuszko, we ran through Long Island City towards the 59th Street Bridge. Larry and I talked about a future run in which we would skip the 59th Street and head to the Tri-Borough Bridge instead. In the meantime though, we kept running and made a pit stop at corner bodega about a half mile from the bridge. The pit stop was just in time as I was getting a bit hungry and I unfortunately forgot to bring some Hammer Gel with me, so I bought a Snickers bar and a Gatorade to refuel. It wasn’t what I preferred to eat, but it will do in a pinch. Honestly though when it comes to ultra running, you need to train your stomach to take on a variety of foods which includes something solid; not just gels. After eating and drinking we made our way onto the 59th Street Bridge. This was undoubtedly the least pleasant part of our run. Only the north side of the bridge was open for running, which meant that you didn’t get the nice views of Manhattan. Plus this side was in the shade and also very icy, in addition to being very cold, windy, noisy and had freezing water dripping down on us from the upper roadway. I would have liked to have gotten several pictures from the bridge, but it was pretty miserable on it and I really didn’t feel like stopping. The only picture I took was looking north from the bridge, on the east side of Roosevelt Island. The most distinguishing landmark of this picture is the smoke stacks which were featured in the movie Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. Once we made our slow miserable way off of the bridge, we headed south on First Avenue until we could make our way onto the East River Greenway. The East River was flat as glass and the path offered great views of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Manhattan skyline and was just in general a very pleasant place to run. As we made our way south, we ran into another ultra runner that Larry knew, so we stopped to chat for a while. This gave me an opportunity to take one last picture during the run. What you see here is a view of the east river looking north towards the 59th Street Bridge from somewhere around the 30’s (streets between 30-39th Street). Once we got going again, we decided it would be non-stop until we made it back home. We ran along the East River path under the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges and made our way onto the north side of the Manhattan Bridge. We once again did a nice tempo run over the bridge into Brooklyn and made our way back up Flatbush Avenue, through Grand Army Plaza and back into Prospect Park to complete the loop we started earlier that morning. As we approached our normal exit/entrance to the park Larry asked me if I wanted to go for the extra distance and run down the hill to the Ocean Parkway exit to tack on a couple of extra miles. We were approaching 22 miles at this point and I could feel my pace slowing down a bit so I decided that I had enough for the day and said that we should just call it a day. I also figured that I should perhaps taper a little bit as only a week from now I will be doing the Camseutt 50K out on Long Island. Larry gave me no argument, so we exited the park at the Bartel Pritchard entrance and made our way to the local bagel store for some post workout bagels. I was a bit tired after this run. I could feel it in my muscles. I attribute that mostly to having taken the past few days off running due to skiing and avoiding running due to shin pain. I hate how it feels like I lose fitness so fast. But maybe I am being just too hard on myself and this new course was a little tougher than I’ve been used to. Anyway, I knew I needed to refuel, so I make a delicious shake consisting of Soy Milk, Chocolate Syrup, 2 Scoops of Recoverite and some Malted Mix. I drank that along with eating Peanut Butter and Jelly on a Multi-Grain bagel. It was a lovely and quick and easy meal. I was satisfied with how my shin felt during the run, although I will admit it was a bit painful the next day. I am really going to need to learn how to ignore this pain so that I don’t even recognize it anymore.

At the Dentist Office

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Enjoying @gregbarnett's Zinfandel. Delicious!

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Sledding in Prospect Park

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Snowmen

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Cry Uncle

So I finally cried uncle last night and gave up a run. I only made it around the corner of my block when I decided that my 9 mile run just wasn’t going to happen. It felt like I was running on stumps instead of legs. All I could manage was an awkward trot and a very painful one at that. If it was just pain in my legs that I felt I think I would have been ok, however, my form was very poor and resembled nothing like running. I finally had to decide that discretion was the better part of valor and turn back home. Once inside I sulked on my couch for a good half hour. I sat there fully dressed in my winter gear thinking that perhaps if I gave the ibuprofen I took just before I went out a longer chance to take effect, that perhaps I may be able to salvage the run after all. I knew in my heart though that I needed to be off my legs. I think part of the problem was taking several days off from running when I went on my ski trip Sunday – Wednesday. I think my legs start to heal, but that when I just pick up running again my legs rebel and say what the fuck are you doing? We are trying to heal over here. Damn, I really think that amputation is a viable alternative at times. I haven’t read anything else that seems to offer a quick fix for shin splints. So as I was saying, I sulked on the couch for about an hour, while my wife insisted I go get on my bike in the basement. I’ve been feeling very depressed lately, which is no doubt due in part to my lack of exercise for the past 4 days. I start to feel really bad if I don’t get a regular fix in. Missing workouts can also put me in a downward spiral as the longer I go without exercise, the worse I feel and the less I feel like exercising. But anyway, I finally managed to get myself into the basement and onto my bike. I was pleasantly surprised to see my legs reacting well to the work and I easily and quickly ticked off two hours while spinning. I entertained myself while riding by chatting with friends on Twitter and on IM and watching movies on TV. I felt good and actually enjoyed the sweaty workout. I don’t know when I will try to run again. It was both legs that were painful and I think they are crying for rest. Either that or amputation. I’ll try for another run this weekend.

Brooklyn Water Tour

I switched my long run from Sunday to today since I am leaving for a ski trip tomorrow morning and won’t have a chance to run long. I think this is just as well as today was beautiful and the forecast for tomorrow is not as good. I decided to run along the Brooklyn water front, which is a run that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I headed out from my house near Prospect Park and headed into Sunset Park. I ran along 2nd Avenue, which is still paved with Cobblestones and has trolly/train tracks running through it. I am fascinated by this area. I can imagine it 50 years ago and around the time of WWII. I could just feel all the activity happening in all these waterfront warehouses and all the train activity. This area used to be so vibrant with commerce and you can feel the ghosts of the past with every step through the neighborhood. Here is a picture of me looking into an alleyway of a warehouse that used to accept freight cars for the loading and unloading of cargo. There are many buildings like this along the way. From Sunset Park, I continued up 2nd Avenue and ran into Bay Ridge. I went past Owls Head Park and ran onto the 69th Street Pier. The pier offers fantastic views of downtown Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. For me this view will be forever scarred. I can’t get used to seeing it without the Twin Towers. But life moves on and so did I. From there it was along the bike/running path that runs right along the water and underneath the Verrazano Bridge. I stopped at the bridge to admire the view and take a couple of pictures. The biggest shame about the VZ is that they built it without a pedestrian lane. Running over that bridge is great and something I only get to do when I am in the NYC Marathon. Once past the VZ Bridge you can see the landmarks of Coney Island coming into view. My route was also taking me past the neighborhood where I grew up. I was able to see the building where I grew up across of the Belt Parkway. Many years ago the area I was running past was an illegal dump. I’ll never forget exploring in this dump one day when I came across a pair of sawed off horse legs surrounded by a bunch of losing Off Track Betting tickets. The apparent meaning was very clear to me, but that was almost 30 years ago and there was no sign of that now. I just kept going and made my way into Coney Island. My first stop into Coney Island was on the bridge that crosses the Coney Island Creek. Years ago this bridge was a drawbridge and unfortunately, I never got to see it being used in my lifetime. When I was a kid you could still see fish swimming in the water, but I don’t think anything has lives in it for 3 decades. From there is was into the heart of Coney Island and onto the boardwalk. I ran out over the pier and took a picture of the soon to be obliterated Astroland Amusement Park. I also got a picture of me underneath Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower, the famous Coney Island Parachute Jump. I never got to ride on this, but I understand my parents did before I was born. I then ran the rest of the boardwalk into Brighton Beach and then took to the roads to run into Manhattan Beach. It had been years since I was in Manhattan Beach, having not gone there since and old friend moved out in his own. I ran to the end of Manhattan Beach, which is essentially the end of Coney Island and then headed back towards Sheepshead Bay. I ran over the small footbridge that crosses from Manhattan Beach into Sheepshead Bay, took a left and made my way back towards Ocean Parkway. On my way to Ocean Parkway, I encountered what I believe to be the largest NYC rat I’ve ever seen. Fortunately it was quite dead, having been struck down by a car. At least I think this thing is a rat. You can judge for yourself with this picture. Once I got back to ocean parkway I had run about 15 miles. I knew the trip back to Prospect Park would be another 5, plus one additional loop of the park would get me to my goal of 24 miles. It was getting late in the day, so I just put my camera away and ran a nice tempo pace all the way back to the park. I covered an uneventful lap in Prospect Park and exited it just as my wife was calling to inquire as to my whereabouts. Fortunately, I was able to tell her I was just a block away and would be home within a minute or two. It was a very successful run and capped off a 7 day period that saw me running over 61 miles. Here are some other pics from the day: Running from Manhattan Beach into Sheepshead Bay Shoot the Freak on the Coney Island Boardwalk

Extreme Snow Tubing

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Extreme Snow Tubing

Decided to go Snow Tubing today instead of Skiing. Great fun! Mobile post sent by BrooklynBeast using Utterz.  Replies.

Beer hot tub snow night and 25 degrees. Nice!

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Juicy Prime Rib

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Skiing

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24 Miles by Verrazano Bridge

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7 Brutal Miles

I had high hopes for my run on Thursday night and I went out looking forward to it, albeit a little tired. I am happy that my mileage is starting to increase as it starting to make me feel more comfortable that I am on the way towards putting in the distances required to run 100 miles in a single day. As usual, the one major wild card in all of this is the health of my shin or lack thereof. It is becoming increasingly painful as the days go on. It just gets fractionally worse as each day goes by, so unless there is a major increase in pain, the discomfit has to this point been manageable. Denying that I am in pain or that its affecting my running has been working. I just need to concentrate on the denial a little more each day. Kind of how I am tacking on just a little more mileage each week. At first I thought my run would be ok. I wasn’t running with any sort of pace, but I was at least making decent progress. It is annoying to have runners passing me who in the past would have never had a chance to pass me while I was on a run, but I console myself with the fact that I am going for the distance and not the speed. I couldn’t keep up with the small group that past me, but my heart rate was ok and I was averaging around a 10 minute mile. I was ok with that. I got around the first loop in around 36 minutes, which was acceptable considering the easy pace I went out at. My second loop was more of an adventure. I started to fatigue when I got down to the bottom of the hill and I caught myself wanting to stop and walk several times. I refused to let myself do that. I just kept saying how just one more step wouldn’t kill me and I kept on going like that for a while. I just put my head down and focused on the white lines painted in the road. This got me around ¾ around the park before I found myself forced to walk. My legs simply had no more juice in them. I would walk for a while and then try to run again, but it was painful. When I got back to the top of the park, I had 7 miles and decided to bail out on the last 2. Anymore than 7 would have just been very ugly, so I dejectedly walked out of the park and tried to do a slow trot home. The ending to the workout was upsetting, but not too surprising. There will be better days.

9 Glorious Snow Filled Miles

Tuesday night was the first snowfall of the year and I went running in it. It was my regularly scheduled Tuesday night run with my friend Larry and I don’t think either of us would have missed it for anything. It’s so much fun to be out at night during a snowstorm. The world looks different, is all quiet and has a dreamlike quality to it. I will admit that running in several inches of snow is a lot tougher that running on dry pavement, but the extra work only added to the enjoyment of the run. I wasn’t sure whether I should do this run as my shin is really starting to bother me. The snow outside, erased any doubts though as I really wanted to run in it. The snow lightened the impacts of my footfalls and was actually a help in that respect – it made the running easier on my shin. We practically had the park to ourselves and put in a strong 9 mile effort. The ground was slippery at times and the snow slowed our pace considerably. I remarked that when we completely two loops of the park, we were seriously behind schedule. It didn’t matter though, as it was just so nice to be out in the snow. I would say that running in the snow was the best part of my day. However, after I came in from my run, I spent some time with my son wrestling in the living room. He has been on a huge wrestling kick lately and begs me to wrestle him every time I am around. Later, when I was tucking him into bed, I asked him about school, what he did and what was his favorite part of the day. This was the fateful question. He replied that his favorite part of the day was wrestling me just a few minutes earlier. This sent a stab through my heart as I suddenly felt bad about spending the time out of the house running. But it also melted my heart to hear that the best part of my son’s day was wrestling with his dad. My son just knows the right things to say to tear me apart emotionally. I just love that boy so much. I just wish I didn’t feel as though I am sacrificing time away from my children when I go out to do my training. It feels as though I could never do too much for them and what I do is never enough. I suppose that is part of being a parent. God I love my children.

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Three Bridges Run – Brooklyn Side

On Sunday I ran with my friend Larry over the 3 bridges that span the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I say Brooklyn side, since this time we did the bridges in reverse and headed through Brooklyn to the Williamsburg Bridge for our first crossing into Manhattan. We got started around 9:30am and begin the day with a loop through Prospect Park, where we exited onto Grand Army Plaza. From there it was down Flatbush Avenue and onto the NYC Marathon Route through Fort Greene and into Williamsburg. It was supposed to be a cold and windy day, but in actuality it wasn’t so bad. At times it felt positively warm outside, especially when we were running in the sun. When we got into Fort Greene we stopped at McCarren Park for a bathroom/water break. When we came out, the sun had suddenly disappeared and it felt like it dropped 20 degrees. We were only at about 7.5 miles at this point and the rapidly changing weather is what we had to contend with for the remainder of the day. It really wasn’t a problem as long as we kept moving. Otherwise, I tended to get a bit cold when standing still. Once we left McCarren Park, we headed down Bedford Avenue for the Williamsburg Bridge. It was here that I decided to take my first picture of the day. I had brought my camera and asked Larry to take a picture. I am about ½ mile onto the bridge, just before the start of the bridges superstructure/suspension. If you can read the sign you can see that this bridge was completed in 1906. It is hard to believe they built these great structures so long ago. I wanted to take some more pictures once on the center of the Bridge, but felt it was poor form to ask Larry to keep stopping so I could indulge in my picture snapping habit. It was a bit windy running over the Williamsburg Bridge, but the views were fantastic. The run over it took us to the Lower East Side. From there we headed back towards East River. We had a good view of the bridge from there, so we took another picture. Here I am trying to create an action shot. I hope it looks like I am running, though apparently I am heading right for a fence. After this picture, we headed down the east river towards the South Street Seaport and over to the Brooklyn Bridge. We stopped at a street vendor for some refreshments, who asked if we would like a hotdog. I have nothing against dirty water dogs, but not in the middle of a long run. We both got a Gatorade and then sat down on a bench by the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridges pedestrian path. I thought the Woolworth building looked particularly nice today so I asked Larry to take another picture. The building came out great, but I think I look like a dork. We then did our run over the Brooklyn Bridge. The views from here are fantastic, but running the BB is a pain in the ass. It’s just too crowded. Once over the bridge we make a left onto Tillary Street and headed back into Manhattan by way of the south side of the Manhattan Bridge. It made for some excellent hill training. As we ran over it into Chinatown and we wondered if we would see any of the costumes for the Chinese New Year Parade. There was a lot of traffic, but other than that we didn’t see any revelers. We didn’t run for long in Chinatown and just crossed Canal Street for a nice tempo run back into Brooklyn on the North side of the bridge. Once in Brooklyn, we headed back up Flatbush Avenue to Prospect Park. Larry and I were both wearing Polar 625x heart rate monitors which also gives you your distance ran. For some reason my monitor was reading about 1.5 miles greater in distance than Larry’s by this point. When we got back to our starting point in the park, I had just turned 20 miles, while Larry was at 18.2 miles. Larry wanted to turn 20 on his Polar 625x, so I accompanied him for a bonus 1.8 miles. For the record I think my watch was more accurate, so I am going to stick with my total distance on the day being just about 22 miles. Once home, I ate, showered, ate again and then shocked my shin with my TENS Unit. After that I vegged out on my couch and iced my shins for about 40 minutes. My shin felt ok, not great, but not excruciatingly painful. Denial so far is still working out. For some reason, I was feeling a little tired by this point. I was a little concerned with this since 22 miles will have to feel as though it was nothing more than a warm-up at some point. However, I am not feeling tired or sore this morning so perhaps I was just running a little low on energy. My shin was a bit painful today, but nothing too bad. I am still not limping when I walk. Developing a limp will be my litmus test to know I need to back off. In the meantime I am going to relish in my gradually increasing mileage. This week I am scheduled for two 9 milers, a 6 mile and a 24 miler. I am looking forward to them.

On the Spin Bike at the Gym

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Applying the Denial

Well, I am still running on my leg with the painful shin. I just apply some Denial and I am good to go. Denial is a great product, you can get it right off the shelf and all it really costs is some breakthrough pain in the morning. So far the costs have been manageable, although it does seem to get a little bit more expensive every day. But as long as it is just a little bit at a time I think I can manage it. I attribute these rising cost to inflation (aka inflammation), but just so long as the price rises slowly I think I will be able to keep up with it. I am really not sure what I will do if the cost suddenly spikes and I find myself no longer able to afford it. My whole identity as an athlete right now is wrapped up in doing this 100 mile race. I want it very bad and I am willing to put up with a lot. I just don’t see myself doing anything else right now. Well, check that, I can, but I don’t want to do them. Maybe I can spend some time on the Elliptical Trainer at the gym as an alternative to running once a week. At least the motion is similar to running. Last night when I came home from work, I was feeling very tired, slightly nauseous and the Denial was wearing off a bit so my shin was feeling a bit painful. I really wanted to just go to sleep and call it a day, but doing that is not how a 100 mile runner is made. So I lathered on some more Denial, took 3 ibuprofen (works great in combination with Denial) and went out for an 8 mile run. I have to say that once I got going, I started to feel much better. I was very pleasantly surprised. Sometimes when I am tired I get a mile from home, run out of juice and wind up walking. Not last night though. My legs carried me very well and I had a spiffy 8.1 mile run in 1:11:16; only 6 seconds slower than my run on Tuesday night. Not bad considering how I felt when I started and the fact that I once again overdressed. So to answer my Twitter friend Darkgracie’s question “you are crazy! your shin will just hurt worse... is living in denial working for you? *wink*”, - yes, denial is working for me so far. People live in denial all of the time and survive. Denial can take you a long way. I just need my denial to take me 100 miles.

At Tao Restaurant Eating Lunch

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Applause at New York City Center

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Two Days Off

Ah well, the unexpected has happened and it appears that I will be taking two days off from training this week. I hate when that happens, which is why I never plan for a day off or let myself slack very often. You never know when something beyond your control is going to come up and force you to miss a workout. When this happens, I begin to start feeling all out of shape. I need to keep up with a regular dose of exercise to feel normal. My first day off was Monday. I had intended to spin on my trainer after I got home from work, but I was feeling a little lazy so I said that I’d do it after dinner. Well, that was the end of that. I sat on my couch after eating and promptly started to fall asleep. I just decided to screw the workout and went up to bed at 8pm. I guess I needed the sleep, because I slept through the night without any sleep aids until 7am the next morning. In fact, I wanted to sleep longer, work was my unfortunate reality. Tuesday night though I got back into the swing of things. I had my regularly scheduled run with my friend Larry and we headed out to Prospect Park for a couple of loops (we ran 8.1 miles in 1:11:11). At first I was a little worried about doing this run. On Monday morning, my shin was hurting pretty badly and by Tuesday night it was only somewhat better. So far my method of ignoring the pain and hoping it will go away has been working, but if the pain starts to get any worse, I fear that I may have to revisit that strategy for dealing with the injury. So anyway, it was with a bit of trepidation that I went out and hoped that the pain wouldn’t get any worse. I was feeling ok during the first few miles and I began to relax. The pain was there, but nothing too bad. At just before midway into the run, I remembered about a website on Chi Running that my Twitter friend Gracie told me about. It espouses the idea of running with a more forefoot stride. I changed myself to a forefoot stride a couple of years ago and that had been very successful until relatively recently. In fact it worked until I came back from an injury to my left hipflexor back in September of last year. Thinking about Chi Running, I realized for the first time that perhaps my stride had changed a bit since I came back from that injury. That could explain why my left shin has been such a problem lately. So I re-concentrated on landing forefoot, especially with my left foot and noticed an improvement in the way my left shin felt. It wasn’t much but it was progress. I guess the real test came this morning when I first started to walk around. I was expecting the type of pain that I had on Monday morning, but it just wasn’t there. The shin was painful alright, but it felt different somehow. It was the type of pain I could definitely deal with, even if it is always present. I’ll just need to pay a little more attention to my stride, until really landing forefoot once again becomes natural. So this leads me up to today (Wednesday), in which I need to take another day off from training. I have a school event to go to for one of my children that will take me into late this evening, so I have no chance of an evening workout. I suppose I could have made sure I got to bed real early last night, so I could have done a workout this morning, but I just didn’t feel like making myself go to sleep. In the past, I would take an Ambien to force myself to go to sleep, but that doesn’t really work for me anymore. My body has learned how to fight it off and stay awake right through it. So basically I am annoyed at myself right now for getting myself into a situation where I miss two workouts in a week. Maybe that is a good thing though. Every time this happens to me, which isn’t too often, I get hard on myself and tell myself that it is time to focus and recommit. Every now and then I need to reset myself and get my act in gear. I have a big race coming up and I can’t be fooling around with it. What I put in today will show up tomorrow. It is all cumulative. If I don’t put it in now, I won’t have it to draw upon when I need it most.

NYRR Gridiron Classic

Superbowl Sunday, 2/3/08 What a glorious day to be alive. It was cool, but not cold, clear and sunny with just the hint of a breeze. The perfect day for another running of the NYRR Gridiron Classic; an easy 4 mile run through Central Park. I had planned to once again run to the start, but I woke up too late to do so. But I wasn’t to worry, as I was able to get a lift to the start from my friend Chris (he was also doing the race) who lives next to me and was good enough to give me a ride. I am glad that this is the way it worked out. Instead of running to the start while it was still dark, I got to run home from the race on a beautiful sunny day. Chris dropped me off near the NYRR club and then went to park the car. I went into the club to register for the race and then ran into another friend from my triathlon club on the way out. We ran down to the start together and headed to the Longest Football Throw Competition. This race and competition is held every year on Superbowl Sunday. I wasn’t going to participate in the throw, as I don’t have the best of arms, but after watching a bunch of pathetic throws from other guys, I decided to go for it as mine would be no more pathetic than the others. I made my sad attempt at trying to match the longest throw and then hung around to watch others throw the ball. After a while the competition was over and I headed for the start in hopes of finding and running with my friend Chris. This was impossible as there were just under 5000 other people at this race. I stood up on a road divider to see if I could find him among the masses, but it was to no avail. I was however able to get this cool picture of myself while waiting for the start. As you can see from the picture I lined up pretty far away from the starting line. Usually I line up closer to the 6 minute mile flag, but I knew I wasn’t going to run fast, especially since I still had to run another 10 miles after the race. I took it real easy while running. It’s nice to do a race without putting pressure on myself to do well. You would think that not trying to run your fastest in a race kind of defeats its purpose, however I was really doing the race just as a way to give myself an excuse to run in the city and to build up the 9 races I need to qualify for the 2009 NYC Marathon. Besides, its run to be running amongst 5000 other people. Since I wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere during the race, I even stopped in the middle of it to use a port-o-san. I still ran that mile in under 9 minutes. The race was only 4 miles and before I knew it, the race was over. I felt like I was barely warming up when I crossed the finish line. The highlight of the race was running behind a really cute girl with a spectacularly hot ass. She made the unfortunate wardrobe choice of wearing a Patriots jersey and a Red Sox cap, but truth be told I didn’t really mind such was the view. Anyway, after crossing the finish line, I made my way through the finishing crowd, grabbed a cup of water and then made my way out of the park by Columbus Circle. I never run past this area unless I am running late to or from and appointment. On this day I decided to stop and chill out for a while (literally), checked my email and snapped a picture. From there it was over to the West Side Highway for a run down to the Brooklyn Bridge by way of the West Side Greenway. The view of the Hudson River and New Jersey from the greenway was spectacular. It was so calm and clear and the river was flat as a pancake. On a day like this it seemed as though so many more people should be outside. I felt as though I had the path to myself. I stopped a few times to take pictures along the way. I love to memorialize my runs, especially when I am running in places I haven’t run before. I’ve ridden my bike up and down the Westside dozens of times, but I’ve never run it. It path is flat as can be and a nice and easy run. I took a couple of pictures along the way down to Chambers Street, where I made my left turn to head to the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was a lot more crowded and offers the most amazing views of the city. I’ve run/rode over this bridge so many times and I never get tired of the view. Words can’t describe it and pictures just can’t capture it. You need and IMAX camera to take it all in on film. By the time I got off the bridge I was starting to feel a little hungry. I thought of stopping into Juniors to get some cheesecake, but kept going. I wasn’t that far from home at this point and soon made it back to Prospect Park and then a short mile to home. Once home I ate, showered and relaxed. I wanted to be rested for the Superbowl party I was going to later on in the day. I brought to the party a batch Guinness (beer) Chocolate Cupcakes that my wife helped me bake. Yummy. Watching the Giants defeat the Patriots was the perfect way to end a fantastic day.