Nice Day

Today I got out for about 3.5 miles. It was a new course, so I had to wait until the sun came up, to make sure I was on the right roads. Now I should be able to run it in the morning before work.

The temperature is into the 30's today, which should melt some of the ice and snow. I also saw salt trucks out in my neighborhood this morning. Maybe the streets will be wider this week.

Flying up to Rochester this Friday.

Cold.

I got out for about a mile and a half this morning. It was cold, temp below 10 degrees, and a pretty good breeze was blowing. My face (the only exposed skin on my body) was numb when I got back, and my hands (beneath my cotton canvas gloves) were quite painful. Later this week, things are supposed to warm up quite a bit, which should make things really sloppy. Water all over, which will be better than the snow all over.

I decided last night to get out for a run this morning, since I saw that almost all of the sidewalks in my area had been cleared.

Got to get out more often. I checked out a nice 3 mile loop I'm going to try.

This Guy is nuts.

Actually, that looks like something I would have done in college, so I guess I'm not one to talk. Got the picture from Yahoo.

Too Dangerous

I decided that it was too dangerous this morning to get out. For all intents and purposes, the roads in my neighborhood are, with the exception of the main arterials, one-lane roads. Many of the cars which were parked on the street on Friday night are still in the same spaces, and so the plows can't get the whole street. In addition, the only place anyone shovels between the sidewalk and the street is in their driveway; there is a 3 to 6 foot tall snowbank between the street and the sidewalk. When a car comes along on one of these side streets, there's nowhere for me to go. It was tough enough walking to the train this morning, running would have been quite a hazardous thing to do. Over the next two days, we're supposed to get somewhat warmer weather. Hopefully the salt will have some effect on the snow, and the streets will get back to their pre-storm width.

Of course, if I had a membership at a health club, I could run indoors on a treadmill (ugh!), but that's really not in the budget just yet.

My dog

After reading Sean Lloyd's post about his dog, I was thinking back to when my dog was young, and she used to love to run with me. Poor old thing is ancient now, we've had her for almost 15 years, and she just can't keep up.

She still loves to run, it's just that down to the corner and back is about as far as she can go before she wants to take a nap.

The Blizzard

Some Pictures from the Blizzard of '05:



Crossing Times Square--having dragged a suitcase like this, I don't envy him.



Ice Sheets in Upper New York Bay



Pedestrian near Central Park

I think I'll get a hold of a camera and bring it with me on a run or two. Unfortunately, I'm one of those primitive film-users, so I'll have to get the pix developed before I can post them. Maybe a nice shot of Raritan Bay or a picture of all the snow in the road.

Snowy

Boy, I guess it pays to get your weather information from a more "live" source than the newspaper. The snowfall on Saturday/Sunday dropped about 17" of snow on Staten Island and 13" on Central Park. We were lucky, though, since in the Boston area, the snow totals were as high as 38".

I didn't get out to run at all over the weekend because of the low visibility. My not being able to see more than a few hundred yards ahead didn't bother me all that much, but drivers' ability to see me was kind of important to me.

The City of New York apparently doesn't have any sidewalk plows,



instead relying on the local residents to shovel the sidewalks in front of their residences. It apparently works, at least to a certain extent, since only a few of the houses I passed on my way to work this morning didn't have clean sidewalks. On the other hand, yesterday I was forced to walk (and would have had to run) in the middle of the street, since the sidewalks were at least knee deep in snow, and in the places where they were close to the edge of the street, waist deep. Waist deep snow is a little tough to run in.

Where this system really falls down is in the places where there is no property owner to shovel the sidewalk. Crossing the expressway bridge on my way to the train this morning, I had to once again walk down the street, since noone volunteered to shovel off the sidewalks crossing the bridge. In addition, the parking lot on the other side of the bridge had noone to shovel the sidewalk. To make matters worse, some plowing had been done, in the parking lot and the lot across the street. The snow from the plowing had been piled up, in snowbanks about 4 or 4-1/2 feet high, on the sidewalk in two places between the parking lot and the train station. Those snowbanks will be there long after the rest of the snow has melted, unless someone takes the initiative and gets rid of the snow or spreads it out.

No running today, since I had to get out of the house early in case the trains were delayed by the snow. Officially, there were no delays on the SIRR either yesterday or today, but I know better. I got to the station at about 10 am yesterday morning. I was on my way in to work because I wanted to get some things done before today. The trains to the Ferry were supposed to come along every half-hour, at 10:17, 10:47, 11:17, 11:47, etc. I waited until about 11:40, and never saw a St. George-bound train. I saw a diesel go by, bound for Tottenville, with a snowplow, and that was followed at 10:17 by a passenger train. At 10:47, I saw another Tottenville train go by, and that was the last train I saw. At 11:40, I decided to go home and hang out.

I found out today that a number of subway lines were shut down by the blizzard. Of course, not all subway lines are underground (despite the meaning of the word subway). As it turns out, the E Line is the only one which is underground for its entire length. The A and C were either shut down or had reduced service today.

Tonight, I'll see how the roads and sidewalks look and decide what to do regarding running tomorrow.

Cold

Blogger seems to have been out of commission for a good part of the morning--I kept getting DNS errors for various pages.

Another cold day today, temp around 8 in Manhattan, probably 2 or 3 degrees colder where I am on SI. The cold got to me again, but this time I eked out about a mile and a quarter, turning around somewhere between half a mile and 3/4 of a mile.

High today is supposed to be around the high teens, and tonight's low shouldn't be much lower than that. The temp tomorrow is supposed to go up into the low 20s, which should be somewhat more tolerable for me.

We're supposed to get about 3 inches of snow tomorrow afternoon--it should be interesting to see what the city does with all that snow. Dump it in the rivers, mostly (or so I would imagine).

I'll be running in the morning tomorrow, since I have some work to do tomorrow. I won't be getting any OT for the work tomorrow, but I really need to accomplish this.

Just not enough hours in a day.

One of my favorite weather pictures:



Lake effect snow over the upper Great Lakes.

Cold.

The last five years spent in Atlanta must have sensitized me to the cold--this morning it was 8 degrees outside, and it was just too cold for me to get in any mileage. BAck when I lived in the Great White North, 8 degrees wouldn't have been much of a problem. I would have just worn warmer clothing. Now, I couldn't even make 1 mile in this weather.

I remember putting small screws into the bottoms of my running shoes the get traction on the ice. Two in each heel, four in each forefoot. Since I replaced my shoes in the spring, the damage to the soles didn't really matter. Those shoes wold become the shoes I wore to do things like mow the lawn or paint the house or other shoe-staining work.

Of course, it may be just that I'm getting older, and now I feel the cold more intensely. The cold weather and reading small print are two things which frequently remind me of my aging. Of course, my kids getting older serves as a reminder, but that seems so gradual--it's not constantly reminding me.

I recently went out and had a few drinks with my roommate from college, and we discussed this. He's worn glasses all his life, so for him it's just the most recent change in prescription. Since I've never worn any kind of corrective lenses, suddenly needing some help reading labels (when I used to be able to read a handwritten page from across a five-lane road) is a jarring reminder of my age.

Race Update

My time and place from Saturday are just a little bit different from what I posted. Apparently we miscounted the number of places on one of the boards.

I was 77th overall and 13th in my age group. My official time was 21:49.

I stand by my pacing, though.

And, if you compare Saturday's Photos with those from the Frog Hop from '04, you can see the difference in the weather.

Race Day!

Ran in a race today--The Don Curran Memorial 5k, in Rochester, NY. Temperatures in the low teens,almost no wind, despite being close to the Lake Ontario Shore.

I finished 44th overall--no idea where in my age group. Great splits, though:

1 mile: 6:58
2 mile: 14:01 (7:03 second mile)
3 mile: 21:00 (6:59 third mile)

Finish time: 21:47.

Very different weather than my last race.
(In the picture , I'm the one all in yellow.)

Now I have to set myself another goal race to make sure I don't slack off in my training.

One of those days

Rough day so far. Worked until 10pm last night, and so didn't get home until after 11. When I got up this morning, I felt a little of the Lower GI, so I've put off my running until tonight (assuming I get home at a decent hour). The neighborhood where I live has real drainage problems--I guess that's a problem with living on a low-lying part of an island, and picking my way around the ankle-deep puddles in the street made me take longer than usual to get to the train. The fog was very heavy this morning, and it delayed the Ferry both getting in to St. George and crossing the bay--we couldn't even see the Whitehall docks until we were just a few yards away from them. I never could see Governor's Island this morning, although I could hear the foghorn there. Obviously though, I'd rather be late than have the Ferry collide with another vessel.
The subway was packed tight when I got to Times Square to change trains. Usually, about six people get off the train at TS, but today nobody left, and we all had to just stuff ourselves into the train. As you might expect, the train was delayed, and so I got into the office about three minutes before I had to go to another floor for a major project.

Obviously, today is going to be one of those days where I spend the day running as fast as I can to stay in the same place

Day off

I decided that after yesterday's lower GI incident that I should take this morning off. Things were "happening" last night when I got home from work. Fortunately, my generic A-D medicine seems to be working, but I didn't wnat to take any chances.

Tomorrow, assuming I feel better, I'll get out first thing. No running on Friday, due to the travel Friday night.


Race Saturday morning (5k).

Cut Short

I had to cut my run short today, because of some -- um ... intestinal distress. It turned out to be not too bad, nothing really happened, but I was at one of those "points of no return," the kind of place where, when you get to it, you can cut the run short, or by continuing, commit yourself to a longer run. the spot probably wasn't really one of those spots, but it is for me, since I'm still not all that familiar with the neighborhood.

As if I wasn't tense enough at that point, shortly after I made the turn, I was jogging down a quiet, predawn residential street, and I suddenly heard a large dog bark at me, and I could hear it kind of "bounce off" a metal storm door.

Update: The All of the following paragraph refers to the time I was actually attacked by a dog. In case somebody reads this, I wouldn't want them thinking that I filed a complaint over just barking.

I've been attacked by a doberman before, so large unfamiliar dogs do kind of unnerve me. I was on the sidewalk, across the street from the house where the doberman lived. I filed a complaint against the dog's owners and I was the third person that week to do so. The people had lived in the house less than two weeks, and their dog had already alienated most of their neighbors.

People who don't know how to care for dogs shouldn't own one.

The following paragraph refers to today's incident.

This dog didn't come out of the house or anything, but just hearing the bark and growl was enough to push me up into a higher gear, and I ran the next quarter-mile or so at a somewhat quicker pace. Once I was out of sight of the house where I thought the dog was located, I slowed back down to a jog. This was all in the last 3/4 of a mile of my run.




Still want to do the 5k this Saturday.

Accidentally took a long run

I set out to take a run of about 3.5 miles this morning. I got a map of the area from Expedia and plotted out the route I would take. When I got partway out, I discovered that the road I intended to take did not run all the way through. In fact, it stopped about a quarter-mile from the turn onto the street. Rather than retracing my steps, I went farther on, knowing about a major road that I hadn't crossed yet, and that I could follow to a cross street that would lead me back to familiar territory. I ended up going about 4.5 miles. Still felt pretty good, although very tired. It did give me a chance to help out a very nice couple who were lost. I was able to give them directions to the street they were looking for, so maybe it happened for a reason. Or maybe it was just a random occurrence which gave me the opportunity to do something nice for someone else.

I bought gloves the other day, and today was my first chance to use them. They're simple, canvas work gloves, but the weave is tight enough to keep the wind from getting through too much. My hands stayed pretty warm the whole time I was running. Maybe I'll get a few pairs of these gloves; if, in a race, my hands get too warm, I can just take the gloves off and drop them. When you pay a dollar for a pair of gloves, it really doesn't bother you too much to lose them.

Begging

I've noticed over the last few years that a lot of people have been begging on the web; essentially asking other people to pay for something they want (or need). I don't know whether I should try that. If I could afford a membership in a Midtown Manhattan Health Club, it would make my life a lot easier--I could roll out of bed, dress for running and pack a gym bag with my work clothes, go work out, shower and change, and go to work. Instead, I have to get up and go run cold, then shower, change, then catch the train/ferry to work.
I'd be way behind the curve on this, and I probably don't have any regular readers (I mean, why would anybody make a habit of reading this?), so I probably wouldn't raise enough to get a membership anyway, so I probably won't try it. Just musing, and thinking that it would be nice if I could get a little bit of cash in my pocket to finance my running.

No workout today--I had to go do my laundry this morning, then go to work. Definitely going to run tomorrow, though. I'm going to wait until after dawn, then go run at a nearby park. There's a path around the perimeter of the park, and I'll see if it's worth running on. Not exactly something I can do at 5am, though. I'm sure that the park won't be open at that hour.



.

Better Weather

Today's weather was nice, official temp was around 40 degrees (40-42 depending on which station). The temperature in SI was probably a little bit cooler than that, though. Got in about 2.5 miles, went at a pretty good clip the whole way, too. I almost rolled over and went back to sleep this morning, but snapped out of it and got out to run.

Tomorrow I'm doing laundry, so on Sunday I will have nice clean running clothes.

Maybe I'll get out on Saturday for a nice easy run, but it's not looking good. I'm coming in to work on Saturday as well as doing laundry, so the time factor will limit whether I can run. It still would be nice to find an inexpensive health club in Manhattan. Yeah, and it would be nice if I could just find a million dollars, too.


5k race on the 15th.

Nasty

I don't think I've ever been this glad that I wasn't running as I was this morning. The weather was nasty--temps in the low 30's with a cold rain blowing in from, I think, the northwest. I would rather have snow than that kind of rain and clod. In addition to the nastiness of the weather, there's the area around me to consider. there doesn't seem to be decent drainage in my area and this, combined with the sidewalk shortage and a complete absence of gutters on the streets, means that the streets (and the sidewalks where they exist) are often full of water. There's one intersection I run past frequently that is usually full of water, above shoe-top level. It's even got standing water on dry days--I can't imagine what the water level must have been like this morning. Anyway, tomorrow, I'll be back on the road, maybe Saturday, but definitely Sunday.



5k race on the 15th.

This Morning

I got out at 5:30 this morning for about 2.5 miles. Went easy, at a relaxed pace. Cold and rainy this morning with temps in the low 40s. I got soaking wet, inside and out.

Still have no gloves.

Race on the 15th (5k).

Yesterday

I got in 2.75 yesterday, nice and easy. I hadn't had enough to eat yesterday morning, so I tired out near the end and had to go much slower.

Today, I got up at 4am to make my flight, so no running this morning. Tomorrow I’ll be getting out early--the temperature isn’t supposed to be too bad tonight, which should make it easier for me to get out of bed in the morning. I'll probably just fall into bed and drop right off to sleep tonight, so not being able to get to sleep shouldn't be a problem.

Race on the 15th.

Multiple Update

I got out for 2.5 miles on Friday,nice easy pace and relaxed. Then on the first,I got out for about 1 mile. I wanted to start my new year with running. The old superstition is that whatever you do on the first day of the year is something you'll do all year long, and running is something I want to do all year.

I'm going to get out for 2-3 miles today, although I have to take down the christmas tree and see some old friends/neighbors this afternoon.