10-Mile Run

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Running!  The act of putting one foot in front of the other, and propelling oneself forward, at speed.  Once upon a time, I couldn’t stand doing it.  It was boring, it was painful, it made me nauseous, and it was something my dad was obsessed with, and God knows, I didn’t want anything to do with his interests back then.  But one thing I’ve always had an excess of was energy.  Insane amounts of energy, actually.  I had always been a walker, walking distances other, car-bound mortals found preposterous, even in the pedestrian purgatory of suburban Pittsburgh during high school and college.  Running and I were clearly on a collision course with destiny, and it was just a matter of when it would finally become an obsession for me, not if.  The extreme effort required of me to recover from a particularly nasty accident I suffered in my early 20s was the foundation for this obsession, and then moving back home to the walker’s paradise of New York City became the catalyst.

Not long after finally completely moving back to New York in 2010, I began running regularly, first managing regular 3-mile, 30-minute runs, then graduating to 4 and 5-mile runs.  But it wasn’t until I took on the only slightly psychotic challenge of running a full marathon, like my father many times before me, that I fell head-over-heels for it.  Training for the 2013 Pittsburgh Marathon sent me on 8, 10, and 12-mile runs, culminating in a complete marathon.  Once that was done, I was officially hooked, and now, I easily run a total of 25 to 35 miles every week.  I cannot go a week without running anymore.  It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 degrees and there’s a blinding snowstorm outside, I will go running if I feel that I need to.

People really don’t understand this.  Running, to people who don’t do it regularly, is the exclusive property of the insane.  Running for more than 20 minutes, much less for 120, without stopping, is utter madness to most.  There are times when I’m describing a particularly long run to someone, and I feel as if I’m describing a visit to the Planet Zarkon in the 8th Dimension to them.  I might as well be speaking Klingon, they really just don’t get it.  “How do you not get bored?”  “How do you keep going?”  “What does it feel like?”  “What do you do to pass the time?”

With all of this in mind, as I ran a particularly intense 10 miles from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn to Astoria, Queens last Saturday, I made  a point of paying attention to what I was thinking, feeling and seeing as I went, so that I would be able to share with you, gentle non-running readers, just what it’s like to run this seemingly magical distance.  Running on the street in New York is always interesting, to say the least, so there was a lot to make a note of.  But it won’t be as deep or informative as you might be expecting…

Here was my route…

I was in Brooklyn to look at an apartment for my upcoming move at the end of April, and decided to go in my running clothes so I could take off right afterwards.  I rode the 2 Train from Fulton Street in Manhattan, saw the apartment, then took off.

 

START: NEVINS STREET, BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN

Beautiful day, beautiful weather, wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt while running for the first time in ages, here we go!  Let’s go south first.  Maybe I can run through Park Slope, or all the way to Coney Island, or something.  I’ve always wanted to run that way.  Yeah, I’m gonna run that way!

.5 MILE: WARREN STREET, BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN

Yeah, screw it, I don’t want to go to Coney Island.  It’s all flat from here to the ocean, and that means dodging strollers in Park Slope.  Let’s go north, instead!  Maybe I’ll run over one of the bridges into Manhattan, eventually.

1 MILE: ATLANTIC AVENUE, BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN

Oh, hey, a group of slightly-scary looking old guys of some variety.  Hello, gentlemen, please don’t look at me.  I wonder if the fact that I’m all in black, including my socks, makes me more intimidating?  Wait, why am I going east?  I’m going away from Manhattan.  …Huh.  North.  I was going north.  What’s a good avenue to go north on?  Bedford goes all the way to Greenpoint, and right through the middle of Williamsburg…  And it’s Saturday, so there won’t be 800 Hasidim looking at me like I’m an alien as I run through South Williamsburg.  Yeah, okay, Bedford.

2 MILES: LAFAYETTE AVENUE, CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN

Clinton Hill is really pretty.  The brownstones are ridiculous.  My God, what a beautiful day!  This winter has been freaking horrible.  I really want to run in this kind of weather all of the time.  Clearly, I need to move to San Francisco.  GAH!  STROLLERS!  Okay, now I’m in the middle of the street, squeezed between parked cars and driving cars, because FREAKING STROLLERS.  Damn strollers.

3 MILES: BEDFORD AVENUE, BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN

Holy crap, this area has gentrified.  But still, it’s kind of depressing that trash pickup clearly becomes less of a concern the moment you cross east of Classon.  It’s like the city doesn’t even care.  Oh, hey, some scary looking guys.  Hello, scary looking guys!  Please ignore my sensitive nature, and focus entirely on my 6’2″ height.  …I’m getting sick of listing to “Vale Decem“.  Why do I keep listening to “Vale Decem”?  It’s basically a funeral dirge.  What does that say about me?

4 MILES: BEDFORD AVENUE, WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN

Okay, I clearly miscalculated on the “no Hasidim glowering at me” thing.  Wow, that was a stare.  It can’t be me and my hairy legs scandalizing that guy, it must be that I’m like some kind of omen, like a reminder of scandalously dressed attractive female runners.  “BEWARE!  SHIKSA FOLLOW IN MY GENTILE WAKE!!”  Under the bridge, and here comes hipster Williamsburg.  HOLY CRAP!  WHERE THE HECK DID ALL OF THESE PEOPLE COME FROM???  Whoa, whoa, whoa!  People, stop walking your damn bikes on the sidewalk!  Oh, God, all the boxes of records inexplicably being sold on the curb!  …Did I just see a 20-year-old guy with a full-blown prospector beard dressed like Captain Jack Harkness?

5 MILES: BEDFORD AVENUE, GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN

Okay, then, legs hurting a bit now.  Hipsters and their bikes…  Dodging all of that didn’t help my ankles.  And wow, I’m still hurting from that demented SoulCycle class on Thursday…  Wait.  Wasn’t I going to go back into Manhattan?  Queensboro!  Let’s run over the Queensboro Bridge, I haven’t done that in ages.  So, I need to find McGuinness, so I can go into Queens over the Pulaski Bridge.  …How long have I been running, anyway?  …I seriously need to get off of this Doctor Who kick.  I’ve listened to “The Long Song” way too many times now.  Again with the ominous singing…

6 MILES: MCGUINNESS BOULEVARD, GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN

Why am I smelling poop right now?  Seriously, that is one hell of a poop smell.  Like I’m smelling a gigantic pile of alien poop.  …That’s underneath the Pulaski Bridge for some reason.  …Oh, great, climbing now.  Okay, this hurts.  A lot.  No, no!  Sing along, damn it!  “Waaaaaaaaake uuuuuuuuuuup…   Waaaaaaaaake uuuuuuuuuuup…  And let the clooooooooak of liiiiiiiiiiife…”  Oh, I love this view of Midtown.

7 MILES: 11TH STREET, LONG ISLAND CITY (HUNTERS POINT), QUEENS

Probably should have gone up Jackson Avenue.  This is one seriously abandoned street.  Well, there’s the bridge.  Hmm…  I feel like the climb up the ramp will kill me…  You know what I’ve never done?  Run across the Triborough Bridge!  That can’t be that far away, right?  And it gives me an excuse to run into Astoria.  I’m not hurting that much, I can make it.  Let’s go!  But first: no more Doctor Who music.

8 MILES: QUEENS PLAZA NORTH, LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS

“Arm yourself, because no one else here will save yooooooooou!  And the odds will betraaaaaaaaaay yooooooooou!  And I will replace yooooooooou!”

9 MILES: 31ST STREET, ASTORIA, QUEENS

Good GOD, that N Train is loud up there.  I wonder how much further I could go?  Could I run all the way into Harlem, across both bridge spans?  That would be awesome.  I’m definitely going to give that a try.  Oh, hey, is that girl high fiving me?  She totally is!  BAM, high five!  Whoo!  I am a runner, damn it!

10 MILES: HOYT AVENUE NORTH, ASTORIA, QUEENS

Cute, kid.  Try to spot check me with a basketball.  I’m older than you and I have more insurance.  Where the heck is the entrance to the bridge?  Oh, there it is.  Wait.  Wait, is that-

FINISH: ROBERT F. KENNEDY BRIDGE (TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE-EAST RIVER SUSPENSION BRIDGE SEGMENT), WARDS ISLAND, MANHATTAN

Damn it, damn it, damn it, that staircase did me in.  Why is there a staircase instead of a ramp?!  I can’t run up that without destroying myself!  Oh, to hell with it.  I’ll just walk into Harlem.  90 minutes of running isn’t bad, Christian.  …There are a lot of homeless people’s abandoned blankets on here.  I sense this isn’t a frequently used bridge walkway.

*Walks onto Wards Island, realizes toes are bleeding, decides to just get on the M35 bus back into Manhattan, then takes a 5 Train from 125th Street back down to Bowling Green.  Caffeine and a night of dancing followed.*

 

March 26, 2014
New York, NY