Hurricane Irene brought a lot of panic and worry to New York City. Public transportation was done at noon on Saturday, August 27 (my parents 49th wedding anniversary). The city was shutting it's doors to Irene, cancelling all scheduled races on both Saturday and Sunday. What? Cancel races? That's unheard of!!! I had a 5K but no more which was almost a relief since Saturday is my slow long run of 18 was scheduled. I had been stressing on how to get teh 18 in. 5K then keep running? Bag the 5K and just run? No running on Sunday, obviously since the biggest storm since 1938 was about it hit. Blahblahblah. So I was going to head out the door by 7:30 a.m. for 18 miles, hopefully beating the approach of Irene on Saturday.
I was so up in the air on which direction to head but decided to do the usual route of going east to the river, south to Battery Park, up the Hudson to Riverside Park at 114th or so. As I approached Battery Park, the only people mulling around were the tourists heading towards the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Closed, hello, there was a hurrican coming and a city in panic. Sandbags piled up, windows taped, and all the garbage cans removed. What? Parks dude standing at one entrance to the westriver bike path explaining that the area where you can see the river was closed. Wrong, I found an unmanned block and headed with the other crazies and ran all the way up to the Riverside Park along the river. The river was quiet, boats were moving silently up towards to GWBridge. I was running out of energy so had a gel, another flavor: STRAWBERRY BANANA by PowerBar. TASTY!!!!
Then I ran over to Central Park, too crowded with others who needed the mileage before Irene...then out of the Park at 96th Street to get closer to the eastside and back home on 27th Street & 3rd. All the garbage cans were turned upside down, interesting. People just piled garbage on top of them because what else were you suppose to do? Lazy asses. So on and on I ran. Loads of people out, the darker the skies got, and wow, it was so humid. I saw lines of people in grocery stores, drug stores, delis, even Subway had a line. I broke out another gel, out of the PowerBar gels, Hammer, could be risky. Had a Double Latte, not bad..consistency much better than the raspberry. We had a winner here!!!! Found a trashcan that was right side up at 89th so I could drop the empty gel thing in there!!!
I go to about 76th and 3rd when the skies opened up and there was a major downpour of the wet stuff. I was soaked but I kept going, jumping over puddles and the flooding that was happening just with this rainfall. So off I went, getting closer and closer to home and 18 miles. At 30th and 3rd Avenue, I hit the 18 mile mark, stopped the garmin and walked home. Wanting a bagel or something but the lines were just so annoying to even attempt. I felt good, the anxiety was for nothing, I guess.
Cold bath, shower, a sandwich and compression socks did the trick. Was tired but Sunday, I felt great. Irene missed the city but I didn't care, I got my LSD in and Sunday was able to run another 3 miles in rain and blustering aftermath wind. Didn't miss any runs, got them all in and felt amazing!!
Getting motivated!
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