Monday 5 October 2015

Running in New York - part 2 - Central Park

No trip to New York is complete, if you don’t go for a run to Central Park.
That is, if you’re a runner. Normal people probably can have perfectly good and satisfying time here without it, but for for the freaks like me, a run in Central Park is a must.

I decided to do it on Monday morning. Since this city is quite big (did I mention it already?), I couldn’t run there and back without turning it into some ridiculously long run, that wouldn’t make any sense for me.
So I decided to go with the Underground to the Central Park, and run back home. It was supposed to be around 16-18km.

There are 2 types of underground trains in NY: local ones, that stop on every station, and express ones, that, well, don’t. But they are faster, and an express one was the first train to arrive at my station.

Underground runs along the Central Park. There are 6 or 7 stops in Central Park. Express train doesn’t stop on any of them. It doesn’t stop on the next one after the Central Park. Or at the next one. It stops only 3 stations later.
That’s fine, it was a beautiful Monday morning, the weather was great - about +15, and sunny. Extra 1.5km through Harlem is not a big deal. I got to take this picture:


I crossed Harlem and got to the Central Park from the north side. Got lost a couple of times, stopped several times to take some pictures, and yet the pace was in low 4 min/km. I think I got a bit excited about the scenery:















I left Central Park and followed 59th Street towards Queensboro Bridge. It’s a bridge over Roosevelt Island - a small Island in the middle of East River, that has only residential buildings and apparently there is no road connection. The bridge goes over the island, connecting Manhattan with Queens.
I’ve heard that the hardest part of NY Marathon are the bridges. I kind of understood that while walking on Brooklyn Bridge. But only now, running this 2km long bridge, I understood it fully. It must be a really hard work, especially on later stages of a marathon. Glad I’m not doing it anytime soon ;)

After the bridge I run south-east towards our place, passing Greenpoint, Williamsburg. Totally different scenery, very industrial. Greenpoint is full of Polish businesses (and even a playful Polish flag):


Finally I’ve arrived home, due to underground misunderstanding and occasional navigation problems, did just over 21km. But finally I was able to eat again, didn’t eat since The Ultimate Lunch day before.

In the afternoon we went to see the Statue of Liberty, but it was already too late to take a boat, so we watched it only from the distance:



There was also walk in the Wall Street and financial district. Here’s a picture of people taking picture of the Charging Bull sculpture:


Dogs playground:


New Jersey in the setting sun, seen from Manhattan:



I’ve also discovered another very popular location for runners. Starting in the Financial District, up north along the Hudson River, through Tribeca, towards Meatpackers District Nice, broad pavement (or sidewalk, as it’s called here). Long, no traffic lights, great views and hundreds of runners. Didn’t have a chance to run there though, that’s probably good enough reason to come back one day.



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