Sports news

The Empire State building changes it lights nearly every night to commemorate some person or anniversary. While the Olympics has been on they had different lights on each side of the building representing countries flags.

We can see the east and south sides from our window but this photo from Twitter shows it in better detail.

© @isardsorensen

On Saturday the city had the second of three Saturdays in August where they hold Summer Streets and they close Park Avenue to regular traffic all the way from 72nd Street right down to near the Brooklyn Bridge.

On my newly acquired bike I set off over the Manhattan Bridge and managed to navigate my way down near the bottom onto the closed road. I've done it once before when I was here for summer and although it's definitely better if you take your time and take in the sights you don't normally get to see from the road, on this occasion I had to get up to Central Park before the road re-opened at 1pm.

I was later in leaving as that morning we finally got cable tv installed in our flat!

You have to keep your wits about you as the streets are full of people walking, running, skateboarding, roller blading, all ages biking and the usual unicycle sighting. Plus the usual idiot on a bike trying to race through the whole thing at speed.

© http://www.particularityblog.com

After a bit of a break and then another lap of Central Park, I headed over to the Westside Greenway.

The inaugural NYC Ironman triathlon was taking place. It started at 7am so around 3pm the winner was heading towards the finish. Most of it took place over the Hudson in upstate NY into the Palisades before they ran the mile long George Washington Bridge back into Manhattan.

I guess it's a big event with qualification for the Kona event available but I was still surprised to see the finish setup, complete with large finish spectator gantry and helicopter tv footage beamed onto a big screen.

I finished the day with a cycle back down the Westside and stopped for a couple of pics at the USS Intrepid. The Space Shuttle that was carried to NY a few weeks ago is now stationed under a bubble canopy on the deck.

After all that, I was out in the sun for five hours total. Just over three and a half hours cycling for about 40 Miles. Sunburnt arms and totally shattered! Too much sun.