Easter sightseeing

Firstly, last Friday at soccer, a couple of us were standing on the sidelines as our game started and were 'lucky' enough to see something like this flying across the sky.

We were a bit shocked as we didn't know what it was. It was super fast, like a rocket, flying straight, seemingly out of nowhere and then disappeared as quickly. Kinda scary at the time but I later read reports of meteor sightings up the Eastern coast of the US that night.

Heather and I went up to Central Park for a midweek run. At the entrance we happened upon some nutritional bar promo thing, nearly as disturbing as the meteor!

Then after our run we checked out some sculptures, United Enemies, at the opposite side of the park.

© Columbia Daily Spectator

The other pic I took was on my bike ride home one day I stopped at one of the piers in Brooklyn where the HMS Edinburgh was on a tour before being heading home to be decommissioned.

The training starts now

This year's main race entry and target goal is the North Face Endurance Challenge up at Bear Mountain State Park on May 4th. I drew up a race training plan as best I could given the type of event it is and the training started today.
They have distances from 5K right up to 50K including a marathon relay but along with a couple of friends we have decided to give the half marathon a go. The finishing times from last year seem to add a good 30 minutes to a 10K and having read a couple of forums and seen the course profile I can see why.

I only ever have work schedules up to the end of the following week and with such differing shifts it could take a bit of planning and getting used to running at different times in order to fit the sessions in if I want to give it a good go.
Although I love trail events and good challenging hills so this should be brilliant, the worst part again will be getting up in the middle of the night to get out there for the 8am start.

Woo-hoo, 5 star scenery! I always trip off-road when I try and look at something like the view though.

Today I had my first encounter with any kind of American health care as I had to get an eye-check up to get more contact lenses. They had real trouble finding my health benefits as there were no details  listed under my plan. I called my provider and got them to email the details and apparently I just get some kind of discount plan on eye care.
It was also maybe the first time I had heard the phrase "at your age", as he recommended getting the eye drops thing so he could see behind my eye. I definitely think it's a very American thing to be referred to a specialist for everything. So now I have to see a retina specialist to take a digital photograph of the back of my eye to give them a baseline record in case anything changes. And even with my discounts it was around £53 just for the eye test and contact lense checkup.