Last Saturday morning I once again trekked up to Van Cortland Park in the Bronx to take part in a 10K cross country or as I said in previous posts, "cross-country".
I might not have bothered if I hadn't already entered as on Friday night when I checked the weekend train situation I found out the 1 train you take all the way up to the park at 242nd street stopped running at 225th. So it meant getting the F, switching to the A train up to 207th and taking a shuttle bus to take you up to 242nd. It sounded like an awful hassle at that time of the morning but they do have people outside the stations and plenty signs on display inside the station so it actually went really smoothly considering I don't know where I am up there. Took about 1hour 45mins in total.
On the return journey they were politely shouting at people that there were no trains today and a bystander jokingly shouted "welcome to new york" and they laughed.
So this was my last ever race as an under 40! Hopefully if I can find a small enough event and be lucky in who turns up maybe I can pick up a prize for over 40 age grouper, ha ha. Doubtful as the small races don't seem to do more than one prize and the larger races obviously have hundreds of top quality runners.
The course is all on gravel paths but was a really good two loops, with a slightly different hill on the second loop. Around 420ft of climb in total and as they said at the start, if this is your first 10K then errr, good luck with that. A show of hands showed that for about 3/4 of the field this was their first time running up in Van Cortland Park. As I said before, if it ain't Central Park then a lot of regular runners don't bother with the trip into unknown territory. A glance around at the starting line up showed it was indeed a smaller field.
I've been doing some good rep sessions for the last few weeks and the weather has improved to just sunny hot mid to high 20's rather than humid so I've managed to pick the pace up in training. I was about 8th going round the bottom of the field after about 300m so that felt good for a change to be so high up in the race.
I ran it hard, and again used my downhill experience, to come in 7th overall! 4th 30-39 age grouper, damn common age. There were only 130 finishers, gotta be one of the smallest races in NY, although I think there was a few non-finishers too as it was quite warm and pretty tough going for a newbie.
Whatever my next race is will be my first as a 40+er, used to think a Vet (40+) sounded really old, ha ha.
On the way back home I stopped off at the British store in the West Village to restock on Salad Cream and I'd had a craving for some black pudding. I ended up coming away with a couple of packets of Angel Delight. Stuff that I wouldn't buy back in Scotland but it must be a nostalgia thing, and very nice it was too. Then I walked round the corner to try a little place that sold shave ice like we'd had in Hawaii. Unfortunately it wasn't of the same quality as the originals, but after a race on a hot day it was very cooling.
I might not have bothered if I hadn't already entered as on Friday night when I checked the weekend train situation I found out the 1 train you take all the way up to the park at 242nd street stopped running at 225th. So it meant getting the F, switching to the A train up to 207th and taking a shuttle bus to take you up to 242nd. It sounded like an awful hassle at that time of the morning but they do have people outside the stations and plenty signs on display inside the station so it actually went really smoothly considering I don't know where I am up there. Took about 1hour 45mins in total.
On the return journey they were politely shouting at people that there were no trains today and a bystander jokingly shouted "welcome to new york" and they laughed.
So this was my last ever race as an under 40! Hopefully if I can find a small enough event and be lucky in who turns up maybe I can pick up a prize for over 40 age grouper, ha ha. Doubtful as the small races don't seem to do more than one prize and the larger races obviously have hundreds of top quality runners.
The course is all on gravel paths but was a really good two loops, with a slightly different hill on the second loop. Around 420ft of climb in total and as they said at the start, if this is your first 10K then errr, good luck with that. A show of hands showed that for about 3/4 of the field this was their first time running up in Van Cortland Park. As I said before, if it ain't Central Park then a lot of regular runners don't bother with the trip into unknown territory. A glance around at the starting line up showed it was indeed a smaller field.
I've been doing some good rep sessions for the last few weeks and the weather has improved to just sunny hot mid to high 20's rather than humid so I've managed to pick the pace up in training. I was about 8th going round the bottom of the field after about 300m so that felt good for a change to be so high up in the race.
I ran it hard, and again used my downhill experience, to come in 7th overall! 4th 30-39 age grouper, damn common age. There were only 130 finishers, gotta be one of the smallest races in NY, although I think there was a few non-finishers too as it was quite warm and pretty tough going for a newbie.
Whatever my next race is will be my first as a 40+er, used to think a Vet (40+) sounded really old, ha ha.
On the way back home I stopped off at the British store in the West Village to restock on Salad Cream and I'd had a craving for some black pudding. I ended up coming away with a couple of packets of Angel Delight. Stuff that I wouldn't buy back in Scotland but it must be a nostalgia thing, and very nice it was too. Then I walked round the corner to try a little place that sold shave ice like we'd had in Hawaii. Unfortunately it wasn't of the same quality as the originals, but after a race on a hot day it was very cooling.
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