Finally, a run in the snow

Superstorm Nemo hit New York on Friday. The local media really love to build things up and although it looks a lot worse in the 'burbs, there was a really just a few inches of snow overnight here in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Saturday morning was lovely and sunny and although the temperature was around zero there wasn't much wind. Luckily I didn't start work until 2.30pm so had plenty time to get out for a run in Prospect Park.
Although, the park was jammed with kids and parents sledging, or sledding as they say here, and a lot of walkers (and photographers!) there were very few runners compared to normal.
I've always loved running in the snow, it's like a challenge, getting the legs and breathing going running across a whole field of it. It was also nice that it was a little quieter than normal as I think in general most locals don't run the off-road as much.
Anyway, here are some lovely park pictures I took:

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Racing: horizontally & vertically!

Superbowl Sunday started with a 4 mile race in Central Park, the NYRR Gridiron Classic.
Just as well for pre-entered races! When money is tight it gets you out of your bed and onto the start line especially when you've just picked up the cold (for the fourth time since November!) and wake to see that it's snowed in the middle of the night.

The morning view from our back window

Like most places, the wind makes all the difference here as to whether it's just cold or right through to the bone cold. Luckily it was a light wind, so I even ran in (long) shorts (and compression socks). The hat and gloves did stay on all the way round though.

I still haven't done enough races in Central Park to get sick of it or know where I am in the park while racing. The starts are still a bit of a struggle with the sheer volume of people and although it clears up a little, you still have to watch where you are the whole way round. Over 5500 people on a minus 3 Sunday morning.

As well as a pre-race longest throw competition, halfway round there were a couple of gates with timing mats so you could choose who to vote for, either the 49'ers or the Ravens.
I voted for the eventual winners, the Ravens, but it was the 49'ers that apparently won the vote. Not sure if more people actually thought they'd win or whether it was just their gate was on the inside of the bend on the road!

NYRR

Felt quite strong despite not doing any actual training since October, just general running, and I finished averaging 6.49 pace which was what I did for a 4M race in Prospect Park in October!
I think starting to cycle to work, at least I was until the weather changed, had helped keep my fitness, especially the uphill stretch from the Manhattan bridge back to Prospect Park.
Walked a little afterwards and took a couple of photos of the snowy frozen Central Park.

And click here to view a cool 360 degree pic of the Bethesda Fountain and lake.

Wednesday night was the vertical one. The Empire State Building run-up!

I'd heard of this event before moving here and when I seen it advertised on the New York Road Runner's website and found out it was a lottery entry I decided to apply. Amazingly I only went and got accepted first time!
The 1576 steps to the observatory on the 86th floor were quickly put in perspective with the three flights of 15 steps we have in our building that often seem a struggle when you come home with groceries or after a run, etc.
So I took to the internet to see if I could find any training advice etc. The main thing I read was that unless you find a minimum 40-storey building to practice in, then some general running or cycling involving hills would probably suffice. Some people had also commented that because it's only a 1/4 mile in distance that you're not going to fail physically on the distance and WITHIN 3 FLIGHTS of stairs you'll feel like you've been punched in the stomach and can't get a breath anyway. The air quality in the stairwell and the hundreds of other runners sweating it out with you doesn't help.
One good piece of advice that I did follow, especially with my cold, was to take some chewing gum to keep your mouth and throat from drying up, totally worked!
One other difference is also going from races that start at 8am or the leisurely 9am last weekend to this, where my heat didn't get started until 9.20pm!

They have different heats. "Elite" invitationals, a media heat, a brokers heat and a charity heat. It was all in aid of Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation which uses orange in its colourway, hence the building lighting scheme that night.
These heats are smaller and all start with a traditional line start, racing the 10m to the doorway to begin the ascent.

Men's Invitational

I was in the open time trial heats which thankfully they moved from these type of mass starts to heats of 100, with runners starting every seven seconds. With my number being 1000+, I had a bit of a wait. While you waited they had loud (crappy) music and a girl interviewing people in the next line of runners waiting to start. One guy's advice was apart from enjoying it, to save some energy for floors 70+.
When we finally got called to line up, the runners that had finished were coming past on the other side of the rope with their medals, half looking exhilarated and half looking pretty tired.
There was humorous advice about not peeing or smoking in the stairwell and of course the "what happens in the stairwell, stays in the stairwell".

We got walked down the hall, downstairs, past the main lobby and round to the start mats. Of course, I didn't really think about pacing myself as such and just ran off at normal speed. I still have enough competitiveness about me that although I made sure to savor the experience and take in my surroundings, I was there to do it as best as I could.
Taking two steps at a time as I had read on one website went out the window after one flight, but I did use the handrail and especially the to post to pull myself up.
It's not actually one complete flight of stairs so you switch stairwells on floors twenty and sixty-five, which is handily where they have some water stops. I passed on the first but was glad of a mouthful on the second stop. And I did appreciate the doormen stationed every few floors encouraging the runners, although not so much the one guy near the start that said only 80 floors to go.

In terms of running up, you were told it was customary to run on the left (inside) and to pass on the right. I don't think I was passed by anyone and after a few floors started catching up the people from the previous heat(s). This is where the elite have it easier, as passing other runners means going the long way round and as you are often just a fraction faster it means running a flight alongside them and then trying to run past before the next turn up the next set of stairs. Everyone was nice and polite though and followed protocol.

I certainly didn't count the floors, the exit doors are numbered with the floor and it helped that I couldn't or didn't see them all. So before I knew it I was around 30 and then 60, only 20-ish to go I told myself, then floor 82, by then I could hear the shouts from the finish up outside. A quick dash across the floor and out the door, round the corner and across the line.
As you got ushered inside you got the amazing view of downtown New York lit up on a clear night sky and although you could then go back outside it was so windy and cold I just headed back down.... the elevator.

Sure, I was out of breath very early on and your thighs fell the burn as you get closer to the top but I was amazed I had no soreness in my calf muscles and no soreness at all the next day either!
I finished in 15.18 and was chuffed to find out that was for 41st place (out of 572) in the time trial and about 77th out of the total 724 finishers from all the other heats.
It was short and sharp as although I only burned 261 calories, I did average 197bpm and my heart rate maxed at 205 at the top, ha ha.

NYC TV show host video clip:

Last 30 days

Had a good Christmas, we hadn't really planned much in advance but I couldn't go without my full Christmas meal so I ended up buying 99% of the food around 9pm on Christmas eve, walking home in the sleet after work.
We cooked a full traditional (to me anyway) meal, the duck fat potatoes and my stuffing were just outshone by the Christmas puddings (another non-American item I apparently can't go without) I'd tracked down.

Heather doesn't do raisins etc so I HAD to eat the puddings myself. As I couldn't go without some mince pies either I managed to find some mincemeat and made twelve little pies. Unbelievably the pastry was nearly as hard to find as apparently it is normally bought from the ffreezer section rather than the ready to use refrigerated kind I am used to. So after buying two large jars of mincemeat I HAD to buy more pastry so I also made and consumed this entire pie :-)

Unfortunately I was ill with the flu from Boxing Day onwards (Americans don't know what Boxing Day means btw). Working a full really really busy day at work was uncomfortable, I was sweating and like the walking dead. It really killed me off and I had to phone in sick the next day. Apparently the flu reached 'epidemic' proportions across most of the US around mid-January.
I worked up to the 31st Dec then had 4 days off at the beginning of the year. We just spent New Years with our downstairs neighbours. We did flick on the tv for five minutes to see the Times Square ball drop but apparently locals couldn't think of anywhere worse to go to.
We actually had a couple of tourists instore that morning who were going down to it and asked when they should head down for a good view. Jerry told them "yesterday".

Into January I was informed that our work does a stock take/inventory night. This involved around forty employees turning up for 5.30pm on a Sunday, the store closed early at 6pm and basically being given sections of the store to work in. Scanning and counting every single item in the store!
After scanning each item in the section, this might have been just six pairs of socks or eighty-six, the handheld scanners gave you two opportunities to 'guess' how many you had scanned. If you got it correct you carried on, if you couldn't count the same number of items then you had to start all over again. I was scheduled to work until 2am but in the end was let away 'early' at around 12.40am.

The weather has gotten colder but not really that bad apart from the occasional couple of days. Although I was indeed missing my winter coat and boots. My shipped items had arrived early December and it was annoying to look up and see the crate was basically just across the water from us.
The boat was on the left in New Jersey and our house is on the right between the park and the cemetery:

In the end, they got in touch in January and with only $108 customs charges I took delivery of my sixteen boxes a couple of weeks ago. Most items are unpacked and due to the space available I have ended up swapping my winter clothing for my summer clothing and that is now waiting to go into storage.

The little cat Piko loved the extra climbing items.

Playing soccer in the winter is fun. The pitch is pretty hard and the breathing can be a bit harsh with the cold air. Tonight our game kicks off at 9.15pm and the temperature is supposed to be about -3.
On the pitch we play at you get a really good background with the Empire State Building all lit up but I'm just waiting until Spring when hopefully we can get a team together and into a league that starts on the newly developed pitches at Brooklyn Piers. I cycled past on the way home from work and they look cool, nice soft turf and great views of lower Manhattan.

Last Monday we used one of our Christmas presents which were tickets to a New York Times Talk. If you've never seen the show Portlandia then it won't mean anything but we were second row and it was a neat thing, an hour and a half chat with the stars and director.
Fred is a Saturday Night Live regular and Carrie was in the 90's west-coast band Sleater Kinney if that means anything too?

I finished up January with my Burns Night supper. It's true that you become more patriotic and traditional when you move away from your own country. Things that I might not have bothered with back home, I feel more of a need to have here. So I ordered some tins of haggis from a supplier in Louisiana and managed to find some turnips too. Heather had a little bit, she preferred the haggis she had in Scotland. It was alright actually, it was the turnips that were the disappointment, very pale and watery.

It finally snowed enough that there was snow on the ground the next day. Luckily I was off and managed a run through Prospect Park in the snow. It wasn't much and it was gone by the next day. There is supposed to be more flurries but nothing major so far.
I am running the Gridiron Classic 4M race in Central Park on Sunday, it's tied in with Superbowl Sunday and there is actually snow forecast for then I think.

Then on Wednesday I am running the Empire State Building Run-Up!!!! Eight-six floors, over 1500 steps, but hey, it's only a 1/4 Mile..... albeit upwards.

NFL sunday

This weekend was busy with a 6am work shift on the back of about four hours sleep but on Sunday I finally got to attend my first NFL game. Heather's cousin plays for the San Diego Chargers and ever since he signed on at the beginning of this season I had scouted the fixture list and marked down the 23rd in my diary as they came to town (actually 18 miles away in New Jersey) to play the New York Jets.

We managed to get three tickets and invited one of our friends (that has a car!) while her husband and two of their friends came along after picking up tickets online. Normally the games are hard to get tickets for but as the Jets are doing so poorly and it's the end of (their) season they got some online the day before. So at halftime we switched seats to sit all together too.

Three tickets and wristbands to get into the family meet and greet the players tent afterwards.

It was also my first time on a yellow schoolbus as we didn't buy a prepaid parking permit to park in the stadium grounds and so followed the non-permit signs to a couple of miles away and got the shuttle (school)bus there. Got to see all the Jets fans tailgating in the car park with their BBQ's and drinking away.
If you look closely in this picture you can see some have just laid the BBQ coals directly onto the pavement.

Walking to the stadium there was already a sense of a more loud, had a drink type fan than I've experienced at the baseball or other sports I've been to here.

The heavily sponsored Metlife stadium, we entered through the Pepsi gate.
I am still just awaiting delivery of my winter clothes so this was the warmest clothing I could muster, combined with my handwarmers and hat it was just enough although I did need the blanket our friends took as once the sun went down it got really cold just like Pittodrie, ha ha.
Luckily the game wasn't Saturday as that was the coldest day since I've been here as the winds were strong and really cut right through you, much more than back home.

Sunny but cold

Unfortunately we just got in as the game kicked off and before we found our way up to our seats the Chargers returned a punt to score in the opening minutes! I just got over to the back of the first level of seating to see the big-screen replay and them kick the extra point.

View from the posh seats

View from our (free!) seats

You get a good view from anywhere though, we were higher up but you could see more of the player movement etc although the Jets in particular were really really poor. It was funny listening to the fans moan as they got called for a couple of penalties and especially the really stupid one for a player not signalling to fair catch a punt correctly, a rare in-game penalty that the fans were laughing in disbelief. The other crowd spectacle was listening the them chant "ass..hole, ass..hole......" to some guy who was escorted from the crowd by security for upsetting the fans around him in some way.
There still was very little bad language compared to football back home, amazing considering they are downing beer from glass bottles too!

Heather's cousin 88 in action

The ladies arrive at halftime with my food

Wishing I had a heated seat like the players

Action shot

Ffffffreeeeezing at the end

The 'luxury' post-game tent

Dante Rosario and Heather with our gift of some baby clothes for their recent new born. There were about 40-odd people, friends and family, waiting in the tent for a handful of players to see them while they're in NY. A couple of players came in wearing sweatpants and hoody, the rest were dressed as above or jeans and jumper but one guy was so funny as he was in a suit, diamond stud earings and a full length fur coat, apparently made from chinchilla fur..... as he stood eating the same battered chicken and fries we had at halftime.

It's Christmas

On Saturday afternoon we took a trip to Rockefeller Centre to check out their famous Christmas tree. I didn't force her, but Heather had never seen the tree in the ten years she has lived here, probably because locals hate touristy crowds!
And it was completely mobbed around the whole area and walking down 5th Avenue, where a couple of luxury retailers were using projectors to display Christmas scenes on the side of the buildings thus making people take up the whole sidewalk while they stood and watched. Damn tourists.

Radio City Music Hall

The Rockefeller Tree

Cleaning the rink

People watching the projections

We walked down to Bryant Park to see some of the Christmas market stalls and they have an ice rink set up on what is normally the lawn.

In other news, I have occasionally been cycling to work when I have been starting late morning, leaving my bike there, and then cycling home when I've been finishing the early shift while it was still daylight so I could get used to the route. After a few times I felt confident enough to tackle it in the dark armed with my super new bike lights (good work discount) and then having layed everything out the night before I cycled in just after 5am one morning.

I stopped on the Manhattan Bridge at about 5.20am to take a picture as there is a water tower that is unusually covered in a stained glass type material and in the dark it was lit up and flickering away as if there was a candle inside.
You can tell you work in a healthy workplace when out of the 8 or 9 staff that started work at 6am that day, at least three of us cycled in!

Columbus Circle

A couple of Sundays ago on a foggy winters morning we went up to the Columbus Circle monument at the south west corner of Central Park to see a free exhibition, Discovering Columbus.
This is what the monument normally looks like:

A Japanese artist (Tatzu Nishi) had turned this into a living room with the statue in the centre of the room!

Even after seeing all the scaffolding surrounding the monument and climbing the steps, when you stepped inside it was so weird to think this was the top of that statue you see so many times when we visit Central Park for a run.

With the misty morning there were some good views from the door when we exited too.

Upon leaving, we also spotted another random piece of metal down one of the streets so we photographed that too.

And as Heather went home I headed north to Van Cortland Park again to do another cross country but a 15K course this time. I wasn't looking forward to it that much and it took all my energy not to head home with Heather but once I got going I really enjoyed it. Back home doing any kind of hill race I am decidedly middle of the pack when it comes to descending (albeit steeper hills that this) but here I was passing, flying past, everyone else until the very end when I must have caught up with a couple of guys my pace.

In other work related news I am still getting used to the hours. Deciding which ones I like (or hate) most, ha ha. The shifts run for 8½ hours with two 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute break. All other time is literally spent on my feet and with a lot of warehouse type work reaching for shoes and on some days unpacking footwear and hats, gloves & sock boxes it is quite tiring work. When you throw in a typical really busy Saturday or Sunday and (occasionally Mondays) it can be pretty hard going and warm through the back of the storeroom!
The shops staff hours run from 6am to 9.30pm or even a few upcoming 10.30pm's when we open late until 10pm in the run up to Christmas and therefore I have worked a variety of shifts:

6am to 2.30pm shift - getting up at 4.40am which isn't early morning, it's the middle of the night has got easier and this shift passes the quickest and allows me to cycle home in the daylight but with limited sleep the night before and surrounded by other working days means I feel like falling asleep by 5pm.
1.00pm to 9.30pm shift - the later start means you can run an errand or go for a run beforehand but it also means I'm not home until about 10.20pm and you don't feel like eating that late and going straight to bed but I'm often hungry for a snack as it's difficult to eat a full 'normal' evening meal in 30mins and be able to move about comfortably afterwards.
There are some in between shifts too and as I'm classified as part time I have had two or three days off per week but I did just work seven days in a row, all various shifts and by the time it was the last day of those I really was just destroyed and shuffling about but as I said before at this moment I'll take anything as I need cash money $$$.

Last week I was also the victim of credit card fraud. I got an alert after $300 was debited and it was from some website in Florida. Probably not connected but it's still weird that unless you select 'debit' and key in your pin it goes through as credit and you have to sign the slips where nobody ever checks the signature on the back, EVER.