My last...

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.

Coconut & Pineapple

My first.......

With everything that's on offer in New York it's easy to discover new things or experience your first ever..... even after living here for 15 months and visiting for a few years before that.
So basically last week I had my first ever New York City bike accident! Ha ha.

Unfortunately it's not just the horrendously bad drivers you have to watch out for, nor the pedestrians blindly oblivious to everything but you also have to watch for other cyclists.
For example I've learned the phrase "bike salmoning" where someone cycles the wrong way down a bike lane as a lot are on the one-way streets.

Like most accidents here, this one was more just a lack of common sense.
After I cross the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn on my way to work I go an extra 1/2 mile out of my way so I can use the supposedly safer protected bike lane on Allen Street.

It is segregated from the road, apart form the crossings, and has little pedestrian areas every so often.

So I'm coming up behind a girl on a bike and as we approach the wide pedestrian area I decide that would be a good area to overtake, but just as I'm alongside her she decides now would be a good time to turn 90 degrees to her left and cycle across the pedestrian area with not so much as a glance, never mind behind, not even to the side.... straight into me.

Luckily we were both okay but as I'm clipped to the bike and had both bikes on top of me as I fell to the ground I came away with the cuts and grazes. A couple of friendly pedestrians as if we were okay and offered me some napkins when they noticed before I did that I had blood running down my calf.
I've been angry with drivers before, in some close incidences but never had anything close with another cyclist before but I was polite and checked she was okay. A couple of people at work said how they would have shouted abuse at her.

5 days later

I was only 5 mins from work and luckily we have the bike shop there so they tidied up my bike (free of charge), truing the wheels and replacing a bent skewer, so my bike was all good to ride home later.
Although they did remark that my brakes were the wrong way round, ha ha. I made sure when I bought the bike they reversed the normal US brakes, what with everything being back to front here.

That's more like it!

Another Saturday morning 5K in Prospect Park, The Central Park Founders 5K in tribute to the guy that had founded the Central Park Track Club.

After another uncomfortable couple of weeks, the humidity finally broke on Wednesday night. I did a speed session of sorts on Thursday morning and felt amazing... the fresh air and lack of humidity was I'm guessing like the feeling you'd get if you've been away training at altitude and come back down to sea level so I was hoping for a better time than the last one two weeks ago.
A slightly later start time of 9am, and although the sun was out and it was hot under the sun, the lack of humidity was noticeable and probably 90% of the course in in shade.

When I got to the start line it turned out a tree had fallen down and hit someone earlier on so the start was delayed 30 minutes. Unfortunate for the guy, who was apparently alright and bad news for us as it meant I had to pass the time by sitting on a bench for 20 minutes meditating, watching the swans etc.

The smaller 389 finisher field start

© 2013 SmugMug, Inc.

A woman who is maybe connected to the CPTC took some photos and I popped up in a couple.

Then when we lined up at the start we were informed that because the start had to be moved up a few hundred metres they didn't have time to realign the mile markers so they would be out. Plus the wrist strap on my Polar heart rate monitor had snapped on Thursday. So no mile splits and no heart rate! I don't really use the heart rate on a 5K race but it's nice to see the averages etc afterwards.
So basically I just ran! First time in ages I've not looked at my watch or anything and just ran on feeling, knowing how fast I can hold for a 5K while knowing the course obviously helped.

© 2013 SmugMug, Inc.

I was pleasantly surprised to finish in 19.14 (6.12 mile pace, 62nd/389), about 26 seconds slower than my best time from May's month of supreme fitness, ha ha.

Then a jog up to the farmer's market where I picked up a raspberry danish, a cherry pie pocket, a sweet onion and goat cheese focaccia and some carrot cake.

The week that was

Getting into my shipping and receiving job. Although I need to get into it fast so I can help train a couple of other people! None of the managers even know how to do a lot of the stuff so when I take a day off and the other part-time guy isn't on there is a crap load of things to do the next day I'm in!

I switched my days around so we could go to a concert on Thursday night. During the summer Prospect Park has a lot of free performances and a handful of benefit shows to do with Celebrate Brooklyn so we purchased tickets for one of the benefit shows to see the Scottish group Belle & Sebastian.

A different type of show than normal. There was the regular standing room up front if you were eager but the majority of people take rugs and sit on the grassy slopes, at least until the show starts. They have a lot of different food and drink on sale plus an Etsy store, which if you know what Etsy is, tells you the type of crowd it was catering too.
So we took along our new camp chairs and a little bag of homemade food and juice, gotta save our money for all the future gig tickets we've bought recently.

One of the highlights was getting a lot of folk out of the crowd to dance on stage for a couple of songs, really funny to watch.

Friday night I was back in soccer action. A couple of teams I've played for needed some players for a cup night so I played 30min games with no break, the first outfield and the next two in goal!
During the second game it started raining and during the third it was torrential. It was so bad all the stuff in the bottom of my bag got soaked and I kept having to ring out my gloves and t-shirt.
When we went to the bar afterwards everyone took turns changing in the toilet into whatever slightly dryer clothes they had with them.

Then with my quads a little sore this morning, I sleepily got out of bed just after 7am for a 5K in Prospect Park. The baseball MLB All Star Game is back in New York so they had a tie-in with the race with proceeds to the Hurricane Sandy relief fund.

NYRR

It was "only" 69 degrees but the humidity was apparently 93%, I say apparently but it was high as the sweat was running down my forehead.
I am starting another training programme for some other races but it's proving difficult in the heat. Steady runs are fine but trying to do any ind of speedwork is real hard. I tried running before work on Tuesday but midday is not a good time to run, no shit, and I was dead on my feet.
So with the lack of training and the humidity I was a whole two minutes slower than back in May and even a minute slower than June's 5K. I know I did a tonne of training in the Spring, so much so that my pace was faster for 13M in May than it was for 3M today!

Just seen tonight's news and the weather forecast is for temperatures in the 90's all next week, "and it'll feel like over 100".... great :-(

4th Of July

We were invited up to our friends (Stephen who presided over our wedding ceremony) lake house just over the border in Connecticut for their 4th of July party.
For once I was off work and didn't need to go searching for someone to cover shifts, which will be more difficult now that I'm the shipper until I can help train someone else!

We caught the train from Grand Central Station, heading an hour and 20mins north east to Brewster, NY.

We got picked up at the station and driven over the border and to their weekend getaway which is an amazing house by Ball Pond Lake. All the properties around there are pretty spectacular and very American! Even more so yesterday as nearly everyone had their stars & stripes on display. Especially the new neighbours with their giant flag and range of lake inflatables, etc.

Apparently the new neighbours were disturbing the peace with something called "kids" and had $6000 of fireworks lined up for later.

Our place was a little classier, ha ha.

The boathouse

Fire it up!

Finding the shade

Totally relaxing, good food and it also happened to be someones birthday so some amazing homemade coconut cake and some patriotic cupcakes to finish the day.

We were offered the chance of a lift back to the city so given the choice between a car ride or fireworks & the train we took them up on their offer. So unfortunately we missed most of the firework display although when we drove home there were random fireworks going off on either side of the road behind the trees for a lot of the trip.
Also by the time we hit Manhattan we got stuck in the traffic from people leaving the Macy's fireworks display on the Hudson River!

Update

A little slow finishing the blog on our Hawaii trip but work gets in the way when you get back to normal life!

Speaking of which, I got a promotion of sorts. I had interviewed for a sideways promotion just before I left for Hawaii, a sales lead role instead of regular sales. All it would have meant was a $2+ an hour increase in pay and just to be a goto for the regular sales staff.

They had also talked about giving me some shadow shifts in the shipping & receiving department as the regular shipper was leaving on a year long cycle from Alaska southwards, that gives you an idea of the type of people who work here!

When I got back to work they called me in as they were going over the interviews and instead went and offered me the job of shipper. So I still get the same pay rise but it does mean a job shift.

I had roughly four days training and then armed with my manual that the shipper guy kindly made up for me, I was let loose last week on my own. The main change is that ALL the shifts are 1.30pm to 10pm but it does pass quickly as there seems a lot to fit in each day.
It also requires a bit of good time management, starting off with receiving the internet orders, staff orders and returned items, then shipping same things the other way out.

Then later on I get a bicep and quad workout as I receive the nightly truck with all the pallets laden with boxes, wheeling it up a small slope, occasionally grinding to a halt during this process! Dealing with everything from small boxes containing one bottle of insect repellant to lifting a kayak downstairs.

I'll still get some footwear shifts (at the same pay rate) so we'll see how it works out.

I have been commuting to and from work by bike all last week. It was so hot and humid that having a shower at work beforehand and then avoiding the sticky underground wait for a train home by cycling back home works better.
It is a thought to do a bike ride after working until 10pm but the weather is so warm plus I'm home in about 35 minutes as I take a more direct route due to less traffic on the roads, I just need to buy some more sets of padded bike shorts though!

Waimea Canyon

Out last trip involved a drive uphill to the top of the Waimea Canyon lookout.

There were some good sights on the drive up. The view out the back window over to the last island in the northern end of the chain, Niihau.

A cool banyan tree as we passed through a village and then the amazing roadside red dirt landscape.

The road was constantly uphill so pretty soon it changed from green to red by the roadside.

The view once we reached the top was up there with all the views we've had on this trip for sure.

This wasn't the top as such, so we drove upwards and around.
There was a mini stop at another viewpoint where we seen some of the islands wildlife. Some mountain hugging goats and another chicken just hanging out in the trees.

Can you spot them?

They get everywhere

Then we drove up to the last viewpoint, the Kalalau lookout.

Once we got all the way back down to sea level we made a short stop to see the spouting water feature.

A bit of shopping on the way back and we were most definitely done for the day.

We had the next day to ourselves after the family left so just another couple of supermarket trips for supplies and then spent the rest of the night and nearly the entire morning of the day we left trying to pack everything! We ended up taking a whole box as extra luggage filled with food supplies and wedding remnants. Which just reminded me that we have four ziplock bags full of the pulled pork in the freezer...... hmmmmm.