View from a Run

This is Jennifer. I convinced her to run a 10K with me in a couple weeks. She was out of the running habit and has diligently trained for the race. Last Saturday she asked if I'd go with her on her 5.2 mile training run. I happily said yes, as I love the new found concept of running with a friend. We started at my house and headed across the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan.



Once in Manhattan we ran through part of Chinatown. Here we're crossing over Canal Street, the main drag through Chinatown. Although this picture makes Chinatown look calm on a Saturday morning (and it kind of was) it gets a little crowded on the sidewalks, so next time I will take a side street.


We ran over the Manhattan Bridge to head back into Brooklyn. This is the entrance to the bridge. Having run this loop once before I knew we were heading toward quite a hill.


View from the top of the aforementioned hill. I love running on bridges because there is allotted space for runners (unlike on the sidewalks or roads in NYC). Plus I can pretend to race the subway as it flies by.


Ah! After running that big-a$$ hill, we took a quick picture break. There's the Brooklyn Bridge and beyond is NY Harbor. We ended our run in Jennifer's hood, Cobble Hill, just beyond downtown Brooklyn. Afterward, I enjoyed a nice cool down walk of a mile or so to the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene. I love running through my borough. So much to see. Thanks so much Jen for the invite!!! Let's do it again!

My next goal is to zig zag all three bridges...start at my house, run over the Williamsburg, down through Chinatown again to the Manhattan Bridge, run back in to Brooklyn, then run south through DUMBO to the Brooklyn Bridge, run back over into lower Manhattan, then run north back to Williamsburg and over to my house. That's probably a 10 mile run? I'll have to plot it out.

The amazing thing is that when I started really trying to run last November, I was on the Williamsburg Bridge looking at the Manhattan Bridge in the distance and thinking "what if I could run from here to there and back home? That would be amazing!" I figured it was a some-day goal. Some-day wasn't that far away. In January I went for it and did that 8 mile loop. It was a huge breakthrough for me and I gained so much confidence in my ability to actually run. I had never run more than 6 miles at that point and I wasn't sure I could do it. But then I did and I haven't been the same since.