NYC Half-Marathon

Here's the Times Square entrance to our friendly neighborhood 1 train.

This has been a busy week.  Now and then I'd sit down to post something, but it would never get finished.  So, now I'm going to take the easy way out and post photos instead.  

Bob ran the NYC Half-Marathon this morning.  He would say he didn't run it, he jogged it.  The weather was his least favorite--hot and humid, post thunderstorm.  Still, it was fun running through the streets of Manhattan: Starting in Central Park and looping around, then out the bottom of the park near Columbus Circle, through Times Square, and on down to Battery Park City.  

As I got up at 4:45 to fix the usual pre-run breakfast, thunder and lightning were echoing through the open windows that faced the air shaft in the kitchen.  C.Z. and I left at 6:30, waited fifteen minutes (practically forever in NYC time) for a train, and then shared our slowly crawling car with a panhandler who was so very aggressive that I almost got off the train.  (I'm used to ignoring a lot, but when a seemingly crazy guy starts talking about how he feels like killing someone, I take that seriously.)  Luckily, he left before I had to make the decision.  

We got to Central Park barely in time to see the front runners go by.  We didn't think waiting for the weekend train again was a good bet, to we left right away and walked to Times Square.

New York City's finest watching the race.  Don't you just love how their precinct matches the local decor?

There we passed the noisy cover band and found a perfect spot right at the turn, just behind a TV camera so that no one could block our view.  Since the runners were doing the loop, we had enough time to get our bearings before we saw the helicopters and heard the sirens again.  I didn't recognize the leader, but I did recognize Dathan Ritzenheim (whom we saw recently at the Olympic Trials in Eugene) in about third place.  (I say "about" because when I'm taking photos, sometimes I lose track of the exact place.) 

Leaders Tadesse Tola and Patrick Makau about to make the turn onto 42nd St. at Times Square

We knew we couldn't make it to Battery Park in time to see the finish, so we did the best we could, which was to take and express train to the 12 mile mark near Stuyvesant High School in time to see the women's leaders go by.  Catherine Ndereba looked like she was going to win this one.

Catherine Ndereba has a reasonable lead at the 12mi mark on the West Side highway.

After the lead women passed by, we walked around the old World Trade Center site to the finish, which was more of a madhouse than most local races.  I later found out that that was because there were 10,000 entrants.  You know you're not in the usual running crowd when you see women in high heeled shoes!  Oddly enough, however, we found an empty spot on the bleachers at the finish line and were able to watch Bob finish from there.  (As he made clear, he just wanted to run through the closed streets and didn't consider himself to be racing, so I'll spare you the details.)  I like downtown; it's not on the grid. 

Half-marathon finishers at Battery Park.  The dark streak is because I took this photo through wire on a pedestrian bridge.

C.Z. and I were actually in time to hop off the train at 66th St. and slip into church just in time for the sermon.  Afterwards we went to brunch with Bob and his running friend Ethan.  So, it's just after noon and we feel we've already had a full day!  But I'm looking forward to a quiet afternoon with The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann before calling the day complete.