After last week’s training we went to London on Sunday where our younger son ran a half marathon in 1h 48m. I’m sure he’ll break 4 hours in Rotterdam, and show me a clean pair of heels.
On the Monday my wife and I did exactly what every training plan (almost) recommends – we went to New York for a few days.
I think it’s a glorious city – right up there with San Francisco, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Berlin and London in my eyes. I’ve been a couple of times before and both our sons have been …. apparently that is grounds for my wife to insist that she also went for a visit. We walked a lot (I think that’s always the best way to see a city) and managed to take in a lot of stuff, including a Circle Line trip, the High Line, an off-Broadway play, the Empire State building, Ground Zero and the 9/11 museum, Central Park, Chinatown and MoMA.
Although we had a bit of rain on a couple of days it didn’t stop us doing anything and we had a great time in a city I love for its incredible variety and the feeling of general mayhem – not that I think I could live there. I particularly like the people, especially people in positions of any authority – so confident with, often, such little reason for that confidence … but charming with it.
It was a rare occasion when I was extremely pleased not to be driving – the grid layout with continual traffic lights is great for navigation but must be a real pain in terms of making forward progress (I guess mass stationary traffic is not called ‘gridlock’ for nothing). The city might be a happier place if NY drivers could be reminded that the motor horn is for use in cases of emergency, not cases of annoyance and frustration.
I really like Central Park but it struck me this trip that New York has rather put nearly all its green eggs in the one big basket as there are relatively few other green areas in the central part of the city – another drawback of the grid structure that doesn’t lend itself well to little squares with gardens like you get all across London. I guess it might be just a bit too expensive to flatten some entire blocks to create a few more Bryant Parks!
With luck, the walking will have counted for something in training terms but I did get out for a really enjoyable run on Wednesday: W40th, up 10th Ave, across at 58th, into Central Park, two loops round the ring up to the Lake and back via 9th Ave. Assuming it is permitted to run in kilometres in New York, in all it was about 10.5km (6.5m) in 58 mins. I even overtook more runners than overtook me (just).
Back to the UK on Saturday but (after 12 hours sleep) I decided not to run on Sunday. I’ll do the week’s long run (12 miles) on Monday, together with the week 19 runs.
The timing of the trip was designed to fit into the marathon taper period to miss the least amount of valuable training. That seems to have worked quite well (allowing for a one day shift in the long run) and I even managed to put on only about 1 pound (0.5kg).
| Week | Run | Cycle | X-train |
| 1 | 16m (26km) | 10m (16 km) | 2:00 |
| 2 | 19m (30km) | 13m (22km) | 2:00 |
| 3 | 21m (33.km) | 66m (106km) | 1:00 |
| 4 | 22m (36km) | 14m (22km) | 1:00 |
| 5 | 24m (39km) | 13m (21km) | 1:00 |
| 6 (Christmas) | 13m (21km) | ||
| 7 | 26m (41km) | 63m (101km) | 3:00 |
| 8 | 14m (24km) | 13m (21km) | 7:00 |
| 9 (Skiing) | 16m (25km) | 12:00 | |
| 10 (Skiing) | 12:00 | ||
| 11 (Skiing) | 7m (11km) | 6:00 | |
| 12 | 34m (55km) | 35m (56km) | 1:00 |
| 13 | 38m (60km) | 14m (22km) | 1:00 |
| 14 | 38m (60km) | 30m (48km) | 1:00 |
| 15 | 39m (63km) | 14m (22.km) | |
| 16 | 42m (67km) | 10m (16km) | 1:00 |
| 17 | 33m (53km) | 9m (15km) | |
| 18 (New York) | 6m (10km) | ||
| ‘Running’ totals | 407m (656km) | 290m (466km) | 50:00 |
(an Old Man in Lycra) 