2 years ago
Running This Town: Astoria Branch
I moved to Astoria on Saturday. I got a dog on Sunday. And today, I ran for the first time in New York City. It was interesting.
Is That A Dead Baby?
I’ve never run in a city before. I mean, for the most part, I was a treadmill runner for my first two years (post-college). I ran a little cross country in high school and I had to run for crew/losing, I guess, beer weight in college.1 I’m kind of a naif, so it was kind of interesting, kind of shocking to me that I kept seeing bundles of garbage that resembled nothing more than dead babies. I kept thinking to myself, ‘Gee, I’m glad I have my iPhone because I’m sure one of these pieces of detritus is actually a dead body.’ I never got that feeling in Hamilton, NY. Fortunately, I didn’t discover any dead bodies on my run.
Speaking Of Which, My Run
I ran three miles at a pace of 7:59/mile. I felt good setting out at around 6am; 2 it was relatively cool. I ran up 31st Ave and turned right at the river because I saw a guy running and I wanted to see if I could keep pace with these NY runners, but I never saw him again, slowpoke. I ran south along the river until, well, the parallelism ended between sidewalk and river. I turned around in Goodwill Park and ran south and headed back home when I saw I was nearing three miles.
I can run for more than three miles really comfortably—about six miles is the distance I can run probably every day—but I started out kind of too fast. I’ve had a pacing problem lately, and the surroundings eased me along quickly. If I kept my average pace closer to 9:00/miles, I think I could run forever. Of course, I don’t think I could stand to run that slow.
Running This Town
So far I love running in New York. Being here in Queens I can run right next to the river, which smells kind of bad but mostly, like, like a river. Looking now at Google Maps, I see where I could have continued up a few blocks and gotten back to the river, which is what I’ll probably do tomorrow. That is, if I’m in running shape. I’m planning on icing some bros today. For Memorial Day.
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The combined population of these two towns is 6,700, which is shocking to me. (I thought they’d be smaller. They felt smaller) Here’s an interesting note: In my hometown’s wikipedia page it says, “Being a village of predominantly working class people, the consumption of alcohol played a major role in the fabric of social life in New York Mills. For many years, there were at least 12 taverns or bars within the village boundaries; a disproportionately large number for a village its size.” ↩
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We woke up at 515am to take out the new puppy. He already peed in his crate. =\ But he’s doing pretty well with the training, so far. He just asked to go outside, which he did, where he peed. ↩
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rubenfeld reblogged this from runningthistown and added:
Will be following this...that you’ve moved into
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