"She’s SKIING!": A Runner Relishes Winter's Last Hurrah

“Look, Mom, she’s SKIING!”  That’s what the little girl said about me, which would be exciting enough since typically when skis are strapped to my feet I’m not upright long enough to actually be skiing.  But it was especially impressive a few days ago because I was not in Vancouver, or even Vermont or New Hampshire; I was in mid-town Manhattan, headed towards the running path on the East River.


It was almost seven years to the day that I had last used the cross-country skis that compete with my running shoes for space in the closet; that was in Manhattan also, after a late-season storm similar to the one that dumped over a foot of snow over the city this past Friday.  I’d been sliding my way through Central Park then, and was interviewed by a NY Times reporter who quoted me in her story the next day. 


The skiing was harder this time around; the 12 hours of hours of rain and slushiness that had accumulated before the fluffy white stuff had moved in made for a very uneven ride once my skis sunk past the surface.  Not to say that a smoothly-groomed trail would have helped me any – there was no smooth shushing going on and most certainly none of that graceful gliding seen recently at the Olympics.  In fact, as you can see by the photo, I wore my bright red NY Flyers jacket to make sure I’d be found in case I got stuck in a snowdrift.


I was getting a great workout, though – you can burn almost as many calories cross-country skiing as you can running, and without the impact.  Until you fall down, that is.  (Yes, some people fall down cross-country skiing.)  I could certainly feel a great stretch in my hamstrings and my arms.  In fact, my hands are still sore as I type this, from the death grip I had on my poles (to keep from falling down.) 
And then I hit it – cross-country skiing nirvana, or as close as you can get in Manhattan: a ¼-mile stretch of virgin snow carved through by the treads of a very big truck.  So big, in fact that the track left by each tire was almost exactly the width of my skis.  In another words – a packed trail!  It didn’t last long – to the credit of the city sanitation crews, by early afternoon, the East River running path was almost clean enough to run on.  (Indeed a handful of intrepid runners were seen hurdling snow drifts and picking their way around ice patches.)  I ended up spending almost as much time walking between snow-covered areas as I did actually skiing.  So I did what most runners do when they can’t find a place to work out – I headed to the local track, in this case at 10^th Street.  Certainly they weren’t going to plow THAT.  Turns out fourteen inches of virgin snow is nice, but impossible to cross-country ski through.  Made falling down softer, though . . .

It was on my way home from the track, skis hoisted over my shoulder, that I saw the young man with a camera bag coming towards me, notepad in hand.  I laughed as he approached; he was a free-lance photographer for the New York Times.  Turns out he’d spotted me because my bright red NY Flyers jacket contrasted so nicely against the snowdrifts . . .   - Uli H.