Looking Back at 2016
by Papa Bear
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| Awards: a Carrot Cake in the VCTC UEC / a Pyramid of NYCRuns 5K awards / a Carrot Muffin in a VCTC XC 5K |
If you look at the awards I won during 2016 (triptych above), you
might think I did nothing but run races and win awards. That would be a mistake,
since I was actually quite busy with other pursuits. And even though
I was happy to win awards, truth be told, there is little competition
in the 70+ age group to which I belong. At some races I was the only
one. And as you might guess, this sport gets tougher and tougher as
the years go by and I am happy to just be out there just giving it my
best efforts. The races keep me honest and my goal
is to not slow down. And by most measure I was getting about the same
times at the end of the year as at the start.
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| Dorothy and Scarecrow |
But even when I ran races and won some age group awards, the two pictures here (Dorothy and the Scarecrow left, and
me and my daughter in those hoodies, right, below) mean more to me than all those awards. You can see we were Just Plain Having Fun.
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| Me and Suzy in Hoodies |
Yes, racing is hard work, but it's
fun when you meet up with friends and family
and just enjoy yourself.
And by the way, both of these photos depict prizes: best costume award for Heidi
and me, and a couple of chance lottery prizes for Suzy, my daughter, and myself.
When I'm
just running—not racing—I go easy. And many of those "easy" runs are with friends to destinations,
sometimes to brunch and sometimes to a park or other lovely place. Among others, this year have I run to the NY Botanical
Garden, The historic 1848 High Bridge, the Cloisters, the Morris Jumel Mansion and more.
Bottom line: Yes, I won a number of age group awards, I more-or-less kept my fitness level intact, but most importantly,
I had fun with my running in 2016. You can't do much better than that!
But Speaking of "Destination Runs", here's a story of a run I did with my friend Susan a little over a week before the New Year:
December 19th: A Cold Run to the Cloisters
On December 19th, the day before the Winter solstice, Susan and I met at about
10:30
AM to run from Central Park up to the Cloisters, a distance of about 7 miles. 7 miles not enough for you? No problem, loop to your heart's content in Central Park before you head north.
It was sunny
but the temperatures were in the mid to upper 20°s. Cold, in other words. We fooled with our layers and finally
got warm enough for running, but we just couldn't stop, or we'd really feel it.
A note on the pictures: I didn't take any photos till we got to Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters —
it was too cold to take out my camera during the run. So the text doesn't catch up with the photos till around the 4th paragraph.
We took the straight route, mostly along the long
diagonal of St. Nicholas Avenue. No, we were not trying to hit any of the parks
today. We did veer up to Convent Avenue at 141st Street to check out the lovely town houses in Hamilton Heights
but got back to St. Nicholas about 152rd where it catches up to Convent. Then when we got to 154th a few minutes
later, Susan said "What's that park over there?" I said "Let's check it out" and we soon found ourselves on
Amsterdam Avenue, opposite Trinity Cemetery, which was the "Park" we had found.
These zig-zags didn't materially affect our route since
we kept heading north and we eventually had to get to the west anyway.
By 162nd Street St. Nicholas caught up to us again, so we left Amsterdam and resumed the diagonal route
north and westward on St. Nicholas. Finally at 169th we reached Broadway where it exchanges its heading with
St. Nicholas so we headed along Broadway which now took up the diagonal. If this sounds confusing, look at the
full route map (click on the map caption) and you'll "get it".
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| Fort Tryon Park |
We knew we had to move one more block west to get on Fort Washington Avenue, but it didn't much matter when we made the
switch so we chose 174th because it looked like a nice street. Now we had about one more mile on Fort Washington Ave. plus Fort Tryon Park, a lovely northern Manhattan oasis, to get to the Cloisters. And here it
was when I got out my camera taking shots in the park and inside the Cloisters.
"What's the Cloisters?" you ask? Well, if you have to ask, it
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| View of the Cloisters From the Park |
means you have never been there, and you should drop
everything and go there, like NOW! You'll find an old building made up of pieces of much older structures —
mostly parts of churches and assorted artifacts — from
medieval Europe, which I believe were mostly
stolen, oops, I mean collected by John D. Rockefeller.
The park land and the
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| Unicorn Tapestry |
Cloisters were later donated to the city. It's
actually a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of art and is one of the hidden gems of Manhattan and well worth the
run (or bus ride if you like) to get there.
I'll let the pictures tell the tale, so here is a link to a slideshow of the photos starting at the entrance to Fort Tryon Park,
going up to the Cloisters and then exploring some of the areas within:
Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters. << Don't skip this slideshow: there's some gorgeous pictures.
After spending about an hour at the Cloisters, we braved
the cold again and walked as quickly as we could down the
park road to Dyckman Street, thence to Broadway, and finding no suitable alternative, made our way to our favorite
eating place in this neck of the woods,
Indian Road Café,
the "
Last Café on the Only Road" in Manhattan.
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| Better Than Truffles |
Luckily they were open for business even though it
was after 3:00
PM on a Tuesday and there were very few other customers. But the food was as good as
ever — we both ordered Mac & Cheese with lobster and truffles. Yum! But where were the truffles? Of course,
we both ordered cold ones as well — those were better than the missing truffles, for sure!
That's all for now folks, but take my advice:
run for fun in 2017, and run to nice places!
Papa Bear
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