5th Avenue Mile

The much anticipated 5th Avenue Mile was this past weekend, on September 21st.  After not a lot of training, but a lot of hype, I ended up running a 4:48 for the mile.  This was what I expected I could run, and I ran pretty much how I felt.  Decent. 

This past weekend was full of "stuff" though.  Paul and Leanne came up and stayed with Jeff this weekend.  On Friday night, I ran with a co-worker in Central Park, then went out for drinks with him.  Later on in the night, I met up with Jeff, Paul and Leanne and at a Restaurant and we hung out for a while, just catching up and talking.

On Saturday morning, Kyle Dragan and Eric Finan (two guys from UC’s cross country team) came up and we ran the Big East Cross Country Course up at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.  We watched a collegiate race that Michigan dominated, and enjoyed the nice, hilly course.  The rest of the day Saturday – we hung out in Central Park and went to the zoo (all 6 of us!) and then went to grab some food.  Dragan, Finan and I went down to the Financial District and checked out the NY Stock Exchange, the Bull, then hit up Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty.  We then went to Ground Zero.  After that, we picked Christine up at the train station, and had dinner.  Then I was off to see a Broadway show!  I saw ‘Young Frankenstein’ with Jeff, Paul, and Leanne.  It was really good – funny, clever, and the music and dancing was really top-notch.  I’ve seen two shows now (Spamalot) and both didn’t disappoint. 

After the busy day of Saturday, I had to wake up early and race the mile!  We hung out the rest of the day, just watching the Bengals game at Phebe’s, the Bengals bar.  I fell asleep on the couch at 9 Sunday night, I was so exhausted.  Never a dull weekend in New York!

Settling In

I'm finally starting to settle in a bit here in NYC. I've been running with some friends/co-workers in Central Park a few nights a week, so it's been really nice to meet some people and hang out. Here's an important update though: Christine found a job! She starts on October 16th and until then she will be frelancing for the company, starting next week. She will be working on 32nd St. and 5th avenue, which is close to my office! We're both excited and happy about the offer!

Included in this post I put the picture I see every day at the bus stop. As you can see, there's a lot of buses that stop at this specific stop, and there's usually one that comes every 5 minutes or so. It's nice, because it's about a 5 minute walk to the bus stop from my place, a 15 minute bus ride, and a 10 minute walk to work from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. So it's a 30 minute commute every day, which really isn't too bad. It's broken up, and I don't have to pay attention to the road when on the bus, so that's nice. It's also less crowded and less smelly than the subways in the City. You can even see New York City in the background of the picture. I'm getting really used to public transportation, and liking how a City depends on it. I realize a city like Cincinnati couldn't really implement a subway system like the intricate one that New York City has, but the bus system could definitely use some work. I’m amazed at how many people don’t have a car, and how nobody even wants a car. It really makes sense and can save a lot of money/reduce impact on the environment. It’s really a matter of time before every city has more options for public transportation, because it’s becoming more in-demand. Plus, you get to see/meet so many more people than you would ever meet if you just sat in a car all the time. With that being said, New York City definitely has some interesting people to meet on the subways. Christine and I even made a point to notice all the types of people that live here. It’s kind of weird at first, but now I’m starting to really enjoy seeing so many nationalities, and ethnicities, and all walks of life every day on my ride/walk to work. I’m starting to feel not normal in that I’m a white, only English-speaking male. I’m part of the minority here.

Races and Celebrities

More things are beginning to happen while living in New York. First off, I ran my first race here in New York at the Fitness Games 4 miler in Central Park. I did alright, running a 24:30 for the race. That’s about a 6:10 mile pace, which isn’t great, but it’s not bad considering I’ve only been at it for 4 weeks now. It did its job of getting me pumped up to keep running and start training a little more hardcore – yet still not as insane as I was training when I was running at LaSalle or UC. I am running the 5th Avenue Mile on September 21st, which is a mile race from 80th street to 60th street down 5th avenue in Manhattan. I’m really excited about this race and excited about what I can do. Not expecting big things, but it’ll hopefully be a lot of fun. That weekend, Paul and Leanne are coming up to watch the Bengals game – we play the Giants – in the City.

I went to a Bengals Bar this past Sunday with Christine to watch us lose to a bad Ravens team. It was called Phebe’s (http://www.phebesnyc.com/) and it was entirely full of Bengals fans. Even the waiters/waitresses had Bengals apparel on, and joined in the celebrating of Bengals football. There were “chili dogs” on the menu and cheap beer – it definitely felt like watching the game in Cincinnati. I’ll definitely be going back to that place to watch the games. To make matters even better, we had our first “celebrity sighting” of Andre 3000 of the rap group Outkast. For those of you who have never heard of him, his bio is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_3000