Race Report: New York City Runs Ice Cream Social 10K

I've been in New York for over a week now, but this is the first chance I've really had to post, as my days have been spent in the archives and my evenings have been spent either catching up with NYC friends or working on a few odds and ends related to a service project. I also didn't have internet access in the apartment where I was staying last week so I am behind on reading and commenting. I'll try to do some catching up in the next few days. Yesterday I ran a 10K over on Roosevelt Island, which was super quaint. After a week of thunderstorms and deluges, we had a day of blue skies and relatively low humidity, so the conditions were pretty much perfect for a day in late May.

View from the tram

A friend and I had both signed up for this race so we met on the Upper East Side and took the tram over to the island together. Due to being a failure at being organized, I had to pick up my packet before the race, and my one complaint about the race and/or its organization was the packet pick-up line was probably the slowest moving line I've ever been in, and, since the 5K started 30 minutes before the 10K race, about 20 minutes before the start of the 5K, the organizer let all the 5K runners jump to the front of the line. Eventually I got my bib. My friend and I headed over to use the portapotties and then to the race start, where we agreed to run our own races and meet at the end.

Before the start

The course was a no-frills double loop around the island and was the flattest course I've run in a while. I didn't really have any goals going into this race. I hadn't done any speed work for the past five weeks, as I had tapered for Vancouver, taken a zero week, and had gently eased back into running over the past couple of weeks. I thought that it might be possible for me to break 62 minutes if everything went perfectly, and for awhile I thought I might have it. Unfortunately, my lack of conditioning and the relative heat of the day (I have only run in temperatures above 40F four times since March) caught up to me in the final couple of miles. My splits were 9:31, 9:43, 10:13, 10:17, 11:02, 11:23, and 1:40. After a couple of cups of water and a popsicle and cheering for the award winners, including a 9 year old who had torn the course up, we made our way back to the tram and then headed back to our respective sides of the park.

It was my friend's first 10K and she smoked it. Her goal was to finish in under an hour, and she finished in under 56 minutes. I was impressed! I might even be a little jealous, as just last summer I ran at a faster pace than she typically did. Have you ever been envious of a friend's running improvement? U.S. friends, did you race on Memorial Day?

A Summer Itinerary

Last summer I think I changed time zones something like fifteen or sixteen times (not counting the ones I flew across in a single flight) between the end of the spring semester and the start of the fall semester. It's starting to look like this summer might rival last summer, as I am planning several trips and starting to iron out some of the more specific details. Apart from the fact that I'm going to miss my spouse and dog like crazy, I'm pretty excited about my trips!

May will take me to Vancouver for a long weekend for some downtime with my spouse and for a half marathon. Then later that month I will fly to NYC to spend about two weeks there doing some final database work for the project I was working on last summer. I'm also planning to do some research of my own while there and to visit some museums -- the Met's PUNK exhibit is seeming a pretty likely destination -- to do some running in Central Park, to hit up a yoga class or two, to do a bit of writing in the amazing New York Public Library, and to try to stay out of Century 21.

I'll spend most of June in Saint Louis, as I'll be participating in a four-week long NEH Summer Institute that's being held at a university in that city. I'm psyched to have the chance to hang out with and collaborate with a bunch of other early modernists, as I'm the only one in my department here in the Greater Whiter North. I'm definitely excited to explore a city that I haven't spent much time in up to this point, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to meet up with the fabulous Joanna before her big move. I also hope that Mark might be able to come out to join me for one of the weekends. From Saint Louis I'll head to Spain. I'm planning on spending four or five weeks there and splitting my time between archives in Madrid and Seville. I'm not sure if it will work out yet or not, but I'm considering a weekend trip to Burgos and possibly one to London or Amsterdam to visit friends. I still have to figure out accommodations for the Spanish portion of my travels, but I'm hoping that Madrid friends will let me stay with them for part of the time to help my budget stretch a little farther.

After I leave Spain, I'll probably meet up with Mark in Toronto for about a week to visit his family and to use the rare book collection at the University of Toronto Library. We'll head back home together and have about a week or so before classes start. What does all this mean for my running plans? I'm not yet sure. However, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to maintain higher mileage this summer than I was able to last, as I'm registered to run the Big Wild half-marathon here about a week after I plan on getting back into Anchorage.

Do you have any summer travels planned? What strategies do you use for getting in your runs when you're doing a lot of traveling? Also, I'm definitely taking recommendations for restaurants and coffee shops in Saint Louis, so if you have suggestions please do let me know!