runs brooklyn/brooklyn runs: Groceries, Garages, and Running into the Future

Sunday 11/12, Run #82: East Flatbush, Flatlands, Bergen Beach

Distance: 10.95 miles
Time: 1:25
Pace: 7:46
Temp: 60
Dewpoint: 58
Weather: cloudy & muggy

click on image for interactive map

Unique Miles Today: 6.95
Total Unique Miles: 644.48
Percent of Brooklyn Run: 36.99

For the complete route, click here

Notes: As astute readers have no doubt already observed, my pace was markedly slower this morning than on my freakishly fleet-footed outing on Friday. Partially, of course, this was by design, since just about every muscle from my waist down was pretty sore (especially my quads, which are usually the stalwart troopers of my musculature) and I didn't want to inflict any additional damage on my balky and occasionally insolent body. But mostly, I suspect, it was an inevitable return to statistical normalcy, a retreat from the rough and tumble frontier of anomolous outliers back to the welcoming and reassuring central countours of the bell-shaped curve. And you know what? It's good to be home.

As for the run itself -- ignore what it says up top about Bergen Beach or Flatlands or whatever, for today I ran into the future! Okay, let me explain: It's true, I remain forever bound to the same time-space continuum we're all stuck in. But I did get to run on a couple of streets that don't quite yet exist. They were on neither the Hagstrom fold-out Brooklyn map (aka the "big map") nor the Google satellite map images (which typically are pretty recent). Anyway, a stretch of what I assume will be part of E. 73rd Street was still in an inchoate state of unpaved-ness, all puddly gravel-and-dirt topography punctuated occasionally by a big yellow bulldozer. Rows of houses -- most of which seemed to be just about complete -- lined the sides (though there were more than a few broken windows), while a short, similarly unformed (and presumably unnamed) cross street connected it to the almost-completed Royce Street (which I had run some time ago). It would seem that this particular part of Bergen Beach is one of the few areas in all of Brooklyn with enough undeveloped land to build whole new streets, and now I can say I was there first. Well, except for all the construction guys and whatever. But you know what I mean.

I also finished up all of Bergen Beach today, so the completion of yet another entire neighborhood is good news, indeed. Unfortunately, it's accompanied by some not-so-good news: Bergen Beach is so far from the closest subway that today's run was my least efficient yet, in terms of covering new ground -- almost four miles today were repeats. On top of that, my legs still hurt. Yes, yes, I know, I've brought this on myself.

So, on that note, it's onward to the cream of a scanty photographic crop, a pictorial harvest rendered withery and stunted by running in a mostly residential corner of the borough featuring block after block of pleasant enough but entirely nondescript houses: