I'm Back (and in Bay Ridge)

Saturday 11/18, Run #84: Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights

Distance: 9.42 miles
Time: 1:10
Pace: 7:26
Temp: 46
Dewpoint: 34
Weather: partly cloudy

click on image for interactive map


Unique Miles Today: 7.72
Total Unique Miles: 658.27
Percent of Brooklyn Run: 37.78

For the complete route, click here

Notes: Yes, I'm back, and feeling okay after the two days off. Obviously, I'm not a dietician, physician, kinesiologist, or physical therapist and thus have no real idea why I was hurting for the last few days, but I nonetheless tried to address as many possibilities as I could. I went to bed earlier, for example, in case I was sleep-deprived. I ate everything in sight, in case I was malnourished, and drank gallons of water to allay any possible dehydration. And, of course, I tried to avoid anything that required using my legs a lot, in the event it was just a simple muscle strain. Mostly, I pretty much committed myself to 48 hours of what Dr. Nick Riviera once referred to as "assal horizontology," and simply took it easy. And while these things didn't add up to some kind of miracle cure, they all probably helped, at least judging by how I felt durning and after the run.

Anyway, I finshed up Bay Ridge today, which makes me both pretty excited (another neighborhood down!) and kind of wistful, since it's probably my favorite neighborhood for running in all of Brooklyn. Hold on a sec. Okay, now that I've shed a tear for the time I won't be spending down there any more, I'm clenching my jaw in a pose of steely resolve, gazing off into the distance, and thinking about all the places I've yet to explore. No time for sentimentality, right? After all, I've still got over 1000 miles to go...

I also hit one (kind of) big milestone today -- with the hour and ten minutes this morning I've now logged 6005 minutes of running on this project, or just over 100 hours. I'm not quite sure if that number sounds super-impressive or remarkably insignificant, but there it is, anyway.

As for completing the southern third of the borough (everything south of my oft-mentioned yet completely arbitrary 65th Street/Avenue P/Flatlands Avenue line), it looks like all I've got left is one run way out on the East New York/Queens border (by the big Post Office facility), a run in which I take the subway out to Rockaway and come back over the Marine Parkway Bridge and poke around Floyd Bennett Field a bit, and one in which I run Fort Hamilton (I'm still working on figuring that one out) and a little corner of Dyker Heights that's left near the fort. That's it! Of course, then I'll have to figure out the plan for the next few months, but I've been kind of working on that a bit behind the scenes here, and I'll post it all here when it's set. Oh, and speaking of maps, if you're wondering why the route up top is blue instead of the usual red, it represents neither a changing artistic vision nor a political statement. I simply saved the map on the gmap-pedometer website before the image itself, instead of the other way around (which is what I usually do). I think I like it better red, so it'll revert to that color tomorrow.

It was beautiful out this morning (at least for us fans of the cooler weather), and tomorrow's supposed to be more of the same. And if all's well physically tomorrow as well, I'll be out there running again. Meanwhile, photos:


Kenruby apartment building on 90th Street


What's wrong with this picture? (Bay Ridge Avenue)


68th Street


On an alley just north of Ovington Avenue


Hello Gorgeous! (Bay Ridge Avenue)