Part of the fun of moving to a new city is that you get a blank slate - a chance to start all over again. After moving to New York, I really wanted to get back into a regular running routine. Thankfully, our proximity to Central Park has encouraged me to bust out the sneakers on a more frequent basis (thanks for the new Nikes Hubley).

From our front door, it takes me about 5-10 minutes to jog to the northwest corner of the Park (assuming I don’t stop at one of the local pizza places). Windy roads meander around the circumference of Central Park, providing plenty of space for joggers and bicyclists. And there’s always a lot of people out running, so it’s nice to have some people to chase after.

For the past week or two, I’ve ran down the western side of the Park and turned around between 70-80th Streets. The journey seems like a couple of miles round trip, but I think that perception has something to do with the hilly terrain.

On Saturday, Anna and I headed out for a run in some very humid weather. After a while, she decided to turn around and head home, while I continued southbound. Eventually, I reached the southern end of the Park, hitting Columbus Circle.

There you’ll find a lot of tourists, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, and the Time Warner Center.

From there, I decided to finish the loop around the park, which is about six miles.

Today, I did some speed work as I’ll be competing in next weekend’s Fifth Avenue Mile. The race is a sprint from 80th to 60th Street on the east side of Central Park. I’ll be running in the Men’s 15-29 flight at 9:45 a.m.

It might be hard for some people to believe, but I’ve only ran an officially-timed mile once before in my life (5 minutes, 20 seconds in H.S. track for those of you scoring at home). I’ll honestly be happy if I break six minutes. My true goal is to beat all of those overly-talented 15-year-olds.

I’m also looking forward to watching the pros race a few hours after I finish. American record-holder Alan Webb (you may have heard of him) is competing in the race this year.

I’ll try to grab some photos of him that aren’t blurry, although that may prove difficult considering he’ll average a speed of about 16 miles an hour.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 pm and is filed under Central Park, Manhattan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.