NYRR FRED LEBOW HALF-MARATHON 2018

I think Fred Lebow's spirit doesn't like me.  Back when there was an NYRR Manhattan Half-Marathon I ran it twice.  It was cold, very cold, but I run better in cold weather so I had a Personal Record with the first Manhattan Half.  There was no medal, maybe even just a shirt.  Not even a tech shirt, I think.  I'm sure I can dig it up.

At some point it became the Fred Lebow Manhattan Half-Marathon.  I signed up one year and it snowed that day so the race was declared a fun run, an unscored event.  I didn't even bother to go fearing it may be slippery.  Some years later I signed up again and again bad weather happened.  That time the entire race was cancelled but if runners wished they could go to the temporary NYRR office to pick up the medals.  It was a win-win situation for everyone - the runners got some mementos and NYRR didn't have to store the medals, or worse, toss them out.  I got the medal but of course it was quite meaningless.  I happened to work not far from the NYRR office so it was no big deal to go get the medal, even though I didn't earn it.

Fast forward to this week.  The cold grip finally let go, even if just temporarily, and the weather was beautiful.  No way there would be a cancellation or any interference from snow.

I have this week-long bout of cough that interrupted my sleep the past few nights.  The night before the race I couldn't sleep, perhaps from unnecessary worry, and the coughing made it worse.  At one point I woke up at 3 AM then went back to sleep.  Next thing I knew I woke up at 7 AM!  Pachelbel's Cannon in D as an alarm tune used to be able to wake me up before but I guess this morning my body just decided to ignore it.  The race was to begin at 8 AM, but the thing with NYRR races is that there are long corrals and staggered start times, so for a slowpoke like me it meant 8:30 or worse.  So I went to the race anyway.  Of course, just my luck, as soon as got out of the house, I saw that a subway train just pulled into my station.  So I spent some time waiting for the next train.  Thanks to a Facebook post, I knew that there would be no train going uptown to the 103rd Street Station, which would put me closest to Race Day Central.  The alternative would be to take the #1 train from Columbus Circle then get off at 103rd Street and Broadway, or something like that, and make the mad dash from there across a few avenues.  I didn't feel like running so soon so I stayed on the D train and went to 125th Street then waited some more for a downtown train.  I discovered today that those countdown clocks that the MTA installed relatively recently don't necessarily tell the truth.  If there's a delay the "3 minutes" until arrival just stay 3 minutes even if you've been waiting anxiously for more than 3 minutes.

At lost last I dropped off my stuff at bag check and ran for the start line.  The course started at 94th Street and West Drive then loop around at 72nd Street, repeated, then repeated again but ended in the 103rd Street Transverse, basically two and a half loops between 72nd Street and 110th Street.  When I entered the park, people were already doing their first loop.  Fearing there was no more start mat, I ran for 94th Street.  Mat was still there, I thought I was all set.  Soon I saw here and there a few clusters of cheer zones with teammates from Prospect Park Track Club (PPTC).  A good word here and there really helped.  As usual there were a few pairs or trios of runners who run-walk and somehow kept playing leap-frog with me.  I went along with the "race" but deep down I know it was really pointless.  I was one whole loop behind them, at some point they would just go left to finish and I would proceed to the right for my last loop.

The time came.  I started to count the number of "competitors" left on the course.  They were mostly walkers.  I was worried that Aid Stations would disappear soon, understandably, so I stopped for water at the foot of Harlem Hill.  And proceeded to walk up it.  There was so much running I could do with the mediocre running program I've been doing.  I had a short chat with an old member of PPTC, Aaron, although I couldn't find him in the team result list later on.  He wore a PPTC shirt with the design from years ago.  I learned that he was a member for some 35 years!  At the top of the hill I resumed running and passed a few more people.  We all run our own races and somebody already won but it's still good to have some targets to pass.  At Cat Hill I again walked it.  Downhill from there and it was already Mile #12.  Just another mile and 0.1 to go! I made sure I would at least run non-stop from that point on.  Finally, I reached the end and as a bonus got medalled by a PPTC team member.  I finally ran the NYRR Fred Lebow Half-Marathon and earned its medal!

Some time later, I found out my time couldn't be located.  They had me as a participant but with no finish time. As if I didn't run it.  Later in the evening, the result database showed that I finished the run in 3:47.  That's probably just gun time, starting from 8 AM.  Strava says I ran 2:47, but even that included the half-mile run from the 103rd Transverse to the start mat at 94th Street.  Strava also showed that I started running on the other side of some pond, straight across the pond to the West Drive.  I actually started running shortly after dropping off my bag on the Transverse.  Chances are my time should be 2:40, still bad compared to the 2:30 I got last year, at other half-marathons.  I guess even though the start mat was still in place, it wasn't set to record anything.  I thought maybe it was there as a checkpoint, since runners were required to pass by that point 3 times.

Just to see how things work, I'm going to write to NYRR to see if my time can somehow be corrected.  If it can be done, great, if not no biggie.

So I was able to run in a race even though I was half an hour or so late.  I normally arrive an hour early just to be safe.  I don't recommend seeing my experience as encouraging people to be tardy.  It is unfair to the organizers if they have to wait around longer than necessary.

DO NOT ALWAYS LISTEN TO GOOGLE MAPS

I love Google Maps.  Maybe Waze too, if I take the trouble to use it.  The Google universe is just too hard to resist.  I often wonder how we got around in the past without these GPS-enabled digital assistants.  However, there are times when you don't necessarily need to listen to Google Maps and such.

I recently had to be somewhere near Prospect Park, where there's a station for the Q train.  I live near the D train and can switch to the Q at the Coney Island terminal.  Alternatively, I can also catch the Q if I go the other way, but I'll have to go further for the transfer.  Google told me to go to Coney Island but I knew better.  It was early morning, like 5:30 AM or so.  There was hardly anyone going toward Coney Island but there were many people going to work, or whatever, toward Manhattan.  So I took a Manhattan-bound train and felt safer with many more people on the train.  Sure, it took longer to get to the Q later on but safety first.

Occasionally, I have the need to go from the area of Bayshore, NY to Kings Plaza Mall in Brooklyn.  The straightforward route is to take the Southern State Parkway to the Belt Parkway.  And fight traffic near Wantagh and Meadowbrook Parkways.  Normally I opt to take the Robert Moses Causeway to Ocean Parkway (the one on Jones Beach Island that runs parallel to the Southern State, not the tree-lined boulevard in Brooklyn that is the route of the NYRR Brooklyn Half Marathon).  I still have to hit the Meadowbrook in the end but it is a lot more relaxing.  It adds some distance to the trip and may not save any time, even with the smooth ride, but for me it's worthwhile.

Similarly, I usually avoid the Belt Parkway section near the JFK Airport by taking 133rd Avenue.  Or use Avenue J to avoid a section of Flatlands Avenue.  Or a combination of northbound roads to avoid the Cross Island Parkway.

The town of Leonia, NJ recently appeared in the news for their attempt to control traffic that flood their neighborhood during rush hours because of people using Waze and such.  With the new local rule in effect, drivers can be fined $200 for using streets that are now available only to local residents.  Great solution for the town but it sucks to be those drivers going through.  In general, drivers and arseholes who don't yield to anyone, so there were reports of people not even able to get out of their driveway because of the constant flow of traffic.  In the ideal world, some combination of state and town traffic agents would help control traffic flow.  I am sure money is a problem, who will pay for what.  Whatever, now we have some local rules that effectively ban the alternative routes and drivers will just have to suffer on the highway.

OUTLOOK RULE - ADDRESSED TO ME

I just sorta cleaned up my Apple iCloud mailbox.  Basically I sorted it by Unread then clicked the first item, scrolled down a bit to find the next bunch of unread messages, held down the Shift key and clicked one message, to select a big block of messages.  On the right window I had the option to set them all to Read status, just so I don't have to see the thousands of messages flagged as Unread.

For work I have a process to organize my Outlook mailbox that is a bit more elegant.  First I created, just one time of course, a folder named for me, let's call it Addressed To Blah.  Next I set up a rule that named where my name is in the To or Cc box.  The action is to move all such messages into the folder created above.  In the picture it's called Addressed To Blah.  When you work in a corporate environment, your name may be added to multiple distribution groups.  Some are really relevant to your job, others not so much.  At past jobs I wasted some time wading through all these emails to find the one that were assigned to me specifically, which usually means an answer is required or the issue at hand is really relevant to me.  I wish I can give credit to whoever came up with this rule, as I am sure I read it somewhere years ago.  With this rule in effect, the first thing in the morning I would first look at my own folder and take care of any issues that need my attention.

You can go one step further by setting this Addressed To Blah folder as the folder that's opened up when Outlook first starts.  The Options is under Advanced / Start Outlook in this folder .  This folder is already so useful, why bother even looking at the Inbox folder when Outlook first launches?  Put out any fires in your own folder first then go look at the other folders.  Chances are they are just noises, but as a responsible corporate employee, you want to at least know what's out there.

PPTC RUN BROOKLYN

Running is supposed to be an inexpensive sports.  All you need is some set of clothes and a pair of sneakers, right?  Not so if you figure in all the races you register to run in.  If you live in Metro NYC and participate with the running community long enough, you may already know about NYCRuns' volunteer program, from which you earn credits for their races.  Relatively new is NYRR's volunteer program with their OpenRun.  Every ten times volunteering for OpenRun gets you into one of the lesser highly-demanded races for free.  I have to stress the OpenRun part because volunteering at NYRR regular races do not get you any free races.  At most you get guaranteed entry into one of their highly-desired races but you still have to pay.

One other way to kinda get free races is through the Prospect Park Track Club's Run Brooklyn program.  There are a few conditions to be met, like being a paying member of the club and running only Brooklyn races, but if you are the lucky person chosen for one of the money prize, it's worth a try.  Read more at

http://pptc.org/runbk/

I just updated the big list this evening.  If there are any Brooklyn races you know about but is not listed, please let me know.

MY I.T. TOOLBOX, NOW AND BACK THEN

When I first started in the Information Technology business, MS-DOS was the standard interface.  Sure the Mac already came out but Microsoft was already the king of the hill and most businesses use DOS-based applications, clunky as they were.  The nice thing with working with MS-DOS was that I was able to walk around with a few floppy disks containing some tools of the trade.  I am sure I still have those disks in the attic somewhere, finding them is another story.  I wish I write this particular post sooner, as now my memory of those tools are vague.  For sure I know there was Norton Utilities.  Recall that this was the DOS era, command line stuff.  You can type some command (NU ?) to launch Norton Utilities with a quasi-graphical interface, kinda like two Windows Explorer window so you can copy things left to right or vice versa, among other things that at the time would take many kludgy commands to execute.  However, you can also type some two-characters commands to do a bunch of other wonderful things.  I think it was TS (text search?) to scan through the entire 20-megabyte hard drive (whoa!) to find a certain series of characters.  Some other commands allow changing the date of a file, something that couldn't be done before!  Outside of the Norton Util bundle I recall two other commands.  BAC from Byte Magazine (or was it PC Magazine?) lets me backup files from the hard drive to multiple floppy disks.  The program would pause to wait for a new, empty floppy disk when one is full.  The other was some kind of print screen command.  Maybe it was one of those Terminate-and-Stay-Resident thingy that lives in RAM and comes to the foreground when you press certain key sequences.  Sheesh, I really forgot much of this stuff, not that they are needed any more, just something from a simpler time.

The toolbox for my current work are mostly hardware.  Sure I have access to some network drives where there are certain scripts or utilities but I think of them separately.  As I go from sites to sites, or projects to projects, to setup new computers, printers, etc I find it very helpful to have the following items handy.

Wireless service is nice but when it comes to imaging of computers via pulling files over the network, a physical Ethernet cable is still needed.  From time to time, I would need to borrow some existing computer's network connection to do my work.  On more than one occasion, it was much easier to disconnect the cable from the lender computer, snap it to a Ethernet coupler, connect the other end of the coupler to the computer I need to build.  The alternative would be try to trace the cable back to some jack that may require moving tons of stuff.  Back when Internet access involved dial-up service over regular phone lines, I used to have a few couplers for telephone cables.  Same idea with Ethernet couplers.  I got mine from Micro Computers in Queens, NY on Kissena Boulevard but they can be bought in most stores catering to technicians, so I would rule out Best Buy and such, unless you go through their web site.

If I have my way, I wouldn't need to drive to my work sites.  All my work sites would be reachable by NYC subway, or maybe even by PATH trains, so I wouldn't have to deal with traffic jam, parking, and other drivers.  But the nice thing with driving is I can keep in the car a bunch of things that I might need for work.  Like network cables, VGA cables, DP-to-VGA adapter, power cables, printer USB cables, etc.  I even have a keyboard with a PS/2 connection.  There was a time when the computer image I used did not have the proper driver loaded and mouse or keyboard connected via USB wouldn't be recognized.  Luckily the computer had a PS/2 connection and I was able to make it work with the PS/2 keyboard I keep in the car.  Sometimes old technology works better than the new ones!

Last but not least, attached to the lanyard that holds my work ID I have a pair of screwdrivers, Philip and slot.  They are useful most of the times, but occasionally I need to use something like the Eclipse Enterprise 20-in-1 Telescoping Magnetic Screwdriver, http://www.microcenter.com/product/206265/20-in-1_Telescoping_Magnetic_Screwdriver .  Call me Inspector Gadget if you wish, but I like to be prepared.  There's only so much MacGyvering one can do, in real life anyway.

HEY GOOGLE

This evening I just started watching the old Arnold Schwarzenegger mover The Running Man.  Funny thing is I noticed from the text scroll in the very beginning of the movie says the story happened in 2017.  Just last year, in real life!  We certainly had some weird political events last year but thankfully no reality TV show that features someone running for their life.  Not last year anyway but who knows what is coming out this year or the next.

Something else that I noticed was that in one scene upon returning to her apartment a woman spoke to the "computer" to have the lights turned on, coffee machine start brewing, and the TV set to a certain channel.  Hello, Alexa!  Or Siri, or Google!

A Google Home Mini recently invaded my home and I've played a bit with it. Back when Siri first came out, I still had some non-iPhone and sorta wished I had one.  When I actually owned an iPhone, I barely used Siri.  With Google Home, I already played around with these commands and questions:

• Who let the dogs out?
• Who shot J.R.?
• Why is the sky blue?
• Play music from the 1980s
• Good morning
• What is being played at United Artist Sheepshead Bay?
• Open the pod bay door
• Sing Happy Birthday
• Sing Old MacDonald
• Sing the United States National Anthem (no dice there, I would need to subscribe to some music service)

I like the gadget.  Sometimes I wish "she" would somehow know the question is silly and be wisecrack about it instead of giving the scientific answer.  It's a great speaker too.

THIS WEEK IN CITYSTRIDES: BROOKLYN, NEW YORK AT 20%

Happy New Year!

I started the new year by volunteering for my track club's handicap race and pot luck party.  One aspect of the event is a storytelling session after the race, with anecdotes about the club's past and current members.  I especially like the story about them interacting with Fred Lebow - yes, the Fred Lebow of New York Road Runners Club fame.

The last week of the year I had a few time-off days to burn, it was a use-it-or-lose-it situation.  Everyday of the week was cold but I wanted to maintain my tiny lead for New York, NY* in CityStrides so everyday I was out there running a few miles to add nodes.  Every little bit helps and currently I'm at 20% completed for Brooklyn and 9% completed for New York, NY.  Deep down I know that, because CityStrides round off to the nearest integer, I don't really have 20% and 9% but more of 19.x% and 8.y%, but it looks better this way.

In case you wonder, CityStrides has a little gadget at the upper left corner used for rotating or tilting the map.  I used it to achieve the view below.  Brooklyn, NY's height is longer than its width so that in order to include its northernmost portion, the area below Newtown Creek, I would normally have to zoom out further.  However, by tilting the map along the Z-axis you can see further without zooming out further.

* New York, NY in the CityStrides sphere means New York City itself, comprising of the five boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island.  It does not mean the New York, NY as used by the United States Postal Service, which means just Manhattan and nearby islands plus Marble Hill, which is physically part of the Bronx but was originally part of Manhattan Island.

RESOLUTIONS 2018

Yes, it's that time of the year to make a bunch of promises that we won't be able to keep.  For shits and giggles, here are my 2018 Resolutions:

• Make more money somehow as my son will start college in September.  Ask for a raise at work, find another better-paying job, sell a kidney...  I don't know, there must be a legal way to get it done.
• Keep on running regularly, ideally everyday.  Recently I started to practice run-in-any-clothes.  As long as I have a pair of comfortable shoes on, I can run.  I do keep a pair of shoes in the car, so technically as long as I don't end up working long hours into the evening, or have something at home I need to rush home to take care of, I should be able to run everyday after work.
• Better leverage my unique skill of "writing" while running.  Maybe there is some ad agency out there looking for such talent.  I should try to market myself better, who knows.  Think Humana, Runner's World magazine...
• Less lurking on social media.  There is only so much usefulness, if any, to be extracted through looking at the "news" on social media.  This includes "planning" in CityStrides.  It is no use planning so much on where to run to hit the most number of nodes.  Just do it when you are physically in the area.
• De-clutter a lot more.  With my recent experiments with Amiga emulation, I couldn't find the $70 disc containing KaraFonts I needed.  I was lucky that the fonts were available on Aminet, but with other things I wouldn't be so lucky.  It's been a few years now that many kinds of plastic are accepted for recycling in New York City, I should take advantage of that and recycle stuff without feeling guilt.

READY OR NOT, HERE COMES 2018!!!

FOND OF ANIMFONTS

At work I have no choice but work with Windows computers but at home I mostly compute with my MacBook Pro.  At one time years ago I actually got things done on an Amiga computer, or on various Amiga computers as I did go through a few of them over the few years.  It was fun and useful for a while but at the time when most people would easily get on the Internet to surf the web, with everything needed included on 3.5" floppy disks or CDs, all free, the Amiga platform would require so much more additional work.  You would have to buy the dialer, some TCP/IP stack, the web browser, the email client, argh, too much work.  I went Windows for a while, with its clunky Windows 95 and all, then went Mac, with a Wall Street Powerbook.

One thing I miss greatly, and not able to reproduce on Windows or Mac platform, animated text like the ones shown below.  They are made with the use of animfonts (animated fonts).  Based on a blog post of mine back in 2005 (http://www.qaptainqwerty.com/2005/11/amiga-forever.html ) I created some animated GIF (animgif or GIF for short), possibly on a Packard-Bell PC running Windows 95, via the Amiga Forever emulator software.  When I went over to the Mac platform, no more Amiga Forever.  Cloanto developed Amiga Forever only for the huge Windows market.  Sure Amiga Forever is based on the publicly available UAE (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator) software but I don't have the time or willingness to muck around with Unix codes and such to make these things work on the Mac.  Every few months or years I would Google "Mac UAE" and probably tried to make MaxUAE work but failed.  Most recently I tried FS-UAE and that effort too got nowhere.  Luckily, while looking for ROM files on an Amiga Forever 2010 disc, to feed to FS-UAE, I came across E-UAE, some Amiga emulation software for the Mac, again based on UAE.  After a few hours of tweaking and configuring, I finally have the ability to generate animated text again.  Only twelve years since 2005!  Maybe someday I'll share my experience jumping through hoops to make E-UAE to run on my Mac.  In the mean time, enjoy the messages below.

RELIVE

With Relive, I can playback my runs in all their glory.  With a premium account, you can keep all the videos in your account and do other things with them.  For me, I just share them to Facebook and Instagram, and occasionally here on Blogger.  Still, ain't technology great?  Click on the individual video to play it, there is an option to play at full-screen too.

Amy rules

Bergie

Menorah

Linda

THE YEAR IN GWRITING, PART TWO

In 2017, I actually won a contest with my run-art/gwriting/StravaArt, did some special requests from fans, and saw my work went to the dogs, in a good way, and, last but not least, created a menorah.

Just donut {swoosh}

Some time in August I found out from my track club's Facebook group that there was a donut-themed contest.  Draw anything donut-inspired for a chance to win a dozen donuts and entries into the Montclair Bread Company 5K Doughnut Run.  I actually came up with two designs, one of a donut being dunked into a cup plus the "Just donut {swoosh}" above.  Supposedly competition was light but I won that's all that matters.

Amy rules

In November, I asked for suggestions of what to write during future runs and one of the response was "Amy rules".  What's interesting with this particular task was that on that day I went for an NYRR OpenRun at Cunningham Park.  I planned to get there ahead of time to gwrite "Amy rules" before OpenRun started.  However, I made the mistake of trusting my memory, instead of Google Maps, and ended up getting lost briefly. Not totally lost, mind you, I still know my Queens geography, just enough to lose time and not able to finish the gwriting prior to OpenRun.  I used Strava app to do the writing so I simply paused it when I was done with "Amy".  Went to do OpenRun with Runkeeper app, then returned to where I was and un-paused Strava and proceeded to finish the whole two-word sentence.  Oh yes, it was no coincidence that I made "Amy rules" in the borough of Queens.

Bergie

Another suggestion came from the owner of a dog named Bergamot Grey, or Bergie for short.  Other dog names that I made in 2017 were Bandit and Beemer.  Just by coincidence that they all start with the letter B.  Yes, I am a dog person, but I do have a not-too-strict rule that dog names shouldn't be names normally reserved for people, such as Michael or Peter.

This Menorah Was Really Good

With the holiday season approaching, a Jewish friend asked if I could draw a dreidel.  Or a menorah.  Sure, I can.  New York City has many rectangular city blocks and a menorah with squarish branches could be drawn in many places.  But what if we want one that has nice, round branches?  As I reviewed the map for NYC, my first choice was the Mill Basin peninsula in Brooklyn.  However, unless I can walk on water (Jesus Christ!) or if Moses can part the water for me, there was no place draw the handle of the menorah.  A better choice was the crescent-shaped streets of Rego Park, Queens.  A few people were interested and we ended up having a small convoy of cars to make the trip from Prospect Park to Rego Park.  Shown above is my test run, during which I mistakenly lit the candles in the wrong spot.  I should know better that a few things in the Judaica world go from right to left, not unlike Chinese.  For the group run, we did it right to left but the flames didn't show that well.

THE YEAR IN GWRITING

The first title I thought for this blog was “This Week In Gwriting”, which is a nod to Leo Laporte’s podcast "This Week In Tech". I didn’t get around to writing the blog post and the year 2017 is almost over, so without much further ado, let us review some of the Gwritings, or StravaArts, I made this soon-to-be-over year.

Linda

My most recent oeuvre, made just this Christmas Day.  It was not the first time I made a Linda route.  Back in August while vacationing in the exotic island of Aruba, one hot steamy morning I ran Linda but the non-grid streets threw me off.  It took a while before I found the chance to redo it, on the streets of un-exotic Brooklyn, New York.  While I can easily cut through a city block to make the middle section of the letter "a", I try to avoid relying on the trick.  While planning the run, I picked Flatlands Avenue as the street that will naturally provide the needed line.

Grab A Bite With Jimmy




"Grab A Bite With Jimmy" is another run-art that makes good use of the existing environment, i.e. no Dark Magic via the use of GPS app's pause function.  Well, to a certain extent.  Jimmy is this friend of mine who seems to have a very healthy appetite.  The quasi-roundabout near Zucker-Hillside Hospital provided the perfect round-ish food that Jimmy seems to eat a lot of.  However, to achieve the bite mark I did have to use Dark Magic.  While I have no plan of drawing offensive pictures any time soon, this was my early foray into drawing, not just writing.

Make Some Noises With Adam

I followed the success of "Grab A Bite With Jimmy" by making "Make Some Noises With Adam".  Adam won two awards earlier in the year from the track club.  Instead of wooden plaques or paper certificates, the prizes were cowbells.  Very useful for a cheerleader like Adam!  To get the trapezoidal shape of the cowbell I did have to resort to my special trick to make the slanting lines.

Resist With Lisa, Sort Of

Back in February, I made "resist" and dedicated to Lisa LMK and others who, duh, resist the current administration.  In November I wanted to make the both the fist and the word "Lisa" but I ran out of time.  Yes, these things take time.  Sorry, Lisa LMK!  I still have the area where "Lisa" would be, I'll return to the area some day to do it.  "Lisa" and fist will appear together in CityStrides, that web site that gives me so much joy and aggregation aggravation.

There are more but there are a few more days left of the old year.  I might make another post just yet!

SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OTIS AVENUE

I love it when two of my areas of interest intermix.  The title of this blog post refers to the phrase SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OTIS.  I don't know anyone named Otis or why he was told to sit on the pan.  It's just that the phrase is a palindrome – it spells the same from left to right and from right to left.  You'll have to ignore the comma and move the spaces around, of course.  I first learned about palindromes in a computer class for the BASIC language.  Recently I found a new love in CityStrides.com.

CityStrides.com let runners and walkers overlay a map of places they visited.  It seems like an impossible task – literally travel along all the streets in your town or places you visited.  In my case, that would be primarily New York City.  For some reason, out of the five boroughs, Brooklyn and Manhattan are also considered their own individual city.

Work and family constrains do not allow me to cover as much of my hometown Brooklyn as I want to so for now I try to maximize my coverage of NYC instead, as I regularly get sent to Staten Island and also travel through the Bronx.  The way CityStrides calculate percent completed has nothing to do with a street's length.  For example, let's say a city has a Main Street that goes for miles and miles.  Then there are also many streets that only stretch for a few hundred feet.  If someone were to focus primarily on completing Main Street while someone else covers all the shorter streets, guess who will have a better completion rate?  Yup, not the Main Street guy because by the end of the day, he may have just one out of the total streets completed.  Fair enough, really.

In trying to take advantage of this seemingly erroneous percent complete (which really is not erroneous), I try to cover all the short streets whenever possible.  Streets that are identified as Place or Lane are usually very short, one- or two-block long.  Then I came across Otis Avenue in the Bronx, in the Schuylerville area.  Imagine my surprise after walking along it and not finding it considered completed per CityStrides.  I searched for it in CityStrides and lo and behold there actually are three different Otis Avenues in New York City.  One in the Bronx, another in Queens, not far from Flushing Meadows Park, and yet a third one in Staten Island, just north of Miller Field.  The three locations are shown as series of green hexagons in the picture below.  Personally I think it is a mistake to consider the three Otis Avenues as three parts of one thing.  They just happen to share the name Otis and then also happen to be avenues.  New York City was not composed of the five boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens.  So at some point before the merger, streets were named independently and Otis Avenue happen to appear three times in the three different boroughs.  Just my semi-educated guess, of course.  CityStrides gets its data from OpenStreetMap, so if anything is to change it would have to come from OpenStreetMap.  Maybe I'll study OpenStreetMap and somehow I.D. the three Otis Avenues with suffix to make them unique to the borough and not considered part of "one street".  Highly unlikely I'll mess around with OpenStreetMap, as it seems to be a lot more involved than editing a page in Wikipedia.

Lucky for me, I happened to start participating in NYRR Open Run at Flushing Meadow Park.  I usually get there early and have time to walk around.  Otis Avenue of Queens was knocked out during my first run at FMP.  Next came Otis Avenue in Staten Island, where my son attends high school and I also work there regularly.  Easy for me, but I am sure the typical runner who have a job with a fixed office will find it hard to complete these erroneously longer streets.  Take that, Otis Avenue, go sit on a pot for all I care!

BED-STUY RESTORATION 10K AND INAUGURAL IMAGINE ACADEMY 5K

I love my "job" with the Prospect Park Track Club.  The Club has a program whereby members are encouraged to run with local races, i.e. those that are based in Brooklyn.  The program, Run Brooklyn, dictates that participants should run in six Brooklyn races that are professionally-timed then get a chance to win money prizes at the Club's annual award dinner.  "Brooklyn races" means the run course must start and end in Brooklyn, such that events like the Tunnel To Tower, which starts on the Brooklyn side of the Battery Park Tunnel but ends in the old World Trade Center site, does not count.  The "professionally-timed" condition eliminates fun runs like the Color Run series, whereby participants' time isn't recorded.

By way of suggestions, announcement of the Run Brooklyn program would list a handful of Brooklyn races, just the names.  I volunteered to maintain a spreadsheet containing the race names, dates, URL for registration purposes, and additional tidbits like whether the race coincides with a popular event.  After a few years of maintaining the spreadsheet, I also maintain a calendar that is embedded into the PPTC.org site.  The info in the spreadsheet and the calendar is mostly the same but the calendar has the advantage of also listing NYRR races, the big gorilla in the market, so that when events happen on the same day, participants can make an informed decision which race to register for.

I made such an informed decision today when I forwent the NYRR Staten Island Half and ran in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration 10K.  Staten Island used to be a mysterious place that I drive through along I278 from the Verrazano Bridge to the Goethal Bridge, or some other bridge, but after spending a large amount time working there, along with running in a few races there as well, the novelty is not there any more for me.  I like to run in different locations and this year the Bed-Stuy 10K fits the bill.

The Bed-Stuy 10K had its staging area in Restoration Plaza, which is near the corner of Fulton Street and New York Avenue.  All under one big white tent on the Plaza were a stage, DJ stand, registration table, refreshment tables, and some vendor tables.  Refreshment included coffee, bananas, half-cut bagels, small apples, and orange juices, which I believe was all donated from the nearby Super Foodtown supermarket.  In a nearby building, runners were treated to indoor plumbing for their sanitary needs, as well as a bag check area.  Maybe I was not too aware of my surrounding but I found out about the bag check purely by accident.  I think there should be more signs to point out the restroom and bag-check service.

The first event this year was the Kiddie Run.  Some five little kids, two as young as four years of age, ran a few yards to the Finish Line on Herkimer Street behind the Restoration Plaza.  Next we had a workout session led by an instructor on the floor of the big tent and three leaders on the stage.  It was a good workout, plenty enough to loosen all your muscles for the upcoming race.

There was no music along the race course but if there was "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds should be played.  Look at the course map!  I was afraid that I would run the wrong way because there were so many turns.  At the start, I asked a few runners near me if they were familiar with the course but they either were running the untimed 5K or not know the course.  Luckily the corners were well-staffed, either by event personnel or by NYPD.  A safety cone with the proper directional arrow also helped in case you missed the instruction from the staff.  Something else I could use along the course was more water.  There was a station at Mile 2 and again at Mile 4, but by the time slowpoke me got to Mile 4 there was no more cups.  I think there was some water left in the water cooler, yes, the sort used in your typical cubicle office, but I didn't want to stop completely to drink from the faucet.  Luckily, it was rainy for most of the race and I cooled down enough to not need water that much.  I don't know the history of the race course so it might be that way all these years, with the many turns, so maybe not much can be done about it.  During the last two miles, I so looked forward to seeing the finish arch from a distance to get me going stronger.  It never came as the arch was just down the road after the final turn.

For every run turn turn turn / There is a reason turn turn turn

Bed-Stuy 10K, now in its 36th year, was well-organized despite all its turns.  A few weeks back I ran an inaugural race that had some teething pain.  From the elitefeats mailing list I discovered the inaugural Imagine Academy For Autism 5K in Marine Park, the actual park, not just the neighborhood.  The race course was just the outer loop of the park, which I ran many times already with NYRR Open Run, so the novelty attraction wasn't there for me.  Open Run covers 3 loops, for a total of about 2.5 miles, the Imagine 5K went for a little over 3.5 to reach about 5K.

The race was supposed to start at 10 AM but there was a speech or two and the race didn't really until 10:30.  It was a hot day so the extra half-hour made a little difference.  Although the course was just a few loops of the park, there was no water station anywhere.  After I did my 3.5 loops, the finish line was totally blocked by finishers.  People were just milling about in front of the finish mat, chatting, taking photos, snacking etc.  Perhaps because it was the first time for these people to participate in a race but the situation could be helped by having the refreshment table a few yards AFTER the finish line, not mere feet in front of it.  Lastly, there was no trash container anywhere to collect all the wrappers, fruit peels, etc.  Responsible runners had to go a few yards away to squeeze the trash into already-packed receptacles.  Hopefully next year these issues won't be present.

WHAT IS IN YOUR WALLET, MOFO?

It is Public Service Announcement time!

As Samuel L. Jackson might have asked in a TV commercial, "What is in your wallet, MOFO?"  Some day the majority of people will do everything with their smartphones and may not carry a wallet any more.  For now, most of us still do and sadly, sometimes the wallet get lost or stolen.

I read a tip a long time ago that said we all should regularly lay out the various cards we carry in our wallet and photocopy them for record-keeping.  I know, photocopy, I said it's an old tip, didn't I?  These days everything is photographed by the smartphone, like I just did below.  Of course yours won't have the white rectangle when you do it.  Yes, I have many more items in my wallet, but the four shown are enough to illustrate the point.  Yes, I like reward accounts.

The idea is to have all the important info from the cards in your wallet in a convenient location.  You would have the cards laid out, snap a photo, then flip them over and snap the other side.  Ten cards per layout may be the optimal number.  Should the unfortunate thing happens (your wallet is lost!), you would go back to these photos and call your credit card companies etc to cancel the accounts or update them on your situation.  Sure you can be more diligent and create a spreadsheet, or something better, to track your wallet, but I am sure snapping photos works best for most people.

It is probably best to print out the photos you took and keep the prints in some safe location at home.  If your wallet is stolen, the smartphone may be stolen along with it.  To be extra safe, delete the photos from the smartphone, or whatever camera you used to snap them, no chance the info is gleaned should someone play around with your phone.

May your wallet be with you for a long time!

CITY STRIDES PROGRESS REPORT - BROOKLYN, NY AT 13%

Captain America appears a few times, in the form of a pep talk video, in the movie Spiderman: Homecoming.  One of the topic he talked about is Patience.  Sometimes you need lots of it.

I have an intense interest in seeing my map updated in CityStrides. But I need a lot of patience.  It is nice that syncing happens transparently but there is a big backlog that resulted during the transition period.  I'm now at 13% completed for Brooklyn but I only noticed it today.  While I don't run in Brooklyn as much as I like to, I do try to target not-yet-ran streets and that strategy seems to pay off.  I just have to be patient and wait for syncing to happen with Strava, which seems pretty quick, but with Runkeeper the activities usually show up 24 hours afterward.  I usually use Strava for runs then keep track of walks in Runkeeper.  I don't want to inundate my Strava feed with the short walks that I do during lunch or at places of business that I visit.  Once the activities show up, you have to be patient and wait for the Streets Completed and Streets Progressed to be calculated.  A little more time then the city completion rates will be calculated.  In this case, Patience has its rewards.

There is a forum where questions get answered by James Chevalier himself.  I visit it from times to times to see what's going on.  If someone already asked a question that I have then I'll just wait for it to be answered instead of throwing out more of the same questions.

One interesting tidbit I recently learned is that city percent completion has little to do with street length.  Personally I like to run long, like from one end of town to the other, as far as possible without being late for work or other important aspects of life.  One long line by one long line I would have a grid created.  While the map then looks nice, if those streets I ran are long and I don't have them 90% completed, then they don't contribute to the percent completed.  On the other hand, if I find the many short streets and complete them, my percent completed will shoot up sharply.  It feels like cheating but that's how it's done.

Given enough time, those big zeroes for Streets Completed and Streets Progressed will be resolved to some non-zero numbers.  Unless I ran in some big parking lot just because I like to have lines all over the super-block.

New on the 13% map is "Adam" and his cowbell in Sunset Park, the inaugural Coney Island Creek 5K, which took place inside Kaiser Park, which I already ran many times, but thanks to a short pre-race warm-up and a post-race walk, a few more streets turned purple.

RUN ART GETTING MORE GRAPHIC

I'm pretty good at spelling out letters and words during my runs, as seen in "Crystal" and "Heather" below, some recent samples.

Naturally, my friends asked if I ever drew actual pictures, not just letters and numbers.  While I did a few, the majority of my run arts have been limited to just letters and numbers.  With my special block-cutting technique, technically anything can be drawn, given enough time and proper planning.  And so I did, recently, advance to the next phase of my run art, with "Jimmy" and "Adam". 

With the "Jimmy" piece, there is this roundabout traffic circle in Glen Oaks, Queens that I have yet covered on my CityStrides map. I have this friend Jimmy who is well-known for his strong appetite. The roundabout made a perfect food item, whether a bagel or a donut.  The fun got better as I tried to include a bite mark in the food item.  Of course, I had to use my virtual trespassing technique to make the bite mark.

Adam is another friend in the run community.  A great runner himself, he loves to cheer fellow runners with his cowbells.  Not just the small cowbells somewhat cube-ish type, but the real, rectangular ones.  Every year, Prospect Park Track Club has a dinner party at which members receive awards as voted by the club.    In past years, the awards came in the form of a plaque or similar form.  In 2016, someone came up with the excellent idea of awarding cowbells!  So useful!  Adam won in two categories and now often carry them to the cheer zone, thus in my run art there's a cowbell after his name.  To achieve the angular shape of the cowbell, I again resorted to cutting through city blocks.

CONEY ISLAND CREEK 5K

I like pleasant surprises.

My friend Josh was instrumental in helping to bring back the Brooklyn Triple Crown series of footraces.  The series ran for many years but after Hurricane Sandy hit New York the series went away.  I already knew about the Staten Island Triple Crown and even ran two out of the three races.  The same people, Complete Race Solutions and the Staten Island Athletic Club, organize both series.

For some reason I thought the Coney Island Creek 5K (CIC5K) was going to take place on a Sunday.  It's summertime and the family wants to have things to do on Sundays so it appeared I wouldn't be able to participate.  What I love about the CIC5K is it was really close to home.  It is basically within Kaiser Park near Mark Twain Middle School.  I used to run there regularly.  I cannot stand races that require me to travel more than an hour, wait around perhaps another hour, then do the race in 30 minutes or more, then another trek to get home.  With the CIC5K, I would be able to just walk over, 20 minutes maybe, 30 minutes top.

Eventually I realized that the race would be on a Saturday.  Sure I could register but I was going to take advantage of the special discount on Independence Day.  I should have registered during the day because in the evening the family watched the fireworks display on the beach of Coney Island and the exodus from the area was horrible.  I don't know for sure what caused the traffic jam, maybe just too many cars leaving the area at the same, from the fireworks and from the soccer game at MCU Park.  Or maybe it was because of some FDNY truck blocking one of the lane.  Whatever it was, I got home really late and missed the discount deadline.  I was bummed.  But then Thursday night I happened to pass by the packet pickup site, VitaminShoppe at Caesar's Bay.  I figured it's a local race that I want to support so I finally registered that evening.

I did walk to the race site, in 31 minutes according to Strava.  I met friend Sheldon for a warmup run on the nearby streets.  At the NYRR Queens 10K a few weeks ago, I also had a warmup run and I felt better during and after the actual race.  I thought from now on I should always have a warmup run.  Besides, I need to cross off a few streets in the area, for CityStrides.com of course.  I am sure I ran the nearby streets before, somehow the lines don't show in CityStrides.  As more friends show up, I learn that Jimmy is in my age group and I joked that my hope for first-place age group is dashed, I would have to settle for second-place.  With the typical NYRR and NYCRuns races, the number of participants is so large that the chance of a slowpoke like me winning anything is infinitesimally small.  The chance is greater with the smaller races and there are many such races in the City.  I recently turned 50 years old too so there is hope there too.  One popular joke is that if you live long enough, eventually as long as you finish a race you'll win because you'll be the only person in the Age Group.  There weren't that many people at the CIC5K but I didn't know who else were in my Age Group, other than Jimmy.  I would just have to do my best and hope for the best.

There was no start mat.  When the time came, the race director walked the group over to the starting line and, after a few speeches, gave us the signal to go.  I was only a tad behind the starting line, probably at the fifth row, with about five or six people per row.  I jokingly asked "Where is Corral L?"  There was no need for a corral, just a small group of people.  During the warmup run, my left knee felt a bit weird.  The pain seemed to travel down below the calf but it went away afterward.  I did more stretching during the wait for the race to start.  Whatever it was I held back a bit in the beginning.  It was a bit scary to see all the runners in front of me taking off.  I just kept my regular pace.  There was no need to dodge slow runners because there were not that many people and the course was wide enough.  One by one I passed the kids then the women who went into walking mode.  I know, nothing to write home about, but in the running world, lots of time the little kids are pretty fast and so are the women.  Just as I started to pass the front of Mark Twain M.S., some guys started to pass me.  I thought they were such fast runners that they already started to lap me, even though I didn't even hit the first mile yet.  I found out later that they were late-comers, speedy ones, who thought the race was scheduled for 9 A.M.  It was 8:30 A.M. but got delayed a bit.  I kept moving and again passed two more women.  There was a third woman but I couldn't catch up to her in the first mile.  By the second mile, she had to take walking break and it was my chance to pass her but before I did that she resumed running.  A short while later, by the sandy portion of the course, she walked again and this time I actually passed her.  My lead was short-lived as she resumed running shortly after I passed her and she regained the lead.  Unfortunately for her not long after passing me she had to walk again.  I once again passed her and kept going.  I should have studied the course better and only knew vaguely that it was two times around the park, that the third time I hit the entrance to the track I should enter it for about a loop of the track.  I wasn't sure by the time I finished the second loop of the park and had to ask the race director to confirm.  I was so glad it was over.  Hot and humid weather does not work well for me.  I perform better in cold weather.

Award ceremony took place by registration table.  First we had the overall winners then came the Age Group awards.  Many of my teammates from the Prospect Park Track Club won Age Group awards, many in first-place.  For my Age Group, 50-59, when the third-place winner was announced and it wasn't me, my hope was dashed.  Oh well, run faster or find another small race, I thought.  But it turned out I was the second-place winner, with Jimmy in first-place, just as I joked before the race.  Pleasant surprise indeed!

Last month I ran the Harbor Fitness 5K in Bayridge.  There were many raffle prizes given out but I didn't win anything.  In the days leading up to the CIC5K, Josh had many announcements on Facebook about so-and-so sponsors had come on-board and will offer raffle prizes.  In addition to the Chipotle BOGO coupon and $2 (?) Coney Island Brewing Co. that every runner would get, that is.  There were indeed many prizes, ranging from baseball caps to socks then $15 Grimaldi coupon and $25 Brooklyn Running Co. gift card.  There were other very high-valued prizes too that I cannot recall at the moment.  Knowing my luck, I didn't expect much but when the winner for the last $25 BRC gift card was picked, the person wasn't present and my number was picked!  Woohoo!  Second-place Age Group AND a $25 gift card, the day sure started on a good note!

THE GREAT SAUNTER 2017, PART 2

The Great Saunter, organized by Shorewalkers, is a 32-mile walk (mostly) on the shores of Manhattan Island.  The schedule set forth by Shorewalkers has the walk start at 7:30 AM from Fraunces Tavern near the southern tip of the island.  Walkers would go along the Hudson River up to the northern tip then return to the south (mostly) along the East River.  Most should finish back at the Tavern by 7 PM the same day.

I don't know what I was thinking but I figured that if I can finish a marathon, distance = 26.2 miles, in 5.5 hours, another 6 miles maybe requires one more hour, so I should be able to finish the Saunter in 7 hours, 8 top.  The only trouble is I won't be running, more like a leisurely walk.  Yes, in the beginning I wished to catch up to the front of the group so I walked a bit faster than others, but then I also stopped to remove outer layers or to take photos of the surrounding.  That was part of the reasons for the walk, to enjoy the scenery.  Five hours or so I only finished half the walk, somewhere past the George Washington Bridge.  It was kinda like getting off the last exit of the Long Island Expressway, it was the end of the highway but there is actually lots more road to drive on.  Lately work has me in the southern end of Staten Island and to me it looks countryside.  Houses far apart, no sidewalks in some places.  Except in the Inwood area it felt like walking in a forest.  The big bridges here and there reminded me I wasn't outside of civilization, then there were also the baseball fields as well as buildings in the Bronx just across the water.

Henry Hudson Bridge, it goes on and on.

Before we exit Inwood Hill Park, there was a rest area where Shorewalkers staff provided snacks and drinks.  Some experience walkers brought along sandwiches and such.  I figured we would not be far from civilization and could always stop by a deli to get a sandwich or something to munch.  I was lucky the rest area had a green market just across the street from it.  I was tempted to have a big lunch but with about 16 more miles to go I had just half a sandwich.  And a nice cold apple cider, plus a chocolate chip cookie.

After the break, the route got a little more challenging.  So far, it was a matter of having the water of the Hudson River to our left to stay on course.  After Inwood Hill Park, we were back in the urban jungle with buildings and traffic in all directions.  Unlike those long stretch of shores with few people around, where you can easily spot the walkers far ahead of you, usually with the white Shorewalkers caps, on the crowded city street it wasn't so easy.  The organizer prepared a nice map for us but I figured I could find my way to the East River, or to be exact the Harlem River.  I got toward the correct general direction but to be safe I asked a trio of fellow walkers waiting to cross the street.  It was a fortunate move because even though I was able to walk alone the whole time by then I was getting tired and could use some chit-chat to make the trek more bearable.  The trio turned out to be husband-and-wife team P. and T., the other person being a seasoned Shorewalker, C.  We stayed together for the rest of the walk, down Harlem River Drive, briefly onto the streets of Harlem, passed over part of the Percy Sutton 5K, then finally along 111th Street to get to the East River waterfront.  My favorite part of the walk was in Inwood because I never visited the area before.  Even though I haven't been to the waterfront of the Upper East Side in a while, it was familiar territory so it was a bit boring.  Still nice and there were surprises, like Gracie Mansion, which I thought was some huge complex with fences and guards, far away from the common folks, but it seemed more approachable than I would, and smaller too, but it may be just from one view.

Among the four of us we share stories about travel, food, walking, CityStrides.com, NYC sights, etc.  It helped to pass the time and slowly we whittle down the miles.  We had to take restroom breaks here and there and our pace got slower and slower but we soldiered on.  It didn't help that the sky became overcast and cooler.  At last we saw the Williamsburg Bridge from far away.  The home stretch!  First Williamsburg, then the Manhattan Bridge, and then not that far away, the Brooklyn Bridge.  Unbelievable, all that walking for a paper certificate and bragging right!  But it was a lot of fun, much to see in the city no matter how long you live here.

Just as we arrived back at the Tavern to collect our certificates, it started to rain, not heavily, just enough to get the paper certificates wet if we stayed outside.  Inside the Tavern it was crowded but we managed to find a table, where they only serve drinks.  If I had known ahead I would make some friends, I would make reservations.  We had a celebratory drink, took a group photo or two, then parted ways, with contact info exchanged.  Just as I stepped back outside, the wind was really strong and I shook uncontrollably!  Maybe my body finally reached its limit?  Luckily the shaking went away as I kept walking.  I even recovered enough to find a Chipotle to have dinner.  The subway ride home wasn't so bad, the waiting didn't seem that long.

Oh the agony of the feet!  Unlike a marathon where muscles in different parts of the body ache, for me with the Great Saunter, it's mostly with the feet.  The smalls of the back hurt a little too.  Lucky for me, by Sunday evening, some 24 hours later, I was able to walk normally, mostly.  I actually walked over 3 miles to complete a few more Brooklyn streets for CityStrides.  The Great Saunter got my Manhattan coverage jumped from 10% to 12%, I should focus some more energy on Brooklyn.

Would I do it again?  Probably not, only because I don't like to do things years after years.  Maybe in x years when the East Side becomes more continuous I will re-consider it.  Shore walkers have many other walks throughout the year, some over short distance like 5 miles but others as long as 10 miles, excellent chances to cover more streets for CityStrides.  Should the average, able-bodied New Yorker do it?  Definitely!  It is a great way to see the City, to visit parts of the City you may never visit!  Just be prepared for it, be physically active some time before the big day.

THE GREAT SAUNTER 2017

A walk on the perimeter of Manhattan Island, 32 miles in more than 12 hours, that was yesterday's The Great Saunter 2017, organized by the good folks at Shorewalkers.  I saw some mention of the event before, on Facebook, but more recently I read that some runners had to drop out of it.  Decent runners, people who finished marathon distance (26.2 miles), people who are faster than me - couldn't finish the walk.  For some it was a nasty blister.  I was curious and decided to finally give it a try.

The day before it rained heavily for most of the day.  On the day of the walk, it was beautiful weather.  Not too hot, but not that cool either.  I was not too worried about the preparation, didn't even pin my bib the night before, like on the eve of a big foot race.  The D train didn't go to Manhattan from my station so I buffered in some extra time for traveling.  It worked out well.  I got to Fraunces Tavern with plenty time to spare.  There was already two lines from the front door, one for registered users and the other for those who wish to register that day.  I didn't recall breakfast being served and asked someone and the answer was no.  Not that surprising, it was only $25 to become a member of Shorewalkers and join the walk, I shouldn't expect more for the day.  There was a Dunkin Donuts nearby, with no seating, but the plaza across the street from the Tavern had plenty of waist-height horizontal surface to be used as table.

After breakfast I felt the need to flush some stuff out of the system and decided to go inside the Tavern.  People were getting inside for buy baseball caps too.  I was tempted but I already have too many caps and resisted the urge even to go inside the Tavern, but nature call and it had to be answered.  By the time I came out it was already time to move - 7:30 AM or thereabout.  People already streamed out what I think of as the backdoor of the Tavern, the one that lead into Water Street.  Off we went, in ones or twos, maybe even three, abreast, filing across the street, past the Staten Island Ferry Station, up Hudson River to the tip of Manhattan Island.

The part of the walk that I looked forward to the most was Inwood Park since I never went that far north on Manhattan Island, but I found other pleasant sights along the way, too.  Battery Park City looked not that different, but Hudson River Park had some parts that I didn't recognized, like the raised wooden walkway below.

Hudson River Park boardwalk.

I did take it easy, stopped here and then to take photos.  I just wished I took action sooner or later.  One building I missed was the "Jenga Building" not far from Borough Manhattan Community College.  Instead of just one rectangular tall building, some of the floors seem to be jutting out of the building, Jenga-style.  I thought I could get a better view of it after turning into the pedestrian path along the West Side Highway, but by then I was too close to BMCC and it was somewhat foggy too.  Lesson learned:  If you like something you see, take photos.  I no longer have limited space or battery life on my phone so there was no excuse.

One year after an NYRR Coogan's 5K I tried to walk down to Hudson River Park but made the mistake thinking that Riverside Park would easily connect to it.  After all, there is the Henry Hudson Parkway between Riverside and the water, so one must cross the highway at some point.  Maybe I didn't have enough sleep that day, but I gave up around 86th Street or thereabout.  With the Great Saunter, I finally walked up along the entire west side of Manhattan.  The best part was the Little Red Lighthouse.

Little Red Lighthouse

I have heard much about the Little Red Lighthouse but the one time I tried to find it while I was in the area, without any software or map program, I failed.  On the Great Saunter, it was not out of the way too, just a few steps off the course.  I took a little break here to check-in on Facebook as well as sip a little water.  It was a cool day, I didn't need much water.

For a while then we were walking way below the Hudson Parkway.  It was time to climb up to its level, at which point Strava said I reached the 16-mile mark so it was time to stop the program just to be safe.  One reason I do the Great Saunter was to improve my Manhattan map on CityStrides.com.  I already had 10% of Manhattan covered, a long walk around the perimeter should increase that number somewhat.  I would hate to lose the phone or run out of battery power before saving the effort.  So at the midway point, I stopped the app and re-started anew.  First 16 miles, second half 16 miles, whatever happened during the second half, I know at least the first half will be safe.  Speaking of half, I better write the other half of this blog post tomorrow, it is time for me to go to sleep.

EARLY HAPPY BIRTHDAY PROSPECT PARK!

That's right, this coming weekend, April 1 and 2, will be the big 150-year celebration of Prospect Park!  Besides the little, artsy run I will help lead on Sunday, the Prospect Park Alliance has many events planned.  For more info, visit https://www.prospectpark.org/150 .  Many events are free, some have suggested donations, while others offer discounts for members of Prospect Park Alliance.  I wish I can join the History Run hosted by NYRR on Saturday the 1st.  It will be a fun run with many stops at monuments and historical sites throughout the park.  I love running and also love history, what a great combo!  Alas, I already registered to run as a pacer for the Hot Chocolate 15K in Philadelphia.  Don't worry, the 15K won't affect the 3-mile run next day.  I ran the Queens Marathon this past Sunday and today I'm well enough to take the stairs at work on a few occasions.  I even plan to do a little morning run in Staten Island tomorrow.

Speaking of the Prospect Park 150 run, if you are coming, do you feel comfortable enough with the course?  About fifty people signed up via the Google doc so I'll print 25 or so copies of the map.  For your convenience, here is the "course" again.  See you Sunday!