I Heart NY

This past weekend Boyfriend and I took a quick trip to NYC. We spent Friday-Sunday morning in Manhattan and the remainder of the long weekend at his sister's in Long Island.

Thursday: 3 miles 9:58 pace; Got this short run in before jumping on a red eye to NYC Thursday night after work. For the record, I hate Virgin America seats. The TV and touch screen are awesome, but those stupid headrests make it impossible to get comfortable! Felt like I spent the whole flight trying to sleep, but not sleeping. Arrived in NYC around 7:00 am which was 4:00 California time (and felt like it, too!).

Saturday: 6.2 mi (10K Scotland run) @ 10:20 pace; Will do a proper race report later, but we actually did a race while in NYC!

Monday: 4 mile @ 10:43 pace; Did this run in the hilly neighborhood where Boyfriend's sister lives. I originally set out to do 6 miles. At first I was blabbing about how the hills were great training for Big Sur. By mile two I said we could stop at four miles. Phew.

Wednesday: 0.4 miles in VFF's; I haven't done a run in these in a long time. I felt a little bit of soreness so cut it short at 0.4 mi (originally thought I'd go for half a mile). Luckily the next day I wasn't really sore. There was a little bit of soreness in the lateral muscles of my lower legs but nothing crippling like the first few VFF runs.

Friday: 8 miles @ 10:06 pace; I haven't done a training run this long in almost a month! I have to say that multiple marathons are both good and bad in that you don't have to run much during the week in between them. This makes me feel like I have been a total sloth even with all the marathons. I felt pretty good during this run, though, and do miss my 8 mile training runs. I have a nice little circuit in Golden Gate Park I do and 8 miles is perfect in that I don't have to repeat any part of the loops.

Here are some photos from the trip:

So, the hotels in NYC are insanely, ridiculously, expensive. It makes the obscene rent I paid for my little studio look like an absolute bargain. We stayed in this room:

It cost almost $200/night after taxes. Yes, those are bunk beds. I repeat, almost $200/night!

For icing on the cake, there weren't any bathrooms in the room. That is right! $200/night and NO bathrooms! They did have this nifty light system so you could tell when the bathrooms in the hall were available. I never had to wait for a bathroom and never ran into anyone while going to or returning from the bathroom, either.

In the event you were caught with sopping wet hair returning to your room, the hotel has devised this nifty thing called turn-the-lights-way-down so no one could see what a mess you were. Seriously, the hall lights were SO dim. It was even darker than mood lighting in a swanky restaurant!

My camera upped the ISO so the hall in the photo looks a lot more lit than it actually was.

I hate paying more than $80/night for any hotel room so you can imagine my angst. I would, however, stay at this hotel again! Great location and it was very clean. The lobby actually looked very nice and it even had a concierge. My friend could actually have gotten us into this hotel for about the same price. But it was way down by Wall Street so we bit the bullet and bunked it. I actually had fun in my bunk bed which I dubbed, "My Pod" (I am so clever, ha ha).

In case you couldn't figure it out, the hotel provided instructions on how to use your pod.

We visited my favorite running store, JackRabbit. I was hoping to pick up another Headsweats running hat, but they were all out of any color I didn't already have. I did pick up a nice Oiselle running bra, though.

They do the best gait analysis out there!

Frozen peanut butter hot chocolate at Serendipity III!!

My old neighborhood

Rockefeller Center was decked out for the Easter weekend. Botanical Bunnies!

This one was quite talented. Maybe I can teach Mario to balance an egg on his nose:

They still have the ice skating rink out at Rockefeller:

Hello, Chrysler Building

Grand Central (Mario actually touched down in NYC at Grand Central -- I took a ride on Metro North to Connecticut to pick him up).

Some more nostalgia:

My old subway station

Times Square:

I used to live one avenue away from Times Square. I had to carry both my laundry and groceries through this mess! Bleh.

I used to run down this side of the street to come home every time I went to Central Park for a run. I used to love seeing what the temperature was on that digital thermometer. I lived on the street where the black building is in the middle of the photo. We actually ate lunch in a courtyard across the street from my old building on Friday, but I forgot to get a photo of the place.

My favorite street food vendor:

They are on 45th and 6th which was one block from my apartment.

When I first moved to NYC, "Chicken over Rice" was $5. The last year I was there it went up to $5.25. Now it is $6.00. But still worth EVERY penny!

Here is Boyfriend telling the chef how much we love his food and how his place was on our list of places to eat in the 48 hours we had in the city.

I lived in NYC for 5 years and it has been about 2.5 years since I was last back. It was sort of strange because it felt like I had never left. I thought for sure more things would be different. Boyfriend is a New Yorker at heart. I have to say there are tons of things I do miss about the City (awesome public transit being the main one) but I don't think I can ever get back into the hustle and bustle again. The amount of people jammed into that city is incredible.