Nurse on the Run

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…this blog has been to key to meeting people around the country and especially in NYC.  At the tweet-up before the NYC marathon, I had the pleasure of connecting with Claire, who blogs at Will Run for Beer.  Given the name of her blog, it was inevitable that a BEER RUN would eventually be planned…and today was the day!  Claire got some interest going on twitter, and last week an itinerary and specific instructions (don’t sue her…) were sent out and plans were made.  Excellent.

After spending the morning virtually tracking runners at the Philadelphia Marathon, I headed over to 90th and 5th to meet up with the group.  Per Claire, we had about eighteen runners, including our youngest member, a nineteen month old daughter of a participant…why not?  After a little greeting by our fearless leader (which led to the couple behind me saying, “I think they’re going to run and drink…”) and a shout of “BEER RUN!,” we were off.  Our route was as follows:

Map compliments of Claire.

Perfect day for a beer run!

After a nice stroll across the 102nd transverse (which I ran across six times yesterday), we headed down the west side (hills working to our advantage) and hit up our first bar:  Dive Bar.  A fairly small bar with a huuuuuge variety of beers, but I decided to go with the Dive Bar Amber Ale.  Good start to the beer run.

Michelle and I at our first stop!

That’s a lot of beer!

Entire group at Dive Bar.

After enjoying our first round of beer, we gathered up the gang and headed to our next destination, which took us on a run back through the park before arriving at Firehouse.  I ended up having a Bud Light (bottled…they said they ran out of it on tap, which is a bit hard to believe since it was about 2pm on a football Sunday…) and we enjoyed the plywood floors.  This bar had a bit less character than the first bar, but it had plenty of room for us to mingle and drink between runs, so no worries there.  Didn’t spent too much time there before we headed to destination number three.

Outside Firehouse.  Thumbs up for beer socks!

I’m not sure whether it was more the beer or the running…or the beer + running, but everyone was definitely a bit more chipper after the second bar, and we set off terrorizing the poor Upper West Side on our way to bar #3, although we were just attempting to recruit more people to join us!  Lucky enough for the UWS, it was only a little over half a mile to the Amsterdam Ale House, so the shouts of “BEER RUN!” were kept to a minimum.  My beer selection here was called “Cold Hop,” picked purely on the name and design on the tap…clearly a good way to select a beer.  I still can’t place exactly what kind of taste it had, but it was a bit…floral.  Who knew!

My apologizes to the UWS.

Beers at Amsterdam Ale House.

Third bar!

The Amsterdam Ale House wasn’t the best for socializing, as the bar space was a bit narrow and I believe our sweaty selves got a little too close to some of the patrons…oops?  After our beer, it was time for the last leg of the beer run.  This leg a bit longer than the past leg, taking us back through the park on our way to PJ Clarke’s near Lincoln Center.  Apparently beer gives people energy (or Baker is just crazy), as Baker (closely followed by Carlos) led us on a speedy tempo run through the park en route to our last bar.  Claire, Neal, and I kept up close and soon we were at the final stop.

Final stop at the beer run!  We made it!

The rest of the group soon arrived and we headed into the bar.  I opted for water here, as my lightweight self was feeling the beer and I needed to do some grocery shopping after these shenanigans!  The water was tasty, and we hung around and chatted a bit before being seated for some delicious burgers.  (Hey, runners like to eat too!) 

With our fabulous organizer!

Last group photo.

So…the first ever “We’ll Run for Beer!” was quite the success!  I admittedly didn’t know too many people before showing up for the running bar crawl, but it was a fabulous time with some great people.  Thanks to Claire for organizing (check her recap!), and I believe more events such as this will be planned…so many neighborhoods to explore in this city, and what better way to do it than running?

The numbers:  I decided to leave my Garmin at home, as this was purely an event for fun, but with my run to the meet-up, the run, and my run to Trader Joe’s after, I believe I ran about 7.2 miles.  Not too shabby for a beer run. 

In case anyone was wondering, that puts me at about 65 miles for the week.  Crazy!  Probably one of the most fun weeks of running I’ve ever had.  Gotta love it!

Note:  All photos stolen from Claire and Maura…next time, I’ll bring my own camera.

My plan for Monday was to RUN.  Due to working three 12 hour shifts in a row and a really busy Sunday (read: I didn’t wake up in time to run…oops?), I hadn’t run since Wednesday.  In case you forgot, I really like to run.  A lot.  However, with the wacky schedule and not necessarily having a training plan to follow, I somehow feel out of shape…which is exactly what I thought to myself when I woke up this morning.

Now, how I can feel “out of shape” when I run eight miles without blinking an eye is beyond me, but it’s all relative, I suppose.  Originally, my plan was to run over to the west side since the path is so pretty, but that is best reserved for long runs since it’s a little over two miles (through the stoplights of NYC…) to get there from my apartment.  I had yet to pick my distance for the day, as I kept shortening it from 12 miles…to 10 miles…to 8 miles…well, I might as well just run around Central Park.

Then I started running….and didn’t feel like doing another run in Central Park.  So I headed over to the west side path.  “I’ll just run ten miles…no big deal.”  That was, of course, until I got to the west side path, turned to head north, and was faced with this:

Hello, GW Bridge.

That’s right, you can see the George Washington Bridge from the path.  The entire way.  So, I ran along, and as I ran, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool to run to the bridge?”  Now, I know I have terrible vision, but I always thought my depth perception was good.  The bridge didn’t seem that far away, but I couldn’t remember what street it was at.  But it looked run-able.  So I kept running.  As I got closer, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool to run OVER the bridge?”  Because everyone’s idea of fun is running to New Jersey.

This would be all fine and dandy, but the bridge wasn’t getting bigger as soon as I expected it to, and soon enough I’d run out about six miles.  I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to the pedestrian area of the bridge, so I stopped and asked someone, who assured me to just keep following the path and it would take me there.  Well, I got to the top of the path (“you’ll go up a very steep hill”…no joke!) and looked around but couldn’t figure out where to go.  Some police sitting in their cars went over their loudspeakers and said, “You want to go left.”  So I did.

But that didn’t take me to the bridge…in fact, it took me further north!  So I ran into another friendly pedestrian and asked him how to get to the bridge.  He looked at me funny and questioned, “What are you trying to do?”  “I want to run over the bridge.”  Alright.  I got some directions which seemed complicated but weren’t too bad.  Soon enough, this was my view:

Pedestrian bridge…except there were lots of cars, I promise.

As I started running across the bridge, I turned and looked towards Manhattan, saying out loud, “Oh my goodness!”  It was so pretty!  It was a bit of a cloudy day, so I can only imagine what it looks like on a sunny day, but I liked what I saw.

Isn’t it pretty?  Clearly not my picture.

Along I ran, continuously looking over my shoulder to check out the view.  Jersey also looks pretty from the bridge (uhh did I just say Jersey looks pretty?  Huh?).  As I reached the grand state of New Jersey, I checked my watch and saw that I was at mile 9.25.  Being some sort of mental case, I figured I might as well run a complete ten miles before turning around.

Because that makes sense, right?

So I did.  Palisades Park is right there, and while I would have loved to run around there a little bit, I did a pretty direct route along some boring road before turning around and retracing my steps.  Now, I had no idea how this run was going to go, as I kept reminding myself, “Remember…whatever you run out, you have to run back!”  I didn’t have any water or food (or Metrocard!) with me, so I had to get myself back on foot.  Twenty miles?  SUSAN.  What are you thinking??

Strangely, I felt fine.  I chugged along and the miles just passed by.  Mile 18 had a water fountain with the most delicious, cold water I’ve ever tasted in my life.  (Dramatic, much?)  During marathon training, I would always think, “Can I really run twenty miles?  That’s a long way to go!”  Then I’d get all nervous when it came time for THE TWENTY MILER.  Perhaps it was the fact that I’m not in training that made running twenty miles seem like it wasn’t a big deal.

Did I just say that??  That’s not normal. 

Okay, I guess I’m not really out of shape if I can run twenty miles on a whim.  That being said, I wouldn’t necessarily advise anyone to do this.  But I had a fabulous time.  I tried to pull the pace back to be more controlled (like 8-ish pace), but that was a failure once I stopped paying attention to my watch.

As a side note (since this post is random enough for it), this is one of my favorite signs:

I need a picture of me with this sign…ASAP.

Moving on.  I had a fabulous run and made it across my first big bridge!  I know that running the bridges are a cool part of living in NYC, so I’m looking forward to doing some more in the future!  Hopefully the longer runs will be a bit more planned than today…but no complaints from me.    Okay, that’s a lie…I wish I had brought my camera!

Monday, November 15
20.5 miles in 2:38:00, avg pace of 7:42

I need another marathon to run.

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Just to clarify, none of these pictures are mine.