Hello readers,
I hope you’re enjoying these dog days of summer. Since I’m writing this on a Sunday, I am enjoying them, but if you were to ask me on a Wednesday afternoon, I would certainly not be. I’ve been very nostalgic for the summers of my teens when my workday consisted of selling people beach badges at the Jersey Shore. Summer just isn’t the same when you have a computer job and live in a concrete jungle.
In general, I find summer in New York to be kind of meh. We are basically living in a steaming hot pile of garbage over here, and anyone who sees it differently deserves some level of praise for their positivity. The only things I like about New York summers are the availability of street parking and running in Central Park.
Central Park is, like, two degrees cooler than the rest of the city and does not smell like garbage, two obvious upsides. Also, it’s marathon training season! Four of the major marathons take place between September and November: Berlin, Chicago, London, and New York. The New York City Marathon is just about three months away, so on weekends starting in July, the park is packed with runners doing their long runs, some in groups, others by themselves. Everyone’s sweaty and gross and eating their sports gels and loving but hating life. It’s so fun.
I’m not running the New York City Marathon this year. I’ve done it three times, and the only time I really enjoyed it was when I paced my friend. It’s a very hard course that nearly broke me last year, and in retrospect it was foolish to try to PR on it. The best marathoners in the world don’t come to New York to run their fastest race, they come for the appearance fees and prize money. Anyway, I still love the fanfare around it and all the feel-good energy from people running their first marathon.
If you’re in New York and training for a fall marathon, there are lots of group runs out there to join. I tend to do my long runs by myself because I’m easily intimidated but I’ve done increasingly more with groups. Unsurprisingly, the miles go by faster, both mentally and physically. The apparel brand Tracksmith has long runs every Saturday, usually starting and ending in Brooklyn (more info here). Nike NYC hosts 3-4 community runs a week, with one long run leaving every Saturday morning from the Upper East Side store (more info here).
That’s all I’ve got for you today. Join a group run, or just get out there for a mile. Whatever gets your heart rate up.
Elaheh