Thirteen Days

On the 13th day of January, it clicked. Maybe it was the cold air (45 degrees) or the fact that Central Park is one of my top five favorite places on earth, but after three days off due to coughing/traveling/negative-nellyness, I woke up Sunday morning and my body remembered how to run. Hills? No problem. My heart rate stayed right in my little MAF window. And instead of laboring along at a 9-min mile, I was happily zigging and zagging through the hoards of under-endowed men running the park in the their Boston finisher shirts at a sub-8 pace like it was nothing. Really, there were more Boston finisher shirts running in Central Park Sunday morning than I have ever seen in one place, including the Boston Marathon expo. I guess it's a bigger deal on the east coast. I guess it's a bigger deal for men, because the qualifying times are so much faster - disproportionately so, in my opinion. And I guess that was mean to call them under-endowed. I'm sure not all of them were. I didn't run the loop, instead, I bounced around like a tourist. Our hotel was on Central Park South. I started by the NYAC, ran down to Columbus circle, and then into the park, where I tried to find every landmark I've ever seen in a movie. The boathouse, check! The mall, check! The reservoir, check! The ice-skating rink, the zoo, the great lawn... you get the picture. It was lovely. I ran again last night in Aina Haina, after being up for 22 hours on the longest travel day of my life, and again this morning, just to make sure it wasn't just NYC magic. Nope, it wasn't. My legs remember how to run.

The trip was a whirlwind. I had drawn a map out of things Henry wanted to see. The bull, Wall Street, the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, shopping in Soho (ok, that was me), the flowers and cookies at Dean & Deluca (me again), the Empire State Building, the Met, the Guggenheim, Central Park, the High Line, the Chrysler Building, Eataly, Times Square... we saw it all. On Sunday night, I used Map My Run to figure out how far my parents, Henry, and I had walked - 10.5 miles. There were no complaints, because there was just so much to see. Henry loved the city. We had a blast. In April, we'll stay a week, instead of two days. I always leave wishing I lived there instead of on a rock in the middle of the sea. I want to be a Manhattan housewife! Anyone out there need one of those? Call me.

Some photos from the trip:

Straight off the plane Saturday morning: Henry figuring it all out.

The 9/11 Memorial. Beautifully done and extremely sad.

Stumbled upon the Love Statue.

My dad and Henry in Battery Park.

The Native American Museum, formerly the US Customs House. I'm obsessed with all the gorgeous old buildings and took as many photos of them as I did of my family.

Wooster-love. I would like to live in Soho, please.

Or Dean & Deluca. I could live there.

Or the Plaza.

The Mall.

Just another gorgeous building, somewhere on 5th.

Henry and I wandered our way through the park.

Henry at the Reservoir.

The Met, shortly before we got lost in there.

Doing my best Serena van der Woodsen.

My mom and Henry stoning out on the stoner light statue in Madison Square Park.

Me on the High Line.