Today was the day of the Abbott Dash to the
Finish Line 5K, the morning run the day before the marathon. The course was
from the UN building, down 42nd street, up 6th Ave until
Central park where we turned right and entered the park at the corner at 5th
and 59th. In the park we did a bit of zig-zagging before finishing
at tomorrow’s finish line.
The race started at 0930 so we left the hotel
at 0830 and a short subway ride later we arrived in the starting area where
people were slowly arriving. While the crowds were easy to navigate on arrival,
as more than 10.000 participated in the run the closer we got to the start it
got pretty crowded. But everything was done in an orderly fashion and the run started
at the scheduled time, with the various starting blocks getting sent off in an
orderly fashion. As this was as any other morning-the-day-before-the-marathon
run it was open for all, not just for tomorrow’s runners. This meant that the
average pace was a bit more relaxed than you’d otherwise, and because of this I
started worrying when I realized I was getting out of breath way too fast.
Reaching the finish line I found there was
nothing to worry about as my watch popped up with three new PRs: 1km, 1m and
5km. (I found out later this was highly unreliable, as the GPS was struggling
with a correct signal between the tall buildings. A 1km in 3 minutes did not
happen, no matter how much my watch tries to convince me!). Coming in at a
clean 24 minutes I ended up being 5 out of 66 Danes (top 7,58%), 153 out of 713
in my age group (top 21,46%), 887 out of 4857 among men (top 18.26%) and 1187
out of 10346 in total (top 11,47%, after crossing the starting line as number
1630), and the average completion time was 32:35 overall and 31:02 for men. It
was a first for me finding out that the organizers tracked runners at this run as
much as at the marathon.
Go home, GPS, you're drunk!
Getting the subway from the finish area back to
the hotel I made it back maybe 15 minutes before they closed breakfast, so
obviously I grabbed a muffin and took with me when returning to my room and had
a shower and my muffin – not simultaneously, though.
I had a short break before returning to the
Expo (where there were many more people at this time than Thursday) as I had
changed my mind with regards buying an extra shirt. From there I walked the
High Line, a public park built on a former freight rail a few floors up from the
roads. Despite being able to look down on the traffic and seeing it go by, the
growth of trees and bushes on the line means that you can barely hear it when
walking which makes it all surprisingly peaceful. Going from the beginning at
34th street and finishing past 13th street it goes on for
a while, and after descending back down onto street level I had a small walk
around before ending up at the hotel to relax before going out to back to
Little Italy to have dinner.
Walking on the High Line.
Looking down on 10th Avenue form the High Line.
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