What Was I Thinking, Part 2

Following Sunday's overly ambitious outing, I wasn't sure I wanted to run at all on Monday. Inspired by the beautiful weather, I decided to run along the Hudson River, which is something I'd never done since moving to New York City in 1997. We've had friends tell us it's really fun to do a family bike ride all the way up to the George Washington Bridge, so I thought it would be cool to run all the way up to the bridge.

Not knowing how far it is from our apartment up to the bridge, I did a quick check of a map on MapMyRun; notice I said quick check. It looked to be about 3 miles up to the bridge, making the round trip around 6, and I figured with the cool weather and an easy pace it would be no problem. Since I know it's 20 blocks to a mile in Manhattan, that distance seemed a little light but not out of the question. Brimming with confidence, I set out close to 7AM and took my camera with me; the kids have always loved the GWB (it's a really beautiful bridge, after all, and we drive by it regularly on the way to and from Connecticut), and I was excited to have a picture in front of the little red lighthouse depicted in The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.

My first hint of trouble came when I arrived at the waterfront, as depicted here: You can see the bridge in the far right and corner of the picture, and though it's hard to tell for sure, it looks like a bit more than 3 miles....


It was great running along the river and through Riverside Park, and I saw a lot of things I'd not seen before and saw other things from a new perspective; for example, I came across this beautiful perennial garden with some gorgeous peonies in full bloom:


I kept running and running, and after registering 5 miles (according to my Nike+/iPod sensor), I still wasn't at the bridge. Even before that point, I was worried both about the total distance - since I'd not set out to make this a long run - and getting home in time to help take the kids to school. I ultimately decided to turn around and leave my meeting with the bridge and the lighthouse for another day, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. You can see in the pictures below how close I ultimately got to my objective......


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