a Very Windy 15+ -- by abby

since my dog frida wakes me up at about 5:30 every morning regardless of what day of the week it is, there's really no such thing as sleeping in. so i was up early saturday, but had to wait for it to get light enough to run. i hit the road at about 7am and ran from my house to the conoco station in manhattan (the littlest apple!) – which is just over 15 miles – in about 2:25 or so.

it was a good run. i was nervous about it! it took me awhile to settle in – i didn't really relax until about mile 7, but after that i was fine. it was ridiculously windy, especially on the highline and in the flood plain just before manhattan. i actually stopped to walk about 1/4 mile between miles 10 and 11 because it was so windy; it seemed like a waste of energy to try to run when i wasn't getting anywhere. after that the road curved and i had the wind at my back so i got blown forward for a couple miles. i heard later that we had sustained winds of 45mph with gusts up to 65mph. yeesh.

so that's the long run of the year so far, and hopefully i won't be as nervous for the 16+ next week. i found out that i'll be running my 20-miler in denver ... which will be interesting because it'll be a course i don't know. which i guess is good practice for the marathon.