We’re enjoying a stretch of great weather here in suburban New York. Warm, not too. A few rainy days this past week, but things are still plenty dry.
This morning’s run was something of a knife-edge affair. We elected — Bobby, Daniel, and me — to drive over to the Old Croton Aqueduct in Hastings-on-Hudson. About a 15 minute drive from Bronxville. From there, one can go south or north, with the letter being more crowded and with more street-crossings but some quite nice stretches. Plus we could get in about 35 minutes before then end. Heading south into Yonkers has great views across the Hudson to the Palisades(the left photo on WestchesterTrails is from the heading-south stretch) but is a bit rougher. We headed north. (The Times had a story yesterday about plans for the High Bridge, which connected the OCA in the Bronx to Manhattan. It will be a spectacular pedestrian bridge over the Harlem River.)
As an aside, this trail was the inspiration/impetus for WestchesterTrails.com. Charles brought me here many years ago, and I was shocked that I had never known of the place. Hence building a site to let others in Westchester know of them. Bobby reminded me that a couple of fast Iona guys used the site for discovery purposes, which is what it’s for and news that was gratifying. As a further aside, Charles bleeds Chelsea blood. We spoke of CFC on virtually all of our runs, including our most recent. He is quite happy, I daresay, about its victory in the biggest club tournament of them all, the Champions League.
A beauty of the Aqueduct is its flatness. While there are some hills on it at the Rockies, here there are none. Bobby complained. I didn’t. Another beauty is the shade. Much of the path is smooth but you have your brief rocky stretches. The turn-around today is right past Lyndhurst, an estate just south of Tarrytown. You run across its front lawn and then hit Route 9 (Broadway to you City-folk) and turn. This is the second break in the OCA; one picks it up again at the Sleepy Hollow HS parking lot.
As is so often the case with these Sunday morning runs, the last 20, 25 minutes became a battle. I don’t know how fast we were going, but it wasn’t blistering. It was just fast enough to be sustainable. But for how long? Which I guess is the point. It was sustainable for the final 25 minutes, through Irvington (named for Washington Irving, who lived there) and Dobbs Ferry. Still conversational, but I felt it.
One thing that came up. Waving. As in, does one wave at other runners? Not in Central Park. But otherwise, I do it all the time. Yet most people we see don’t. I say “we” because Bobby and I had an extended discussion on the issue, and that people just don’t seem to do it. There are runners I see all the time, often twice on an out-and-back, to whom I always wave and who just ignore it. Creepy. Few people were in a waving mood on the OCA. A bit more waving on the northern stretch. Bobby’s irritation increased as we headed south. “I’m not a creep” he said after being ignored once too often. I declined comment.
On a different topic, there was a LetsRun thread this week on someone killed while running in New Canaan, CT, by an apparently distracted 16-year old, distracted by a website she was viewing. She crossed the white line separating the road from the (narrow) shoulder, and is being prosecuted (as an adult) for vehicular homicide and other offenses. I mention this because the victim was running with traffic when he was hit. An irony of the suburbs here (and New Canaan is an albeit distant suburb) is that those closer to the City, as in Southern Westchester, is that we have many more roads and many more sidewalks along those roads than the towns farther north. I don’t know the road on which that accident took place, but I am familiar with the area and for all its contryness, it strikes me as a terrible place to run. Few roads, fewer sidewalks.
On of my mantras is avoiding main roads. This was the impetus for posting the (so far non-utilized) New York Running Routes site. Find routes where cars are not much of an issue. Indeed, last Sunday I think I insulted someone for calling a route he described as “idiotic” because it was winding and had no shoulder and even with a 25 MPH speed limit was just asking for trouble. Yet I see people running on it all the time. At least, though, they are running facing traffic. That’s a point about the New Canaan tragedy, the guy was running with traffic, incapable of knowing what was coming. (I posted a video on Facebook that my friend Dave — he of the really-injured foot and a winner of a triathlon today (in which he describes some, er, short-comings in how the race director handled the race — posted of a couple of cyclists being picked off (they were not seriously injured) on the shoulder of a road in Berkeley, CA who happened to have a camera mounted on the trailing bike.
Some time ago someone argued the contrarian point that running with traffic makes sense because people turning onto your road from a side road will look in your direction. A valid point. How many times have cars on sideroads started to turn without looking at you coming against traffic? But by always expecting the turning driver not to be looking at you, that concern diminishes and is dwarfed by an inability to get out of the way.
So endeth the lecture. So, next stop, the Bronxville 2.5 on Saturday. And next Sunday at the Rockies.
9 comments
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May 21, 2012 at 7:49 am
Sadye
Your running routes website is a great idea, and I’m sorry to hear that others haven’t latched on! Have you checked out a similar page on runnersworld.com?
May 21, 2012 at 2:44 pm
JoeGarland
Thanks. I have seen the RunnersWorld site. The first one I tracked down randomly for “Bronxville” exemplifies the problem. It’s just a bunch of main roads that anyone can get simply by pulling up a map. This one has three major roads. One, Central Avenue, is a super-busy road on which I trust one runs on the sidewalk. Another, Bronxville Road, may or may not have a sidewalk, but it is also busy and narrow and winding.
By contrast one of the routes I have up is in the same area but minimizes the big-road experience. That’s just coincidence. A site like Runner’s World’s is too random. My idea was to add an editorial element, courses that I’ve run again and again where the objective is to minimize runner-auto interaction. I figure most of us have such “secret” routes we frequent, and I hoped people would share them to create, as Charles did when he took me to the OCA, an I-didn’t-know-about-that moment.
May 21, 2012 at 8:48 am
philip
Hi This is my usual path for runs up to 8-9 miles – I live less than a 1/2 mile from the trail. Couple of tips re water and restrooms – you can stop at Dobbs Ferry police station (minor detour) or at tennis courts in Irvington – just south of Main Street.
May 21, 2012 at 8:50 am
philip
by the way – I almost always wave!
May 23, 2012 at 4:52 am
Ewen Thompson (@EwenThompson)
I’d wave or at least say “g’day” on courses that aren’t highly popular — at Central Park you’d get RSI if you waved to all runners.
If you don’t want to risk getting killed, don’t run on the road — simple. There are plenty of off-road alternatives. Saw a video a little while back of a bloke commuting to down-town NY by running — in the city he was running on the roads with all that traffic. Bloody idiot if you ask me.
May 28, 2012 at 1:16 pm
JoeGarland
It’s not an either-or proposition. You just have to be smart, or at least not be dumb, which is my point.
I’m not a big fan of running on city streets, by which I mean sidewalks, but I’ve done it in loads of places when there’s no alternative (although there is a bit of diceyness where people drive on the wrong side of the road).
May 24, 2012 at 8:21 am
Edgemont Dave
The OCA is one of the best places to run in Westchester, period. First learned about it from your site and have utilized it for many a run, including most of my long runs for marathon training. The dirt, the shade, the flatness, the views, the ample parking nearby; it was made for an early morning 22 miler.
August 16, 2012 at 2:46 am
cg9m
ah, waving. something you’ve given me grief over for a one-time perceived slight. (lol- have to wonder now if you’d really want runners/joggers like me to wave at you. but personality issues aside, also wonder how you’d react if we were running so slowly or pushing jogging strollers so as to impede your progress…)
i used to cross paths w/another former ssrmc’er fairly frequently, esp in summer. we always waved. at some point during the year, he stopped. i knew i hadn’t (believe it or not!) done or said anything to offend, so i was perplexed. i very stupidly publicly posted a comment to him after i found out that he’d left the club, “oh! that’s why you stopped waving!” he apologized and said he’d just been oblivious. i felt so badly, i sent an email regretting my gaffe. a few weeks later, he ran an amazing pr, and i realized that he’d totally been “in the zone” when i’d crossed him on those runs. i felt even more the fool for mentioning it.
that said, as a youngster i always waved at people on runs. it was considered proper etiquette. i’ve also been an avid hiker most of my life- some years more into it than others- but in hiking, it’s de rigueur. then i moved to nyc. in central park, where i did a lot of longish runs, it seemed absurd to wave at everyone, excepting those who did loop after loop. so i lost the habit on more popular roads and paths. i still *always* wave at people on trails- it’s actually a safety thing in hiking (and i imagine ultra-running).
(as an aside, cyclists often nod, or even ‘cutely’ tip their helmets…)
i suppose now i’ve adopted a policy of waving at those with whom i make eye contact. you can kind of tell who wants acknowledgment and who doesn’t. but i honestly can’t relate to being annoyed at a total stranger for not waving. we don’t all have the same purpose for being out on a run- some people (and frankly, i relate more to them) run for the solitariness- to escape their various personal stresses, etc. it’s a reason i prefer to run in the evenings- i find it clears my head like nothing else, and “all my troubles seem so far away”. and yet i know some are totally the opposite- they prefer to start their day w/a run to energize before the day’s conflicts, expectations, obligations, and politics overwhelm and exhaust. but neither may really want to be social and wave or nod to (or even notice!) another during those times. getting annoyed about it makes one kind of like the clueless guy who says “smile!” to you in an elevator when you look distracted or sad b/c you just found out your best friend is dying.
on the subject of suburban roads and safety…yeah, westchester had sidewalks. and there are sidewalks where i live now…but as is typical of most older neighborhoods, the sidewalks are often in such disrepair that it’s it’s a toss-up whether it’s more hazardous to run on them or the road surface itself. (and in westchester, one of my biggest pet peeves, esp in scarsdale, was that no one shoveled the walks in winter! if you have that much $$…)
funny story- last year i got stopped around here while running (facing traffic) by a woman driver (on the opposite side of the road) who proceeded to tell me that she’d been running for 30 years in the area, and that i should run on the sidewalk (there is only one through that stretch, and it’s with traffic)…i pointed out to her that the sidewalk was not only ill-maintained, it was also lumpy poured concrete with a significant cant making it impossible to navigate at a normal run pace. she argued with me until i also pointed out to her that she was stopped in the middle of the road on a blind curve with her school-age kid in the back seat! then she drove off. miffed of course. it gave me some pause, not to what i’d been doing, but to the self-righteousness some runners exhibit. i’ve read countless stories about runners pounding the hoods of cars, or flipping drivers off, or screaming obscenities (thankfully, my ears have been mostly spared those since moving out of nyc…but it was something i grew up with 3 miles from an army base near baltimore, and i often thought if i never heard the “f” word again it would be too soon…alas, it’s all too common in all-male professional environs..)
i personally give the “peace” sign when a driver cuts me off (or nearly kills me for running a stop, as happened numerous times in scarsdale). another running friend waves emphatically and shouts “BE COOL, YO!”, while another still likes to blow a kiss (love that sarcasm). but i feel each of those responses provides a less antagonistic reaction that typically elicits sheepishness from the driver rather than escalated aggression. if your point is to make someone aware…
what side of the road to run on? the default is “facing traffic”. but that often doesn’t make sense on suburban or rural roads with no sidewalks. i’ve been lectured by by-the-book sorts on this, but esp when encountering a blind curve adjacent to a steep hill on the left (no room to maneuver), i run with traffic on the opposite side. around here, where there’s not much traffic, but b/c of the steep hills, the roads are banked on both sides, quite a few runners will run down the center line- top of the dome- and i don’t blame them. i just wouldn’t wear headphones and be very alert.
August 18, 2012 at 7:20 pm
JoeGarland
As you know, I am non-dogmatic about things. You, at least, have given thought to where you run. It’s those who don’t that irk me. I agree that if a sidewalk is not good, act like it doesn’t exist. (I broke my elbow on a bad sidewalk.) I have a spot on a curve where I too run with traffic because doing otherwise is nuts.
The most important thing is to be aware of what is happening and act accordingly, as you do. Again, it is the oblivious that give us all a bad name. We all see them when we’re driving.
Regarding drivers, if one does something helpful, like swinging away from me on a narrow road, I always give a thank-you wave. I try to avoid being confrontational, but I can’t resist the occasional shout of “Signal” to someone who couldn’t be bothered to use it.
As to waving, I find it amusing that I see the same people and the same thing happens every time.