My love for New York City

I was seventeen when I first visited New York City in 2010. It was on a trip with my grandmother, to celebrate graduating from high school. She took trips with all her grandchildren to celebrate that, usually in pairs and in Europe. Somehow I ended up with just the two of us going to the USA! A big city like this was a first for me, except for having been to Amsterdam on a school trip or two and with my parents. But that was nothing like this.

It was up to me to figure out where to go and how to get there. Kind of scary, not something that I was comfortable with. I'm not the adventurous or outgoing type and it all felt very foreign to me.

On the first evening after settling in our hotel we took a short walk in the neighborhood, looking for a place to get a week pass for the subway. Our hotel was close to Grand Central, so that was a safe first step. The next day we were up early (because of the jet lag) and I really wanted to visit the flagship Apple store on 5th Ave. Because we were so early it was very quiet compared to business hours (as we would later find out).

Afterwards we went into Central Park. I was stunned by how such a park could be found in the middle of a city like that. Mind you, I hadn't even ventured that far into the park. We barely scratched the surface that day. It just really left a lasting impression on me.

The next lasting impression was when I decided to go out for a walk on my own when my grandmother had to take a nap in the room. I was still bursting with energy and excitement. After walking for a while over the sidewalks past all the tall buildings I suddenly found myself in the middle of Times Square with all the flashing billboards and hordes of people.

Back again, and again, and again...

The next visit was only a year later in the summer of 2011, this time with my dad. We stayed in a tiny hotel room just a couple streets north of Times Square. I still remember fondly the warm evenings sitting outside watching traffic pass by. There was always something happening. On the way back we would sometimes grab french fries and eat them on the roof of the hotel.

That trip was also the first time I bought proper running gear, at the Nike store: a pair of gray Nike Livestrong running shoes. I didn't take them out for a run during our visit, but in a sense, that vacation might have been the moment when I started taking up running. Only in the spring and on cool summer evenings though and only a few kilometers per week usually. There was one running streak of twenty days where I ran the same loop of 10km, but that really was the peak of my running activity back then.

I would visit again in February of 2012 with my dad and a year later, again in February, with my brother and (for the second time) with my grandmother. All memorable trips as well, but I'll save you the details on those. In 2014 I wanted to go again (yes, I had long fallen hopelessly in love with the city). Nobody was up for being my travel partner though, so I decided to be adventurous and go on my own. What a thrill that was! I had a wonderful (and hot, and humid) late summer trip with lots of walking and travelling around the city discovering new places. Still, I hadn't caught the running bug yet.

Running and racing in New York City

It was the summer of 2017, on my eighth trip, when I did. A colleague and I had managed to score tickets to a conference in the city for work. Co-incidentally 2017 was also the year where I had to run a marathon in order to win a bet with my boss. I had done some races back home at the time and figured it would be cool to run a race in New York City as well. It turned out there was a 5K hosted by the New York Road Runners in Central Park that week. A distance I could easily manage, even in the summer heat, so I signed up and brought my running gear on the trip.

Throughout the week I would also go out for runs when my colleague went to the hotel gym in the afternoons. It was amazing. That is when I fell in love with running in the city, long after I fell in love with just being there. New adventures and places were waiting to be discovered.

I didn't have to wait long either, in November that same year my dad and I went on our fifth trip together. It was no co-incidence that the New York marathon was in that period as well. I brought my camera and managed to film the lead pack for both the men and women on First Ave. A year or so later I would buy a book where a short piece about a Dutch elite runner told about how he ran that 2017 marathon. Turns out I managed to film him without even knowing!

We hadn't registered for the marathon but we did run a 5K race the day before. It started right in front of the United Nations HQ and had us run over 42nd Street past Grand Central and Bryant Park and then up towards Central Park to finish in the same spot where thousands of runners would finish their marathon the next day. Within half a year of that first 5K in the summer in New York I improved my PR by over 90 seconds.

That was most certainly not the only running we would do. We ended up doing a run in each of the five boroughs of the city (Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island). The marathon crosses all five in one race, but if you want to do a continuous run through all five at once you have to cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn. Unfortunately there are no pedestrian walkways, so you're out of luck if the NYPD is not there to close off the roads for you.

We also ended up finding a cool t-shirt at the Nike store to summarize and remember our trip by.

So there certainly were a couple of big highlights that trip. It also was the first "dedicated" running one.

Favorite routes

I knew about Central Park since I had walked there many times before. There is the Central Park loop, roughly 9.6K with some nice changes in elevation and options to extend or shorten as required. And there are so many runners, so awesome! Vlogs by Casey Neistat frequently highlighted a different route, the West Side Highway which goes all the way along the Hudson.

Then I discovered Strava Local, a section on their website with running and cycling routes. Among them was a run called Prospect Park. It is a 5.6K loop in, you guessed it, Prospect Park. Located in Brooklyn, easy to reach via the subway, it became one of our frequent routes during our visits to New York. You pretty much run downhill half the time and uphill the other half. Some steeper parts and some relatively flat. A welcome change of pace from the pancake-flat routes in the Netherlands.

I also discovered Van Cortland Park. All the way up north in the Bronx at the last stop of the subway is a park with a few trails. I hadn't really done any trails and it was a fun experience to just cruise around the path up and down jumping as I went. Finally, Roosevelt Island is another little gem. A more quiet place with views of midtown Manhattan, this island offers a unique way to get there: by way of the Roosevelt Island Tramway.

There are many more routes we ran (across all five boroughs), but these are the few I wanted to highlight for now!

To run the marathon

So what is it in New York that attracts me? There isn't any one thing I can point at and say that's it! I'm afraid I have to fall back to the cliche there is just an energy. That energy (along with copious amounts of foods and beverages from Starbucks) has fueled me on many long walks and runs all through the city.

I guess it's that feeling, along with the joy of training for, and running, marathons that inspired me to make qualifying for the New York City marathon one of my goals.

New York, I love you.