Manhattan run, 116th St-->79th
Sketches of the places in the stories
Last week, I wrote my first run story, The Mighty Hudson, 2000. As I write these, I also want to share maps a some details about the routes themselves. This is something I’m trying out, so let me know if this is interesting and you’d like to see more, or if it’s not that interesting. I’ll post a poll below the post as well.
Our Riverside Park run was from 116th St and Broadway down to where 79th St would be if it extended into the park and then back again. NYC blocks are about 20 to a mile, so the entire route was only about 3 miles, including the avenue blocks we had to run to get to the park and back.
In the map above, you can see the route from the big iron gates of Columbia, down into Riverside park and finally onto the footpath where we almost fell into the river. This run is an out-and-back, nothing fancy, and, once you’re in the park, is as flat as most riverside runs are. I don’t like flat runs, but it was okay for starting out running in New York.
Les and I chose this run as our first Columbia run because it was simply the only one we could figure out. Eventually, and you’ll see in upcoming stories, we really branch out and get downtown, but to start out we stayed close to home. As you can see from the map, it’s a pretty pleasant route that got us out of the traffic and into a steady run quickly. The stairs down into the park were always a little treacherous, but nothing that wasn’t a bit of an adventure.
Route details
Riverside Park* is a long, flat park running the entire west side of Manhattan. When I used to run it, the park was broken up by the Westside Highway, aka the Henry Hudson Highway, which is why Les and I are running on an illegal footpath in the story. Now I think the city has linked the park together all the way from the George Washington Bridge in the north of Manhattan to New York Harbor in the south, making it one of New York’s best long runs, if you’re into a lot of continuous, flat stretches.
If you’re going to NYC and looking for a long run, I highly recommend this one. Take the 1 train up to 116th and run down to the Statue of Liberty, or go for broke and run the entire island, from Van Cortlandt Park 242nd St to the Harbor! But where ever you find your route this week, remember: go run.
*I called Riverside Park “Morningside Park” in error last week; I’ve corrected it now. I always get the two parks mixed up, for some reason. Apologies.