parking, running and rats

Ended up staying late at work last night and skipping my planned run. Oh well.

I'm working from home today (which rocks!). Anyway, when I work from home, the first mission of the day is usually to move the car. In New York City, you constantly need to move the car due to street cleaning, meters, etc. So, one side of the street has cleaning on Monday/Thursday, the other side has street cleaning on Tuesday/Friday. Wednesday is the best day to work from home because there are double the number of legal spaces. Plus, there are meters on the avenues (which run north-south), but not generally on the side streets (which run east-west). Meters in my neighborhood run 8am - 7pm, including Sundays. Anyway, got home late last night and could only get a meter space, which means I had to move the car by 8:00 today. Yes, I am too cheap to put it in a garage. And it is not practical to feed the meter every hour. ($0.25 per 10 minutes and 1 hour at a time max). Just a little lesson on the joys of city car ownership for you non-locals.

So I headed out around 7:45, in my running clothes, to move the car and go for a run. I do circles around the neighborhood until I find one where I can leave it all day. This took almost 30 minutes today - total PIA. Anyway, I saw something really gross on the way. I was behind a big truck at a red light. It wasn't a regular garbage truck, but a construction-type truck filled with demolition-type trash. Sitting at the red light, I watched as first one, then two, RATS scrambled off the back of the truck and ran for their lives on the sidewalk. GROSS! They were bigger than Paris Hilton's stupid dog.

I finally found a space and heading out toward East River Park at a slow jogging pace. On the way, I saw lots of squirrels (rats with furry tails) and pigeons (rats with wings). Sometimes NYC grosses me out just a tiny bit.

But it is a gorgeous day. Parts of the park that have been under construction all summer are open now and look great. Lots of other runners were out. Are they training for the marathon too?

I didn't have breakfast before I went, and definitely felt the difference. Had some cramping in the arch of my foot, which made me stop to stretch and walk a few times. I wore heels to work yesterday - I totally blame them for causing foot/calf tightness and usually avoid them. Without breakfast, I get tired, cranky, various aches and pains. Which is why I don't like to run at the absolute crack of dawn. I like to get up, have breakfast, digest -- I need about a 1/2 hour or so after waking up before I can go out. Of course 8:00 is far from the crack of dawn, and I could have done all this if I had risen just a tiny bit earlier. I also like sleep.

So, I was thinking about running 6 miles this morning. Due to foot cramps and lack of breakfast, I only ran 4. Not so bad though - I was happy just to get out there.