Last Updated on October 8, 2024
One thing I wanted to make a priority this year was spending time in New York City. After traveling for almost eight months in 2017 and barely spending any time in my adopted hometown, this year I wanted to take advantage of everything New York has to offer, especially during the warmer months: free outdoor movies, concerts, kayaking, rooftop bars, picnics in the park, beaches, island getaways, and exploring parts of the city I’d never been to. While I feel like I succeeded in some of these things, others got completely neglected, and I only made a small dent in my ‘New York Summer To-Do List’ that I created in the spring. Well, I guess there’s always next year..
Looking back at the summer, among my favorite days were a lazy day picnicking and cycling on Governors Island (a small tranquil island just south of Manhattan with great skyline views), taking in New York from above from both the Empire State Building and One World Observatory, relaxing beach days in the Rockaways, an island getaway to Fire Island (off of Long Island), and more recently a quick ferry ride over to Staten Island to visit a microbrewery I’ve had on my ‘to-do-list’ for a while.
I usually take the ferry every time I have visitors in town, because it is free and it offers some of the best views of the Manhattan skyline, pictured above, especially during the Golden Hour, just before the sun sets. But for some reason, I hadn’t gone a single time this summer, even though I had a long list of things I wanted to do in Staten Island (I admit that most of them included pizza).
I figured taking the ferry would also be a good mental preparation for the marathon – in less than three weeks, I will be taking the ferry again, then to get me to the starting line of the New York Marathon. Running 26.2 miles across the five boroughs has been a dream of mine for years, and I am stoked (and slightly terrified!) that I’ll be running it this year, among 50,000 other runners. Admittedly, I am feeling anything but prepared right now, but I will continue to follow my strict training plan and hope for a great race day on 4 November.
