I didn’t drive to the start of my first ultra. Instead, I left my third-floor New York apartment around 4:30 a.m., walked to Second Avenue and got on the M15 bus headed for South Ferry on the southern tip on Manhattan. I watched outside the window as the bus continued south through Murray Hill, the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, and then snaked its way through FiDi and eventually—finally—ended at the Staten Island ferry. It probably took about 45 minutes to travel 5 miles, which actually isn’t bad.
By then, the Staten Island ferry had become sort of a monthly ritual for my big races. Two months prior, I was there for the Staten Island Half, and then I was there for the NYC Marathon, where the ferry is very much a rite of passage for many of the 50,000-plus runners as they make the journey to the start line at Fort Wadsworth.
Now I was there a third time in as many months, heading to my first 50k. I bought a coffee from the 24-hour place and waited, reading the same ads I had read a month prior: a giant billboard featured Pete Davidson enjoying a cigarette while swimming in the ocean, others that must have been ads for the marathon, hyping up the participants who were long gone by now. I started talking to some other runners, and once we were on Staten Island, a school bus picked us up and took us to Greenbelt Nature Center. I ran a 50k (“ran” is a very generous word) and converted to trail running on the spot. I cried tears of joy like an idiot, and texted my friends, family and a guy I had just started seeing.
Afterward, I took the morning’s journey in reverse. On the school bus back to the ferry, I ate homemade Rice Krispies treats that someone else’s cheer squad offered me. I chatted with some of the runners on the ferry back to the city, while a guy with a pigeon on a leash passed by. Then I got back on the M15 and made the long trip up First Avenue back home. My fellow passengers included a few groups of teenagers on their way to Saturday night plans, and an old guy who asked me about my medal.
Fast forward to today, and I’m now living in Queens with that guy I had just started seeing, who is now my husband. In an effort to get more trail running into my training, I’ve been going to the Long Path, a 300+ mile trail just over the George Washington Bridge (GWB). The trail starts at the 175th Street subway station, but it’s a bit easier just to go to 181st Street. As the crow flies, it’s about 8 miles from my apartment.
Everyone in New York knows that Washington Heights is up there, but it’s really up there. From my home in Queens, if you’re taking the subway—and of course you’re taking the subway—you need to get to the A train and go up to 181st Street. You can take the E or the R from Queens Plaza, or the 7 or the N from nearby Queensboro Plaza, and transfer to the A at Times Square/Port Authority, but depending on which train you take, you may have a very long walk through the station and the connecting tunnel to Port Authority. I recently discovered it’s much quicker to take the E to Seventh Avenue and transfer to the D (which is express), then transfer to the A at 59th Street/Columbus Circle. But if the A is down, you need to ride it as far as you can and then transfer to the 1 to get to 181st Street, and then it’s an inconvenient extra few avenues to the bridge.
We’re not done yet. Once you get to the GWB, it’s about a 1-mile warm-up run across the massive gray bridge (be careful of the bikers), and then you’re a mere two staircases from the Long Path. The trip takes between 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes, when accounting for weekend schedules and any number of things that could go sideways: track work, signal issues or planned shutdowns.
It’s a weekly tradition for me to wonder if this trip is worth it. Why am I doing this? Shouldn’t I be working on the apartment, or doing something that’s not such an expensive use of time? I could even be asleep right now and still do my run later, just on pavement.
And the usual response to myself: yes, it’s worth it. It’ll be worth it once the runs get longer, because the trip will be far less a percentage of the workout time. I’ll have months’ worth of training on a trail when it’s time for my upcoming races. And I’ll remind myself that right now, the trip is the hardest part of training, at least mentally.
For me, public transportation is an inextricable part of trail running—it is simply part of the deal that the experience is bookended by trips on the nation’s busiest public transit system and its attendant nonstop calculus of arrivals and departures. It can be exasperating. It can be exhausting. And it can be positively embarrassing when a fellow passenger’s stare makes me realize that a half-finished packet of maple syrup is oozing from my vest, dripping perilously close to the person next to me. But the considerable, unavoidable inconvenience of trail running as a New Yorker is worth it all the same.
The other day when I finally made it to the Long Path, I experienced my usual excitement to glimpse the trailhead—and then I realized it was closed. The chain-link door was locked, and I bet you can imagine my frustration. I contemplated climbing over the fence for a half-second before common sense prevailed, and then I headed back across the GWB. My husband, making his way back from a 5k in Brooklyn, texted me that the N was getting rerouted through Roosevelt Island and skipping our stop. Noting this for my own trip home, I finished my required run time along the Hudson River.
I had run a bit south, so I Googled which train to catch from my location. There was the 1 sort of nearby, and a C about the same distance in another direction. There was a D an 18-minute walk away, but since the D is express—and surely I could walk fast—I chose the latter, assuming I’d make up time on the train.
It was a mistake. Google Maps had me wandering across some overpass where I incredulously stared at Yankee Stadium (How on Earth was I nearly in the Bronx?) while my phone insisted that the station was right where I stood. Another 20 minutes or so and I had made it to the D, and then a further delay of 22 minutes because of some switch issues. The D is crowded when it arrives, but it eventually gets me to Herald Square on 34th Street. I transferred to the N, planning to transfer to the R at 57th Street, since my husband mentioned the N was skipping our stop.
My patience was waning when I finally made it to 57th Street and discovered that now the R had something wrong with it, and it would be a 14-minute delay. While a tourist with his family in tow argued with a train conductor about what track the N would be arriving on, an R pulled up right away, unannounced. I got to my stop faster than expected, and I was home a few minutes later to my husband, who—bless him—had coffee waiting for me.
Exhausting, but worth it. I’ll be back out there this weekend.