In my attempt to get an entry in the 2020 NYC Half Marathon, I need to run four out of six of the qualifying races – one for each borough and the NYC Half Marathon itself. Having already run the NYC and Brooklyn half marathons already, the next race in the succession was the NYRR Queens 10K, so this past Saturday, I took sneakers to pavement in Queens to continue qualifying.
I’ve run the Queens 10k previously in 2014, 2016, and 2018, but this year was different. Not only because I was running it for the first time on an odd numbered year, and not only because they changed the course for the first time since I’ve been running it, but because I was running with Andrea.
So we lined up together at the start in Queens and began our 6.2 mile journey together. We started on Meridian Road for about a half mile before turning left and heading south around Meadow Lake. As we reached the northwest point of the lake and crossed over a bridge, we looped around and headed back onto Meridian Road. We ran north past the Queens Museum and the National Tennis Center on to Shea Road, which led us north to Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. We looped around and headed back south, reaching the 5k in view of the stadium. We ran back down Shea Road and crossed over the Grand Central Parkway to run on the path that would take us next to the Queens Zoo before running over the Zoo Bridge and back into the park and giving us our first view of the Unisphere. With a short run north, we came back around to run up towards the Unisphere and around the fountain it resides in before running a wide out and back to a straight two tenths of a mile stretch to the finish line.
It was an exhaustive 6.2 miles, but Andrea and I were able to run it in 1:05:43 together. With the Queens 10k done, my last race to get into the 2020 NYC Half Marathon will be the Bronx 10M in September.
