As I continue to rehab my foot from the tendonitis, I am continuing to run smaller races to get back on the horse and prepare for my return to marathons next year. On Saturday, I entered the relatively north Harlem from my usual racing grounds of Central Park in order to run the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K.
As someone who rarely visits that far up in Manhattan, it was a nice change of pace from my usual scenery. After the trials of finding parking up there, I headed over towards St. Nicholas Park, where be entered the corrals on the street on the east side of the park. As the race began, we headed north on Bradhurst Avenue for a fairly flat first half mile. As we reached the half mile point, the road quickly inclined upwards as we made a quick left and right. Pushing hard uphill for the next half mile until we reached the left turn onto 155th Street for the one mile marker was tough. I have not begun to train on hills again yet, so that part of the race was rough for me, but it felt good to crest the hill.
A quick left on to St. Nicholas Place took us south again as back towards the park. A couple short turns marked our trip back down until we reached the two mile marker as we reached the north end of St. Nicholas Park. It was nice to see some greenery as we continued downhill, carrying us closer to the finish line. Looping around the bottom end of the park and heading back north gave us our final half mile to the finish line, which was just past where we started.
It was nice to run in a new location, and we could not have asked for better weather that morning. The hill made the first mile of the course rough, but much of it was downhill, making the other two miles a bit easier and making up the time lost running uphill. My final time was 27:05, which was a respectable time, but I look forward to returning to my pre-injury pace in future races.
