Story
Wow, that was an epic day! We call this our “track crawl” day, or “trackapalooza”. We looked up all the public tracks in Manhattan and found four that we could reasonably do in a day (we just dropped our son off at summer camp at NYU). With the track workouts, plus all the walking between them, we logged 18 miles today. Here’s what we found:
FLRC Challenge: Sweet 1600 (Asser Levy Recreation Center)
This was a really tiny track as part of a playground complex. We shared a Naked Juice (Mango) before this effort. Beating down sun and tight turns on an asphalt surface. There was a couple doing plyo workouts in the middle, but other than that we were alone.
FLRC Challenge: Sweet 1600 (John V. Lindsay East River Park Track)
This track was SO beautiful! We walked along the East River walkway from Asser Levy. The track is a genuine quarter-mile with a nice rubberized surface. A lot of people here and a soccer game going on in the infield. We liked it so much we did it twice: ran it once and walked it once.
FLRC Challenge: Sweet 1600 (Chelsea Park Track)
After hitting Sweetgreen for a shared salad we headed up to this track which ran around another soccer field. The surface was rubber mats on top of asphalt, and really in need of an upgrade. Super tight turns on the corners. We did another walking effort on this track to wind down and talk a little.
FLRC Challenge: Sweet 1600 (74th Street Track)
We were whipped after the last effort so we grabbed some Gatorades from a nearby grocery and enjoyed them as we walked up the Hudson River Greenway to 74th Street. This track was a cute cinder oval looking over the Hudson. Grabbed a cab back to the hotel to rehydrate with some Ithaca Flower Power (one of 3 beers on offer) and then some delicious Mexican food.
Shop Local
Plenty of local shopping to keep us fed and hydrated, all mentioned above.