Ugh. I still need to wake up. I think it will take a few days…
This was scheduled to be one of my busiest weeks of the year… if you had seen my calendar you’d think I had cloned myself. In between work, coaching, and all the marathon related things, I was ready to go full swing since last week.
But it wasn’t meant to be huh?
Saturday things started to slow down and shut down. I did my run around 3 pm and it was getting cloudy and windy. Sunday people started leaving the city. My run was uneventful, though there really was a strange wind in the air. The trains and buses all scheduled to shut down at 7 pm, so we would all stay indoors. It took me a bit to decide where to hunker down, but all I’ve learned in my years here is that the Upper East Side is usually the place with the least issues, so I stayed.
I did no prep. Sunday night was quite quiet.
Monday morning, I was starting to get antsy. I don’t usually stay for so long in my apartment (I wish I had time to do this more often!), and it felt stoopid to be so secluded: no rain or wind just yet. All bridges and tunnels were closed.
At 5 or 6 pm it started raining and it got windy. People started losing power. Lights were flickering. Triple high tide was bringing up loads of water up the south of the city, Battery Park, etc. The Hudson and the East River were coming up into the city soon.
Train station, water above the platform. This is obv, not my picture!
I took my flashlight out, organized the apartment, took my two mp3 players out and found radios I could listen to if lights went out, candles ready, headlamp on, and iphone constantly plugged in to be at 100%.
Lights kept flickering. River came up to First Avenue, 120 meters from where I was. Soon, everyone below 30th st was out of power, along with some of Brooklyn and Queens. Around half the city, a third of a million people without power. In the UES, people were still walking their dogs. Morons.
The Empire State Building was all left with power downtown. Like a beacon of hope or something poetic.
Then I heard wild noises from the tree outside whipping into my window, I got scared for a bit and considered moving my bed. Eventually, when the wind died down, and we figured the worst of the storm had passed, I was ready to pass out. Like a bad dream that needed to be over.
This is gonna be one tough week. And it’s marathon week. It’ll take a bit for the airports to open, for the trains to work, and for First Avenue (some 4 miles of the marathon run on it) and the rest of the course to be cleared up. With half the city with no power and no trains it will be hard to get marathon week moving, but… this is NYC. It’s sunny out now.
What a mess, Sandy. Did you have to visit this week?
runningandthecity 