NYC 2: I know that name

I work with CLOs (Collaterlized Loan Obligations). Each has a name. Some are named after the manager. ING IM CLO 2011-1, Carlyle Global Market Strategies 2012-1, KKR Financial CLO 2012-1, Halycon Loan Advisors Funding 2012-2 etc. Others after things. So there is nearly a CLO for every single park, street, avenue and river in NY (one manager even ran out of parks so they used a park in NY which is literally just a tree!). And obviously there are managers named after places in NY. So I'm walking around seeing words like Duane, Tribeca, Gramercy, Bryant, Hudson I think CLO! Same thing happens in London but the other way round.

When in a new city I like to explore by foot. I might have taken this to the extreme but what can I say, I don't often get to walk down rows and rows of dead straight roads with wonderfully colourful names like 39th Street, 9th Avenue and Avenue C.

It would be desperately boring if I detailed each of my walks. So instead I will show some pictures I took on my phone and intersperse them with random and unrelated thoughts.

 The first picture above is the Chrysler Building at night. Impressive. I prefer it to the Empire State Building.

Americans like there big cars. The only compact car I saw over here was the modern Mini. Saw a Land Rover advert on TV: the voice over was reassuringly British.

This was the view from my hotel room. Man was I excited to see those water header tanks, so American. Also that Art Deco building in the back ground is rather to my liking.

I've been told that a building exclusiveness is proportional to the building's height. The British guy I was talking to said his 5 story apartment block is probably the least prestigious in the Upper East Side, whereas the 30 floor block across the road is the most.

Sat in Washington Square today listening to a Jazz trio busking. Green with envy yet? Stopped in Union Square a few days ago and watch a guy jump over 5 people.

The best "urban renewal" I saw was the High Line, which is a converted elevated railway line. Interestingly for parts of it they had raised the walkway up and left the railway surface untouched. There were trees growing! Not sure if you can call Freedom Tower urban renewal. But I did not appreciate how tall it is until I wrote this. The view I have at Newark Airport is of all of Manhattan. Freedom Tower and Empire are head and shoulders above the rest.

This was a nice view to the Empire State building with blossoms. There wasn't as much blossom as I expected but this was a little gem of a street.

None of these photos show how bad the roads surfaces are. If you think London is bad.... You wouldn't complain about Chelsea tractors if London was that bad.

NYC 1: Running In New York

I have been in New York for business this week and in the first in a series of post I am going to talk about my runs in NYC.

So my next race will be the Bournemouth marathon in October. And as that there is no time like the present, I set my training program to last for 6 month. Yes, a ridiculously long time but I have "Sub 3 hours" branded on the hindquarters of my consciousness by my 3:09 at Berlin.

I planned to buy new running shoes here, so while getting the Nike Frees 3.0 at the Nike running store I got chatting with the sales guy who gave me a few tips about running here. Hudson river path good, East River not so good.

The first run, Tuesday early afternoon:
The weather forecast said it was 82F, which I thought was about mid 20s C. I thought to my self "No problem, I was running in the 30s in Lyon for like 3 hours. Pfff what's 25C for 50 mins. I don't even need a water bottle." Ohhh how wrong was I. A couple of differences between that day and Lyon. 1. it was actually 28C, which is hot. 2. I was used to hot in Lyon. Not chilly England spring. 3. I never ran with jet lag. Apart from the mild hallucinations from dehydration it was a nice run. I started at 39th Street, passed the UN building and crossed Queensboro Bridge at 60th (the original namer of the bridge must have made typo). Saw Roosevelt Island and touched down in Queens before turning around. 54m 24s, 11.45km, 977cal.

The second run, Friday evening:
After working the day I wanted to see Central Park. Much better weather this time, 10C and drizzle. So I put on my waterproof and headed off from my hotel at 39th and Lexington. Going up to the corner of central park I took in a bit of Lexington, Park Avenue and Madison Avenue (the streets between 3rd and 5th Avenue). Then the loop of Central Park. It felt similar to Hyde Park in that you can always sense there are building near by but different in three important ways. Firstly there are many more trees so fewer open spaces. Next is that it much hillier, Hyde is almost pancake flat. Lastly is all the granite sticking out of the ground. Every time I looked around I felt like I'd see that vista before from a TV. I then stupidly though it was a good idea to run down Broadway through Time Square at about 7pm Friday evening. Well you can imagine what that was like - "bloody tourists slowing my run down"! The following picture is the San Remo hotel, it really caught my eye. 1h 8m 47s, 15.35km, 1307cal.

Last run, long Sunday morning:
The loop of Manhattan. This was the one I was most looking forward to. I went from East 39th over a bit and down 1st Avenue, then cut over to the East River path at 20th St. On a side note "East River" isn't a very inspired name for a river. The path until about the Staten Island Ferry was quite boring. Got the feeling the path was there for completeness rather than for the tourist attracting views of industrial Brooklyn. As impressively big as Williamsburg, Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges were they were a bit meeh (with a Gallic shoulder shrug). But then it got much better. I run up the Hudson river path and ran past/saw from a far: the Statue of Liberty, Freedom Tower, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Intrepid aircraft carrier with a space shuttle and a blackbird on it, New Jersey, etc. Made my way up to West 50th before tracking across Manhattan to Grand Central station where I finished and had a freshly made fruit smoothy from a street vendor, sublime or should I say sub-banana-carrot-&-pineapple. 1h 47m 7s, 21.58km, 1849cal.

Below is a map of New York: the blue fountain pen is where I have run and the blue biro is where I have walked as of Sunday evening.