Not your typical beach weekend

So, judging by my low mileage last week, it seems I was a little quick to celebrate my graduation into 30mpw territory... but I had a good excuse, I promise! (Besides, I managed to make it out for a morning run, by myself, not once but twice. Which I think deserves accolades of its own, because we all know how much I prefer staying in bed.)

In any case, my excuse is that I got only four hours of sleep on Saturday night / Sunday morning, and those were on the beach between the hours of 4 and 8 AM. And, you might be surprised to know (I was), sleeping on the sand -- as in actually sleeping, not just nodding off while reading a book -- is actually not all that comfortable. Unless you're on your stomach, in which case you are comfortable and you also have a mouth full of sand.

Yes, I went to sleep on the beach at 4 AM. No, I wasn't camping. In fact, I and the other dozen-plus people I was with weren't technically supposed to be there after sundown at all. But who needs rules, right? ;-)

The evening was the idea of one of Ry's friends -- a guy who I imagine must have literally climbed walls as a child, and is now better known for doing things like climb New York skyscrapers and bridges, for fun, under cover of darkness. But, by the time my crew made it out to be beach to join the party, we thought we had, well, missed the party. It was 2am, a new moon, and only the stars and distant haze of city lights illuminated the pile of sleeping bags gathered at our "campsite." Two people were awake, another one or two were asleep, and where was everyone else?

Out exploring the grassy dunes behind the beach, of course.

So naturally, we set out on an hour-plus hike to find them. We had cell phone contact, which as it turns out is not quite so useful when the clearest directions you're given are "we're out past the campsite a little ways. no really, it's not far. behind the really big dune... uhhh... the one after the other big dune?"


(This picture isn't mine, btw; I don't have a digital camera. But this is what our hike would have looked like, had it been 3 in the afternoon and not 3 AM.)

We didn't find them, but it was a nice walk. The breeze was quick, the air was salty and damp, the buzzing of night bugs the only sound above the crashing of waves. By the time we made it back to the "site" the other half of the party was back too, and everyone settled into the sand to chill and chat. The breeze picked up and our eyelids began to droop, and soon we crawled under our blankets -- three of us laying like sausages on top of the one full-size sheet I'd brought along -- and went to sleep, with only the clear sky over our heads and the soft, lumpy sand under our bottoms.

I opened my eyes briefly as the sun rose, intending to take some pictures, but the sky was cloudy and gray so I gladly rolled over and went back to sleep. Finally, the rapidly climbing sun -- by now the clouds had cleared again -- woke me for good a little after 8am. I was groggy, my face felt greasy and sandy, and it was suddenly a little too warm for the pair of jean's I'd worn since night before. But to wake to the sounds, smells and sights of a wide open, solitary beach, with the water just steps from your feet... totally worth it.

We dawdled on the sand and in the shallow surf for another hour or two before driving back into Brooklyn for a delicious brunch, and then back on the train into Manhattan. By the time I got back to my apartment it was mid-afternoon and too hot to run. So I broke out the ol' rollerblades instead and took two easy loops around the middle of Central Park (with a two-hour break in between loops to hang out with a friend in Sheep's Meadow). By evening, I was pooped.

So, just because I can, I'm counting tonight's 9-miler back a day, which puts me back at 30 for last week after all :-) And now that I'm one day in debt for this week, maybe I'll be that much more motivated to make it out for another early morning run!