So Go Downtown, Things'll Be Great When You're Downtown No Finer Place, For Sure!

Petula Clark said it best,

"When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know - downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?"

Now a time for reflection.

It didn't hit me until I was walking to my car after today's practice, but today was my last Cross Country practice of my college season. That's kind of depressing, where did the time go? I also realized it all came full circle. My first practice ever in Albany was the summer before I came here and we ran downtown. Today without even realizing it, we ran downtown. This was without a doubt my favorite run this season. We all laughed and told stories, we matched ourselves up with our equals, or so we thought, from the men's team, it was just exciting.

We arrived downtown around dusk, all the lights were on in the capital building, the state buildings and Corning Towers.

It was beautiful.

It was a great way to go out.

So just remember:


The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown, where all the lights are bright

One Fist, Two Fist...Holy Crap Fight!!!

I should not be amazed anymore about some of the things I see on my day to day runs. But it seems every time something new and crazy happens I still have to do a double-take and really ask myself :

Did that really happen?

It was a gorgeous day for a run. The weather was just right and the team and I had good conversation flowing throughout the entirety of our seven-miler. Almost back at school, running down Ontario Street, we looked ahead to see six guys. I would say they were about 18-years old walking towards us on the sidewalk. None of us thought twice about this because we often share the sidewalk with others.

We got closer and their pack shifted left except for two of them. We were about ten feet from these two and began to shorten our stride trying to anticipate what they were doing, seeing as they had not yet moved. Next thing we knew we were witnessing a fist fight directly in front of us. We literally jumped out of the way into the road to avoid these swinging idiots.

Seriously? What the hell?

We looked back thinking that maybe they had been trying to show off in front of 15 girls but they were still going at it pretty fiercely. We couldn't do anything but laugh, so that we did...pretty hard.

That was enough excitement for the day at least that's what we thought. But of course that wasn't enough action for an Albany run.

Around 50 yards later we crossed Park Avenue. The three of us in front of our pack, myself included, nearly got nailed by an oncoming Honda Civic. The airhead was on her cell phone and decided it was smart to roll through the stop sign and somehow failed to miss all of us in brightly colored t-shirts running directly in front of her.

She seemingly failed to miss the Albany Police Car that was stopped at the adjacent red light.

Unfortunately for her the officer wasn't  missing anything. He let us pass then threw on his lights and siren and pulled her over 20 seconds later. Oh karma.

Fast Community Servers

I'm sure you've all seen them lately; the vast array of knocked over garbage cans littering the sidewalks or even worse the roads.

It's the worst thing when you're driving down a one way street and there's a garbage can or 5 in the middle of the road. You're left with the option to bump it enough with your front end to get it out of the way or put the car in park, get out, and move it to the side (because god knows you're not about to nail the thing and see what comes flying out...or maybe you are).

Well yesterday the team and I took it up ourselves to help out the innocent drivers and walkers of Albany. I'd say we turned upright at least 15 cans on our 6 mile run covering mostly main streets. Not to mention at least 10 that we removed from the road.

It's all about the little things!