Good morning – how is your Tuesday going? Mine has been pretty busy and productive so far. But first, let me talk a little bit about the dinner I went to last night.
Megan from the Runner’s Kitchen organized a dinner gathering with a few fellow local bloggers and blog readers. We all met at Caravan of Dreams for what turned out to be a delicious meal. Our group of girls consisted of myself, Megan, Katherine, Liz, Irina, Jess, and Jacqui.
Katherine and I traveled from the UES together and quickly realized that neither one of us is very good at navigating. We got ourselves a little lost and ended up showing up about 10 minutes late. Oops – sorry!
After we finally managed to point ourselves in the right direction and get there, we quickly settled in to look at the menu. Caravan serves organic vegan food and the menu was gigantic. I seriously experienced a slight feeling of panic because there were soo many things I wanted to order, I wasn’t sure how to narrow it down.
I settled on the: BURRITO MONOSKI with seitan, black beans, brown rice, sautéed vegetables, guacamole and salsa. I didn’t snack much yesterday, so I was ravenous and wanted something filling. We placed our orders and our salads arrived quickly – I pulled out my camera, turned it on and watched as it told me to change my battery pack. I’m a bad blogger. Seriously – everyone’s food looked amazing and smelled amazing. I’m sorry I can’t back that up with some nice photos. 😦
I chose the burrito monoski because it sounded great, but I was also interested in trying Seitan for the first time. So what is seitan?
Source: “Although it is made from wheat, seitan has little in common with flour or bread. Also called “wheat meat”, “wheat gluten” or simply “gluten”, seitan becomes surprisingly similar to the look and texture of meat when cooked, making it a popular meat substitute. Seitan is also high in protein, making it a popular protein source for vegetarians.”
I can say with all honesty that my meal tasted like a regular chicken burrito. Maybe even better. It was flavorful and large and had plenty of guac and salsa – what more could you want?
Caravan also has a diverse tea menu – yay! I ended up ordering the dessert tea, which had a delicious vanilla flavor and aroma.
Our dinner was very nice – I was at the end of the table, so I feel like I missed out on chatting with some of the girls on the other end, but overall it was great to talk about running, good food and more NYC restaurant recommendations than I can even remember. These girls knew their restaurants and I was trying to keep all the names in my head – no such luck.
Katherine, Liz and I headed back to the UES together and Katherine said she was game for a run the next morning. YAY!
So today my training plan called for a 7-mile run, but let’s be honest, with the way I felt after my Sunday 14-miler, there was no way that was happening. I was still sore and thought that a nice 4-5 mile run sounded manageable.
We met at the crack of dawn…actually pre-dawn, there was no sun yet, and set out for a run on the streets of NYC. I finally got to meet Katherine’s dog Bodhi and he was so adorable and such a good runner. I loved when I would have to run a bit behind him because there wasn’t enough room for the three of us on the sidewalk and he would look behind him every now and then to see where I was – like he was checking on me. 🙂
Last night, Katherine and I had been talking about running on the city streets and how she had heard from others that Garmins don’t work very well. I told her that mine worked perfectly last time and I thought we’d have no problem.
WRONG! Katherine was indeed correct – my Garmin seemed to have some problems locating us and ended up telling us we were running super slow, then super fast and then that we hadn’t run as much as we thought.
Katherine used www.mapmyrun.com to map out our route and it looked like this more or less:
It came out to be a 4.56 miles. Now, here is the Garmin run:
Look similar right? Well, when you zoom in a bit, things get a little funky:
It seems like we were zig-zagging and cutting corners left and right, but we really were not. At then end, I ran from Katherine’s apt to my apt, which added about .29 more to the total and according to Garmin the run only reached 4.29 miles. According to mapmyrun, when we reached Katherine’s apartment we were already at 4.56 miles.
So who knows what the precise mileage was, but I am a bit annoyed that my Garmin seems to have such a hard time when I run the city streets.
Has anyone else who lives and runs in a major city (with lots of tall buildings) experienced the same problem?
I like running on the streets when it’s too dark for the park or promenade, but guess I will have to settle for a general estimate of my mileage.
The highlight of the run though was most definitely when we saw the sun rise at 6:04 a.m.!!! So early!! Daylight Savings here we come! 🙂
Eat, Read, Run 
I have no idea how you wake up for a run so early… good for you!!!
Your burrito sounded pretty good, even though I would be skeptical about the “meat flavored” stuff. I think that the guacamole would sell me, since it is one of my food obsessions. Oddly enough, the Taurus horoscope in Cosmo this month told us to “have a party on the 20th and serve margaritas, mojitos, and homemade guacamole”- no lie! How did they know??? I think I may follow the advice- how about you?
I like that horoscope: margaritas good, mojitos good, guacamole good – what’s not to like!? It wasn’t so much meat-flavored as it happens to take on a meat-like texture when it’s cooked. And it isn’t highly processed like a lot of meat “substitutes.” I’m not going to eat it everyday, but not bad every once in a while.
I am sooo excited for daylight savings! I had issues with my car navigator working when I was driving in NYC- not fun. I’m glad you guys were able to figure it out!
I want to go to Caravan of Dreams, it sounds amazing! I’ve looked at the menu a few times over the last few months but never went. The city Garmin issue is the exact reason I got a Polar actually. Their footpods are said to be extremely accurate so that is what I use.
Definitely go! I am excite for Candle Cafe though too. 🙂
Yeah – it was so weird b/c the first time I ran in the city with it, I didn’t notice it. It works fine in Central Park and when I run on the promenade though – thank goodness!
Gosh, I just can’t imagine navigating my way through NYC!
I have yet to splurge on a Garmin but I adore map my run. I love trying others’ routes for a change of scenery!
I used map my run religiously until I got my Garmin, and still use it now and then as well. It’s such a great site.
No experience in the big city with my Garmin… it works great on my beach run, but no big buildings there.
I love tea, especially yummy vanilla or almond flavored ones.
Glad you had a good time at the dinner! I ended up working late so I couldn’t come, unfortunately.
I’m impressed by your city run namely because you were able to wake up so early. There’s something about running in daytime darkness that just thinking about makes me tired.
Yes – I was sad that you couldn’t make it! Hopefully I’ll see you at the next one.
It’s weird – for some reason I seem more alert when I do dark morning city runs. I always feel like I’m running faster too…even though I’m usually not. 🙂
Go us and our awesome pre-dawn run! I’m going to do some more research about the Garmin issue and see if there’s some kind of setting that might help. Maybe reducing the number of times it searches for a GPS signal (or increasing) will make a difference. Hopefully we can figure it out! Worst case, we’ll just have to run further so we can justify heading to Central Park, and we know the Garmin loves CP! 🙂
Aww thanks! I also noticed that when I did my other run on the streets, I pretty much stuck to one street for a while and they may have helped it out a bit as well. Like I ran all the way York and then all the way up 1st to 79th, then over to 5th and back on 79th. It’s so finnicky!
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