A Day of No Wine And No Roses (but it was a sweet run!)

March 10, 2012

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a whole three weeks since I’ve posted, and now that my oldest son’s birthday, Pi Day and the Ides of March have all passed, I think it high time for a new entry.

My training schedule in the past three months has gone from one that featured runs of 3, 4 and 6 miles to one that typically contains 10-milers, 15′s and even a recent 30 miler (and I still need to do more of those).  But last Saturday, while my youngest son was in his morning aikido class, I took a short run in and around the village of Washingtonville, NY, where my kids live and go to school.  I fell in love with this little town when I moved here in 1999, and although I have moved away, I still have quite an affection for it.

Like many Hudson Valley towns, Washingtonville is old, but it isn’t overly historic in terms of its architecture.  It is a simple, quaint town, where ‘everybody knows your name’ as the saying goes.  The land here was purchased on a government patent by Vincent Matthews in 1721, and the village was settled in the 1730′s.  It bore a couple of different names (“Matthew’s Field” and “Little York”) before ultimately becoming Washingtonville in the early 1800s, named in honor of the late general and first president of the United States, whom legend has it came through and watered his horse at the trough which had been located under the big tree in the center of the village.

Washingtonville isn’t known for much, but it does have the oldest continuously-operating winery in the country, the Brotherhood Winery, whose wines are too sweet for my general taste, but very popular nonetheless.  The most historic structure here is the Moffat Library, endowed by David Moffat (son of one of Washingtonville’s key early citizens, Samuel Moffat), which was dedicated in 1887, and is located in the center of town.  The library suffered heavy damage in the floods that followed Hurricane Irene, and is unfortunately closed at this point, still awaiting the allocation of monies to affect necessary repairs.  No one here seems to know when the library will reopen, and it’s a true shame that the most aesthetically appealing piece of architecture in town lays idle.

Anyway, my run today consisted of a four and a half miler that traversed parts of North St, Ahern Blvd, Bull Rd, all of Moffat Rd, and portions of Goshen Avenue and East Main St.  As always seems to be the case here in this region, there were a smattering of rolling hills to keep me honest, but nothing too steep as to drive my heart rate into the 90% range.

It was a sweet run on a pretty pre-Spring day, and it made me pine for the change in weather that is soon to come.  It hasn’t been a very harsh winter in the Hudson Valley this year, but psychologically speaking, I’ve had enough of it.

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