On my first morning without a baby in 9 months, 2 weeks and 4 days (who’s counting), I voluntarily woke up at 6:15am to run the streets of New York for the BlogHer 5k during the BlogHer conference.

God I am a freak. of. nature.

I started off running with Working Mom Fence. She was in her running splendor adorned with a tutu to support Tutus for Tanner. I give her “oodles” of “whoohoos” for that.

We were signed up for the Broadway portion of the BlogHer 5k.  The other route was Central Park. From a running standpoint, Central Park probably was the way to go. Why? Well, because you could run for a period of time.  For those of us in the Broadway edition of the BlogHer 5K, we dealt with this every 100 steps.

To give you a feeling of it:  run, run, run, stop. wait. run, run, run, stop. wait. run, run, run, stop. wait.

Also, when it would go to a white walk signal, you had to dodge these…

They are freaking everywhere, and do not give a $%&# if you have the white walk signal.

I probably had a different experience than my Central Park BlogHer 5k counterparts.

Pretty sure they did not have the stench of trash or trash to jump over.  At one point, there was a huge pile of trash bags. I stopped to take a picture but then started running for my life when a rat ran out from the pile. We will just call that the “Lost Photo”. Plus the lost photo of the guy peeing on the sidewalk, which really explained the urine smell during the 3.1 miles of running.

However, I got to see Times Square and the lights of Broadway. Not something I would see on my suburban mommy morning run. (Note the tail end of the cab on the left of the photo….damn things.)

I actually started getting tired during the run.  Between the cab-dodging, trash-jumping, walk-signal-intervals and holding my breath (not advised generally since one typically needs oxygen while exercising), I was really looking forward to stopping and taking a freaking shower.

But I got distracted….

Luckily they are not open at 7am.

I did not need the cab fare that was tucked in my sports bra, nor the Starbucks card I had for emergency sustenance. Thank goodness the streets in New York are numbered, because I was able to get back to the hotel.

After dodging one more of these.

I survived the urban jungle of New York City. While I think I carried the stench with me for days, it was a run I will never forget.

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(Many thanks to Shannon Entin of Mom Improvement for planning and hosting the run! And for Steaz and the other brands that sponsored the event!)