Tip To Tip Walk Benefits Guatemala

If you run it, it'll take about 2 hours.

That this very worthy event is even possible these days is a tribute to (dare I mention his name?) Rudy Guiliani. T'was a time, after all, where no one sane would have voluntarily essayed a walk through certain neighborhoods on the route.

I kind of think Manhattan runs a bit longer than just to 220th street. Columbia's Baker Field complex is at 222, and I believe numbered streets go at least as high as 228 there before the jump to the Bronx. From Baker Field, one can see the "topmost" point of Manhattan Island, Metro North trains hug it for a while alongside the Harlem River.

Have you ever walked the entire length of Manhattan...and back? I do this every year with The Shorewalkers, www.shorewalkers.org, though I usually come back describing it as "five miles longer than fun." The Great Saunter, as it's called, is on Saturday, May 3, covers about 32 miles of Manhattan's shoreline, and takes about 10 hours.

And back? Gaccckkkkkk! In one day? 32 miles? (Farther than it is from LA to Santa Catalina, "the isle of love.") Sounds like the Kennedys and their long-ago fixation on 50-mile hikes. We never walked 32 miles in a day even out to and back from the rifle range in basic training at Fort Dix.

Do you at least stop for services at Reverend Ike's theater-turned church, by way of a break? And 10 hours seems a pretty brisk pace. Are you perchance in a race-walking club, scottaleh?

It's three miles an hour, so quick but not very fast.

The walk starts at South Street Seaport, rounds Battery Park, up the West Side (all of which has shoreline park/pathways until around the Cloisters area) with stops at 42nd Street at at the Little Red Lighthouse, and turns around at Inwood Park. That's usually when I get the first blister and start slowing down.

The East Side is more difficult, as there are big detours inland after Yankee Stadium fades from view and then all around the United Nations area. That's when I start limping. The last five miles are around the "belly" of the Lower East Side, which seem to take forever...but everyone unites at the Heartland Brewery at South Street and drinks their aches and pains away (temporarily) afterward.

Then, of course, there's the Five Boro Bike Tour the next day....45 miles, ending with a great ride over the Verrazano, one deck which is closed to let the riders pass.