Summers Return

So it’s no secret that the weather all weekend has been back in the 70s and 80s and I am certainly glad I had been so lazy the last few weeks and didn’t swap out my current closet with all of the sweaters and winter weather items stored under my bed.

It’s hopefully also no secret that I ran my second 18-miler on Friday afternoon (18.5 miles if we want to get specific). And I’d like to spend a little more time doting on that.

I think I ran it way slower than the first, when I did it through NYRR, which is certainly NOT something I wanted to do. I am a big believer that every run I do should be better and faster than the one before, though I know that’s not the case and rightfully so. I ran slower for a number of reasons though: I had been working long, late hours (on my feet nonetheless), because of those long hours I got out the door at approximately 9:31 on Friday morning (I really do prefer to get started on long runs by like 7), because I got out the door so late my pre-run eating rituals were all askew (way more peanut butter than is reasonably necessary), I was exploring new territory for the first time (hello east side running paths), I had to dart a lot of pedestrians and dodge lights (boo east side running path that disappears circa 34th street) and I had to stop at water fountains while attempting to fuel properly mid-run (rather than have very nice NYRR volunteers drop cups of water in my hand as I jogged by).

So yeah, I think I was slower. But I’m okay with that and here’s why: even though I worked until one in the morning after that run (please keep in mind that after the first 18-miler I literally dozed off at the Mets game because my body was so exhausted), when I woke up on Saturday I felt FINE. Like, barely sore at all! I think this can be credited to my body learning to adjust to longer distances (finally, sheesh) and the fact that I forced myself to be good about the post-run stretching and foam rolling, AND I treated myself to compression socks for the first time. I think they are pretty awesome and I might live in them from now through November.

dear compression socks, every wonderful thing i've heard about you was true.

Anywho, long run aside, Saturday morning we woke up bright and early cause my little sis and her friend were visiting from Virginia. We headed down to Times Sq. for some touristy sightseeing and photo ops before making our way over to the river for the Circle Line Cruise. Ladies and gents, I’ve been to NY a million times over the years, and now I officially live here, and I STILL don’t get tired of this boat tour of the Big Apple. It’s worth the money and it’s worth it to go back again and again. You will never get such good shots of lady liberty herself, or the Manhattan skyline:

she gives the lincoln memorial a run for its money as far as my running monuments are concerned.

The girls had a good time and got lots of keepers for their scrapbooks and photo albums (or really, probably just facebook).

Then we walked around the village and past all of the stores and boutiques that I’ll never be able to afford before hopping on the train back up to Central Park. There, we met up with my uncle who gave us a quick and crazy ride around Columbus Circle on his pedicab. It was awesome. We also made sure to share a waffle from Wafels and Dinges before calling it a day.

I had anticipated us returning to the apartment around 4. It was actually 7:15 when we walked in the door. I banged out a 4 mile shake out run and hopped in the shower as quick as I could, but it was 9:00 by the time we made it out the door to find some dinner. We ended up in Little Italy at a place with awesome pizza, but crappy service. No shock there, I’m sure.

From there we scooted over to the east village and essentially chose our destination by who had the best music coming out of their front doors/windows. I need to look up the name of the place that won, because it was a fun little bar and I’d like to send you there. They had excellent music and lots of board games. If you know me/my family, you know this is a crowd pleaser. So we stayed put for a long while, sipping on drinks and playing Uno and Apples to Apples–neither of which I can say I won.

We bar hopped our way back to the Subway and walked in the door at the lovely hour of 3 a.m. I do NOT, repeat do NOT, stay out late (seriously, most often I’m falling asleep on top of bars at midnight), so this was a big change for me.

A not fun change either, since we were waking up at 9am to catch a train to Long Island, where my mother and lots of other family and friends were awaiting us. We hit up a Columbus Day street fair in Farmingdale and spent the remainder of the 85-degree day grilling out and playing cornhole at my aunt’s house. It felt like an awesome August day.

And today feels the same. So I will continue my stay on Long Island and try to get out and enjoy this beautiful weather, before heading back to the city…and running. and the gym. I need a lot of both of those after this weekend.

Hopefully you all are enjoying the holiday as well Happy Monday!

Success!

This weekend was a success in many ways. And a wee bit of a fail in one teeny tiny way.

After an amazing 12-mile run on Friday morning I was a busy bee at work before heading out early for a 2:00 interview. I won’t bore you with the details on that, especially since I never leave an interview with an “omigosh it went so well” feeling. We’ll wait and see what my inbox has to offer…which thus far, is nothing. Immediately following that interview I headed up to Penn Station to meet two of my very bestest gal pals in from Richmond for a Big Apple Bachelorette Weekend! We waited around tourist town for a few while waiting for the fourth member of our very-SATC style entourage to get in from Boston and then we were off to get 80s night started!

Our bride-to-be is a big fan of the Madonna era, so we opted to rock out at Joshua Tree–a place that many assured me would not disappoint when it came to continuous 80s music and boatloads of frat boys. And it did not disappoint. And while most of those frat boys and their just-out-of-college lady friends attend JTree in their street clothes, we decided to shake things up a bit. And got decked out in the greatest array of neon and sequins H&M had to offer. It was hot:

This photo is apparently going on the bar's web site.

I may or may not have been the reason the night came to a close when it did, due to having had a 5:15 wake-up and 1 (or 10) too many dirty martinis. Spoiler: this is the fail of the weekend…the booze.

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day that we spent outside and on foot (zigzagging from Midtown to Union Sq. and back all day counts as CT, right?) as much as possible. After putting our feet up at the apartment for just a few minutes of relief, it was time to get ready for night #2. We started out at 44SW, a super cute little place in the Theater District, where a 5th bachelorette joined us from Astoria for the evening. Delicious food, delicious wine and plenty of good girl talk

From 44th we scooted on down to the West Village with one goal in mind: dancing (the bride-to-be’s favorite bar time activity). I don’t know the West Village well, but I know that it’s certainly not hard to find a fun bar, as there are about 12 on every block, so the goal was to just hop and go where the night took us. That mentality brought us to 1849, and funnily enough, Jekyll & Hyde (which I thought only existed in tourist town, aka, midtown). A strange pick for a bachelorette party? Yes. But since said bachelorette is getting hitched on Halloween weekend, it turned out it was a very appropriate place to grab a drink and whip out the iPhones to come up with a plan for the next pick.

We had Off the Wagon on the brain for a while, but somehow or another ended up at Wicked Willy’s. Which was the. best. place. we could have possibly ended up. A live band was playing covers of all kinds of favorites while subbing out names like Caroline or Sue with the bride-to-be’s name and actively enforcing the entire crowd to buy her and the bridal party shots. And they listened. Needless to say, Wicked Willy’s was wicked fun. After fighting with the blanket of rain that was coming down and some cranky cab drivers (what do you MEAN you won’t drive us to the UWS?) we made it home and passed out hard. Big Apple Bachelorette=success.

The rain continued all through yesterday and it was pretty awesome. Why? Because it was the first day in probably the last 842058490583443 that I can remember where I had nothing I needed to do. It felt awesome to just be lazy and relax for a while with no fixed schedule in sight.

Except, of course, for my marathon training schedule. I went into Big Apple Bachelorette weekend convinced that I could celebrate the bride-to-be, the 80s, good friends and good food with water as my toasting beverage of choice. Clearly, that was not the case. Booze taper=fail.

And while lazing on the couch yesterday after my friends departed (miss you ladies already), I knew that I’d enjoy my rainy Sunday much more if I ditched the blanket of guilt. So I laced up my sneaks and headed to the park.

It was only misting lightly when I left the house, but by the time I got to the southern end of the park the marathon training gods decided a little bit of guilt was not enough punishment for going on a bender 2 weeks before a half marathon and 10 before a full. The skies opened up and buckets of rain came down for the entire stretch of the east side of the park all the way through Harlem Hills.

I finished 7 miles soaked. to. the. bone.

I could literally wring out my clothes afterwards.

And while I spent a good 6 out of those 7 miles with an internal monologue that went something like this, “Welp, guess if it rains in Richmond on Nov. 12th you’ll be staying in bed because there’s no way you’d be able to do this for an additional 19.2 miles,” I felt really good once I reached the 7th mile. Rainy run=success.

It was not a fast run. My legs felt like lead. Rain added another 5643 pounds of weight to my shoes and poor choice of running clothes. But finishing a run in a downpour when you really wanted to quit 2 miles in always makes you feel like a bit of a badass. And it got me up to 35 miles for week.

This week is going to be another craaazy one. Leaving work early yet again, for another interview today. And CT is finalllly back on the agenda for tonight. Then I need to knock out as many miles as possible Tues and Wed before taking of to Chicago/Madison for a long wedding weekend with the JD and his fam. Do we think I can make it through the reception sipping solely on water? Here’s hoping!!

 

- Why must wedding season and marathon training fall so perfectly in sync? How do you balance your social life with your running routine?

- What’s your favorite rainy day activity?

 

Annnd we’re back!

Since we last spoke, I was finally able to reconnect with Central Park. Twice. And essentially, I affectionately repeated this over and over again in my head while there:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6YVZehzuLc.

After work I headed to the Time Warner Center because the New York Running Company housed there very graciously allows Central Park runners to leave their belongings in the store while they hit the pavement. Thank you NYRC, you are too kind! I dropped off my bookoos of commuter bags and headed out hoping to cover the outer loop. It was a complete change from the 6:30 a.m. runs I’m used to with the RB…pedicabs, real cabs, pedestrians, kids, and all other sorts of foot traffic beyond the normal runners and bikers (with anger management issues) made for a lot of dodging and swerving. But the weather was gorgeous, there was a good amount of shade, and I managed a pace just under 9. Not my best, but I’ll take it! 

Even more encouraging was discovering that those mountains I climbed at a park in Richmond were just as steep as I thought, because when I came around CatHill I thought someone was playing tricks on me and had moved the crouching cat down to lower ground. That hill didn’t bother me at all! And while Harlems were a little trickier, they really had nothing on last weeks climbs. Huzzah!

Afterwards, I had planned to continue my welcome back high by walking home after my run, vs. use the subway. But the going-out-of-business Borders on the way out of the Time Warner Center caught my eye and then threw a lasso around me and sluggishly dragged me through the aisles of 30% off books for far longer than necessary. I ended up leaving later with a growling stomach and hopping on the 1 train home.

This morning I guess I still wasn’t fully back in the swing of things because I slept through my alarm the first go-round and somehow managed to forget my keys (luckily, I knew the JD would be leaving a little later than usual this a.m. and could buzz me in) on the way out to reunite with the RB. It was great to have some on-foot company for a run (though biking buddies help a lot as well) after going solo for most of the last week and a half. A good portion of the convo was spent discussing how I’m feeling so flustered between dropping mileage in Richmond and seeing no end in sight to a jam-packed calendar. Between now and marathon day it looks like I’ll still be doing a lot of traveling, which makes me nervous. As much as I love discovering new places via running, I feel far more grounded and prepared in my training plan if I stick to my tracks here in NYC. Luckily, RB has some good recommends for next weekend in Chicago/Wisconsin. Now if only someone out in the blogosphere could provide some insight on where to try 15 miles in Arkansas? Takers? Anywho, we covered four miles in the park this a.m. and with the back and forth to my house I ended at about 6 for the day.

I think I’m in need of some serious yoga and/or CT (maybe tonight?) but I’m trying to tackle somewhere between 10-12 miles tomorrow morning, so don’t know how much of that extra stretch and strength stuff I’ll accomplish. Must. Avoid. Burnout. But that long run needs to be conquered tomorrow because its Bachelorette Weekend in the Big Apple, and I will be far too busy celebrating one of my best friend/bride-to-be’s “last weekends of freedom”

 – Is anyone else doing the Bronx half? Yesterday I pretended like I was all rainbows and butterflies ready for it, but now I’m getting a weeee bit nervous. [Sidenote to self: stop saying "huzzah" after every remotely exciting thing you write about].

– Do you like running in new/unfamiliar places or do you prefer to stick to your route while training?