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Happy Throwback Thursday!

NYC Christmas fun run 2012

On Tuesday, my boss called out sick leaving me to fill in for him. What a whirlwind day! I was busy making phone calls and keeping workflow flowing. I came home and just crashed. Last night I decided it would be nice to do an evening run again. My parents live about a mile up the road. They are on vacation and I’ve been tasked with collecting their newspaper and mail each day. So after dinner and some couch time with the dog and the remote I mapped out a 4 mile run (that’s what was on my training schedule) that would get me from my house to my parents house. I LOVE Google Pedometer. Then I packed a bunch of keys—my house key, my parents house key and mailbox key and my car keys. I also planned on walking to my car that was still parked by the bus stop about 1/2 mile from my parents house to drive it home. This was quite a multi-task run! I jingled about and focused on keeping my pace easy enough so that I wouldn’t have breathing issues. It’s still a heat wave situation here in NYC. And I’m trying to be pro-active about being discouraged after struggling through a short run. Well I have to say, my plan worked. I kept to an average pace of 11:11 which was almost a whole minute slower than Monday evening’s run. But I had control of my breathing for the entire run. I did however successfully sweat like crazy.

All in all, a nice run. Highlights were the 2 sprinklers I ran through, the dinnertime BBQ burger and hot dog aromas wafting through the air, the fireflies and of course the cold water at my parents house when I finished.

Question: What is your favorite website, app or other tool used in conjunction with running? Pace calculators? Route makers? Sneaker mileage tracking app?

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Last November I ran the Philadelphia Marathon. It was obviously way before Sweat Out the Small Stuff was even an idea in my mind. But it was absolutely one of my favorite events ever.

A few weeks ago I submitted my story in response to a request from the Philadephia Marathon for stories about why we loved it. I was giddy to share my story and they selected it to be the first of many featured on their blog.

Without further ado here it is

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Last night I had the bright idea that running at night after dark would be so much cooler than running in the morning where the sun is out at 5:30am. Mainly, I wanted to run because my evening commute was far from stellar. I had to stand on a bus with no air conditioning for close to an hour and a half. I could feel the sweat dripping down my back before we even made it out of Manhattan and into the Lincoln Tunnel. I needed to release that built up anxiety and frustration. I originally planned on starting out at 8pm but my IT guy wanted to remote in to my laptop to get me reconnected to our server at the office and I needed to be there for that. Have you ever had guests drop by unexpectedly when your house was a mess??? Well let’s just say the computer desktop could be it’s own episode of Hoarders! I am embarrased. Now the IT guy knows how disorganized and chaotic I really am. LOL!

So, back to the night run thing. Not having the sun beating down on me was definitely a plus but IT WAS STILL 91 DEGREES OUT at 9:30pm!!!!! So, still a “hot-and-stuffy-hard-to-catch-my-breath” run anyway. I did however enjoy the fireflies and the fact that by running last night I could sleep in a bit this morning. I started off with 2 miles that were snuff-worthy (10 min pace) and then by the third mile I slowed down significantly giving me an overall average pace of 10:22. I’ll take it! I have a 10k coming up this weekend and my goal is just to finish somewhere between 10 and 11 minute per mile average pace. If this race were in the cooler weather I might try for a PR which right now stands at 59 minutes.

heat wave

I came back from my run and had successfully sweat out the small stuff (and the big stuff and just about everything)! Duncan loves to lick the sweat off my legs. Kind of gross. But I pick my battles. I’d rather he lick sweat than roll around in geese poo (I wish I were joking but yes folks, he has done that). Here he is in action getting his salt fix:

Duncan is quite interested in my running hobby. I caught him trying to use my foam roller the other day.

don’t you know foam rollers are for fetch

Question: How would you choose to get over your fear? I’m thinking hypnotism would be cool.

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Hidey Ho people…

Hope you are enjoying your Saturday. Today has been a little bit awesome and a little bit tragic all rolled up into one.
I woke up before 5am (after only sleeping about 5 hours) and headed into Manhattan to meet some of my favorite people which was AWESOME! I have missed them. (it’s been a couple of weeks).

The “Peeps”

We had a 15 mile route mapped out that had us stopping for a donut around mile 6 at this place in Brooklyn called Peter Pan Donut Shop.Well what a surprise when at 7:30 a.m. they said that we were too early for donuts. We’d have to come back in and hour.

Tragic….no donuts at Peter Pan. Thanks Elvia for taking this pic. Look at sad Shishaldin (in the yellow)

Hmmm…onto plan B. Mike, the biggest donut lover of all smart one in the group remembered that in a couple of more miles, once we crossed over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan there is a great place called Doughnut Plant

(trying to wrap my head around the 2 different spellings of do(ugh)nut.) I was having a really hard time running from the minute we started. It’s super humid here in NY. And I’ve been STRUGGLING to breathe since probably June. But today I actually felt as if I was wheezing. I couldn’t catch my breath and I was walking a lot. This route was no walk in the park. In fact, we had already crossed 3 bridges which meant inclines and wind.

crossing the last bridge…..seriously! oy veh!

in NYC graffiti is art. so technically this was a bridge and a museum combo

a better view of the art

I knew unfortunately i’d have to bail WAY before 15 miles. But I wasn’t missing out on Doughnut Plant! So I did what I could to keep up and successfully made it about 8 miles which was right in front of DP. I guzzled my watermelon water but saved my doughnut for later.

amazeballs!

Shishaldin turned that frown upside down with her coveted peanut butter and jelly doughnut. I had a piece of it and it was really decadent and delicious.

much better!

Then I told my peeps that I was going to head up the street to the subway to go back uptown to my car. I just knew it would be too much of a struggle to continue. I was quite sad. But in reality I only had 7 miles on the schedule for today. So I couldn’t be sad, I met my goal. I am however starting to get annoyed by the breathing issues. I mean really, my groin is finally healed and I STILL can’t get my pace back up to snuff (snuff for me is in the 10:XX minute per mile pace). Gary, was having some heel pain and decided he’d take the I (for infirmary) train with me back uptown. It was nice to have company and as soon as I was back above ground I chowed down on my donut.

So all in all a great day. Awesome and tragic isn’t such a bad combo. Neither is watermelon water and a blackberry do(ugh)nut. =) Question: what do you do to make lemonade out of lemons (or watermelon water out of watermelons)? Bonus question: Did any of you get my subject line pun? Abridged: as in shorter than it should have been and over 3 bridges. Dadum-dum! 

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