Happy Sunday! This day has flown by!

It started out just like yesterday. It was a bit like Groundhog’s Day…

I arrived at the Staten Island Half Marathon race day packet pickup at 6:30am Parked my car and headed over to the start village area. It was DARK and they were still setting up. These banners eventually got hung…

Used the flash on my phone to illuminate the “S” box so that the volunteer could locate my bib…

and then picked up my race tee (I ended up getting 2 on accident….they were stuck together….SCORE!). I made a quick pitstop back to my car to drop the race tees and pin my race number on my pants, grab a bottle of water and then I started out on my pre race miles…

Three miles in I took a path into a park that has a great view of the Verrazano Bridge. (yes I know! I’m obsessed with my overpriced-toll-suspension-bridge. It’s unhealthy.)

I followed the same route back to my car and managed to get about 6 1/2 pre-race miles. My goal today was to try and keep a pace in the 11 to 11:30 minute mile. I stayed at 11:15 for those pre-race miles. Things were right on target. Met up briefly with my running peeps before we all split up to head to our appropriate corrals.

I won’t go into boring detail about every mile of the race. It went smooth and I kept my 11:15 pace for the entire half. At one point the leading men were running past us in the opposite direction. I quickly pulled out my camera to snap pics. The 1st place dude was so fast that I didn’t get his pic. But I got a great shot of the 2nd place dude (I looked up his results and he did indeed hold the 2nd place spot…

As I was entering the final chute to the finish I thought it would be kinda cool to video it. I’ve never done that before. The footage is quite shakey but I was excited that they annouced my name as I finished. And unbeknownst to me my running peeps were on the sidelines and Lisa took a photo of me. When I watched the video I saw that I actually videotaped her! We’re just meant to be.

Here’s the pic she took of me…

And here’s a still shot from the video where you can see her taking the pic…

and here’s the non-award-winning video…

After I finished I jogged back to the parking lot and did a few laps until I hit the 20 mile mark and then went back to my car (running peeps hopped on the Staten Island Ferry to head back to Manhattan) and stretched for a bit. I knew I’d have a good 40 minutes before the roads would be reopened and all of a sudden I realized I was STARVING! 20 miles and I had probably only eaten about 500 calories…I scraped up a few bucks in my car and went into the ferry terminal to get a nice hot slice of pizza! So good!

Then kicked back and patiently waited….

Finally they let us out and I headed home. My final half time was 2:27 and my final 20 mile time was 3:45 giving me an average pace of 11:15! My A) goal for the NYC Marathon is 5:15 which is a 12 minute pace. I think I’m right on target (which means I probably just jinxed myself).

I want to give a shout out to Mike who set a shiny new half marathon PR at 1:46! WORD! I was so grateful to him yesterday for pacing me to a 10K PR that this made me happy.

I bought a new pair of earbuds yesterday at Walgreens and decided to give them a test today so I’ll know if they will work for the NYC Marathon.

They get my seal of approval. I didn’t use the extra hook pieces that go behind the year but they never fell out. The only issue is they are so snug that people were asking me questions and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I’m going to make sure not to wear both at NYC Marathon. Keeping one ear free should allow me to hear better.

All in all it was a great running weekend. Unfortunately not much else was accomplished. Well I did take the doodle on a walk with his Dogue friends (and my human friend)

and last night I made a quick visit to another friends house where her boxer Chance and the doodle got to have a riveting play date…

And I also treated myself to a plate of my favorite cookies…

I’ll let you in on a secret. I cried both yesterday and today. Just a brief moment each morning while driving to my race destination where I just got all fuh-klempt. There’s something about the journey of training for marathons that really opens up the emotions. I become overly grateful for everything. So now I’m officially beginning my taper period that will last 3 weeks until marathon day. I’ll try and focus everything that has taken a back seat the last few months. which is basically EVERYTHING!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Question: What is your favorite type of cookie?