Running Update

“The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.” - John Bingham

With some much needed words of encouragement from friends who are running the Rock 'n' Roll New York 10k in Prospect Park, Brooklyn on October 12th. Eeek! I decided to do this run as part of my goal to run a race every month this year. As the date gets closer and closer I am going to do my best with the time I have to run/prepare for this as much as I can. I just started school this week, two nights at week and therefore cuts down the time I have to run. 

Race route

Goal: To complete this run; not for time but just to say I finished. Finished with that sense of accomplishment (and not to mention a shiny medal). When I completed the registration form I put 1 hour 30 minutes as a rough estimate of when I think I would finish based upon previous 5k times. We will see how this goes, wish me luck!

Update: I plan to now do 13 races for 2013 but instead of running #13 I plan to volunteer for a race to give back. Race #10 is the 10k in Prospect park, race #11 will most likely be the race I volunteer for (eyeing either the Brooklyn Marathon or the Festival of Lights 5k/10k in Bay Ridge), and race #12 is the Flushing Meadows 5k the weekend before Thanksgiving. Race #13 is hopefully going to be a race with my sister while I am home for Christmas since I thought it would be awesome to start and end the year by running a race with my sister. We will see how things go!

1 Year Later... The Color Run

Feel good. Be happy. Run faster.

1 year later and I'm back at Aviator Sports Complex in Brooklyn with my friend Kerri ready to run The Color Run. After an early morning rise to meet Kerri at Atlantic Terminal to be at Brooklyn College by 7:30am to catch the shuttle to the complex. When we arrived at the complex I was surprised yet happy to see a few changes from the previous year. 1) They moved the stage to the back of the area reserved for the run which helped stream line the flow of things. 2) That being said, the bag check area was moved towards the exit of the area and was a definite upgrade. They had scanned bar coded tags for each bag and required the runner to give a phone number to match with the photo they also took for record keeping. 3) There were more vendors this year (one of my favorite - Kind Bars). Two negatives I would say about this year: 1) They didn't have lawn blowers to blow off any excess color dust. This helped tremendously the previous year and 2) Occasionally they squirted color water into the post-race color throwing party crowd. Great idea for it being warm but didn't exactly dry quickly before getting back onto the shuttle.

Race #9 for the year :)

As for the race itself, it was the same layout as the previous year although they shifted the start and finish lines so you ended up running through the finish line right into the festival area. Kerri and I made a plan to try to run the race straight through as we didn't feel the need to stop and take pictures after each color zone since we had done it before. The color zones were better equipped this year with more volunteers, music at each zone and huge arches designating the color. 

With a happy feeling inside, Kerri and I finished the race straight through with no stops for pictures or anything and I felt GREAT. After a couple pictures at the finish line, we made our way to check out the post-race festival. There was coconut water (found out I'm not a fan), Kind Bars (yum!), Color Run gear and this year even food and beer for sale. We managed to gather at the stage for a color toss with the free packets of color we received with our registration and managed to fit with Kerri's waist pack. Dancing, color throwing, and singing among the fellow runners, we had a blast for a couple hours until we were too exhausted and hungry to enjoy anymore. Disappointed we didn't see the lawn blowers out, we dusted off as much color as we could, grabbed our bags to head home.

Goodbye August, Hello September

I can't believe summer is basically over, August went by in the blink of an eye. Starting off the month on a fun note with the mud run, I was excited for the rest of the month's activities I had planned. Made it to a few baseball games, went white water rafting, checked out the MTA Museum in Brooklyn, went to the NY Cosmos game, tons of birthday celebrations and brunches. Here is a few snapshots that was August.
 

Suprise birthday for Kara :)

I can't wait for what September has in store for me. The Color Run is this weekend, my 9th race for the year. Also looking forward to more birthday celebrations, a trip to San Francisco to celebrate a wedding of one of my closest sorority sisters and starting school (finally). Keep you posted on my adventures!



MTA Musem - Old Subway Car