turkey trotting = great success

so im back in the city after a much needed lil break from work.. unfortunately, the monday after thanksgiving is quite possibly one of the worst mondays during the year. my patience with the kiddos is running thin (no pun intended) and i am impatiently awaiting winter break. i was just talking with a friend about how stressed i am about so many things that are going on in my life right now. ironically enough, he asked what i would do if i couldn't run.. and ya know what? i dont know. i have absolutely no idea what i would do.

maybe that's why i continue to run. maybe that's why i continue to sign up for race after race.. because if i didnt, what would i have left? what would be my "thing?"

anywho, that's enough philosophizing (is that a word? blogspot is telling me that it is so i'm gonna stick with it..)

thursday morning i woke up to run the garden city turkey trot. it was pretty sweet cuz i was able to wake up a half hour before the race started and still get there early enough to chat with joanna and ppl beforehand. the course is pretty flat so it wasn't difficult.. plus it was easier to push myself to go faster because i knew that i was only running 5 miles. i ended up with a time of 47:39.2, which is about 40 seconds faster than my comfortable short-distance running pace.. so that was kinda cool.

definitely made me feel better about eating so much food later that day.. def something i'll consider doing again next year if i'm still running then. i'm wondering if this "obsession" will fade in the upcoming post-marathon months.. or if it'll just sustain until next training season starts up and i'm back in the pre-marathon craziness that got me here in the first place.

guess we'll see..

giving into peer pressure..

okay this will be a quick post but considering todays events i felt that i needed to share..

mr. martini somehow convinced me to sign up for the half marathon grand prix manhattan in january.. and to run all 5 half-marathons in the grand prix for that matter..

after i gave into his peer pressure (there is no other word to describe it.. that's exactly what it was. bad martini, bad bad bad!), i immediately sent my parents the following e-mail...

CHECK ME INTO A CLINIC

I just signed up to run the first grand-prix half marathon in january..
which means i will basically run 6 half marathons this year.. including the long island half.

these are the responses:

dad: where is that one?

those knees are gonna hate you one day

me: it's in central park.. the grand prix half marathons are half marathons in all 5 boroughs.
my feet are gonna hate me too..

mom: YOU ARE A RUNNER HA HA

touche, mama b-rocks, touche..

in good company.

okay i officially cannot stop eating.. i thought i was done training for a marathon.. shouldn't my appetite subside at least a little bit? ughhh.

anywho.. yesterdays run was awesome. i met up with dena on central park west at around 2 o'clock and we started the loop in the park to meet tabitha over on the east side. it was beyond beautiful out.. one of those days that just makes you feel good about life and makes you feel lucky to live in this amazing city. the park was full of people walking, running, biking, rollerblading, playing football, and just enjoying the gorgeous fall weather.

that being said, i love autumn in new york.

on top of the amazing weather, the company was quite enjoyable. it's so nice to be able to get to know people from work in a different way. there are so many people who i see everyday and yet know nothing about.. in the same way, there are people who work at the school who i probably wouldn't recognize if they were standing in line behind me at westside market. those who know me well know that i tend to get intimidated by large crowds when i don't really consider myself friends with the majority. this is one of the reasons i tend to shy away from work gatherings. it was great to run with tabitha and dena and just be relaxed, talk, learn some things, get out our frustrations with the male gender, etc.

on our walk back to amsterdam, dena and i started talking about what my "training" looks like during the week. i explained how i'm currently "training" to run a 10k on december 6th. she laughed and reminded me that technically, i had just run a 10k.

go figure.

turkey trot on thursday. gobble gobble.

Cross-"training"

Today, seeing as though there was no way in hell I was waking up to meet the TFK coaches for a run at 10am.. and there was no way I was waking up to see New Moon with Sunim and her amica due to a late night last night, I stuck to my 10k "training" schedule for the weekend. Went up to the Columbia gym to get a good 60 minute of cross-training in. Although, seeing as though I don't necessarily feel like I am training for anything (who needs to train for a 10k?), this was really more of a bicycle workout than a "cross-training activity."

Last year when I was training for the half-marathon, I looked forward to cross-training days. The days on which I actually had to run felt like a chore. Granted, I was working all day in the city, commuting back to Long Island, and then forcing myself to go to the gym where I had to fight for a treadmill only to be bored for 5+ miles or whatever it was that I had to run that day. After having run so much outside, I cannot for the life of me imagine running on a treadmill for more than 20 minutes. Even last week when I just did a quick 2 miles on the treadmill felt torturous. I look at those girls who spend like an hour plus on the treadmill and I cringe. It's boring.. and bad for your knees.

Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll be able to get my run in with Tabitha and Dena. Last night Tabitha mentioned she was going to run the 6 mile loop in Central Park for the first time so obviously, I invited myself along. I figure I need to get a 5-6 mile run in.. and running with people you enjoy is always much more fun than running solo.

Oh and I just signed up to run the Long Island Half-Marathon once again this year.. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! Seriously, someone save me from myself..

"training"

struck up a conversation with a woman in the lobby of my doc today. basically it went something like this..

woman: you look like you ran here. (eyes my jacket) oh wow did you run the marathon?

me: haha yea i did actually.. i just came from the gym though, i didn't run here.

woman: wow that's incredible, good for you. what was your time?

me: 4:49:40

woman: that's fantastic. will you run it again?

me: yea, i'm gonna do it again next year.

woman: ahh so you enjoyed it.

me: "enjoyed" might be the wrong word..

so yea, today was a pretty hectic day.. during marathon training i had tuesdays off.. which was nice because i didnt have to worry about running or getting a workout in between work, faculty meetings, and class. today, however, i had to squeeze a short workout in between all those three as well as a doctors appointment over on the east side, which by the way, i haaaate. yes, i am indeed a west-side snob.. and proud of it.

aaanywho, i'm in the midst of a month long 10k "training" schedule.. i hesitate to call this training seeing as though i'm still technically in recovery from the marathon.. and i dont actually feel like i need to "train" to run a 10k.. which sounds like a joke at this point. at the run last saturday morning, coach neil explained how it takes approximately four to six weeks for your body to recover after running a marathon, depending on age.

immediately following the marathon, i felt pretty good. a few hours later though my joints started to lock up and by the following morning, my muscles (especially the quads) were as tight as they've ever been. i walked rather slowly and slightly like a duck.. took the elevator.. and when i had to take the stairs, i may have walked down them backwards.. but by wednesday, i felt fine. good enough to run? no no definitely not.

about a week later my body was ready for some short easy runs.. up until last saturday when myself, coaches neil, sid, and asteria (i dunno that i spelt that correctly.. if i didnt, someone please correct me), ran an easy 4.5 miles in the park, i hadn't run more than 3 miles post-marathon. nice thing about running a 10k is that all the "training" runs are technically short.. heck, the race itself won't even last longer than an hour.

today i just did some cross training and tomorrow i'll do a quick easy 3 miles after work. i'm relentlessly trying to convince chris to run the garden city turkey trot on thanksgiving morning with me.. wish me luck (with the convincing, not the running).

anyone else running or want to run? dooooo it.. it'll totally make you feel better about stuffing your face at the table later in the day.

and don't worry.. running a turkey trot will not make you a runner.

i promise.

denial.. it's not just a river in egypt.

in my 23 years on this earth, i have gone through many a series of denials. i've denied being in love, being cranky, being lonely, being heartbroken. i've denied the fact that i need to watch my spending, that i need to look for a job, that i need to smile more, that i need to laugh more and worry less. i've denied that i had been crying. i've denied that i had lied. i've denied that some of my choices have been bad decisions. i've denied that i've ever been in denial about anything. that being said, i am in full realization that i am, by anyones standards but my own, in fact, a runner. *gasp*

why not by my standards though? why don't i consider myself a runner? it's easy. there are runners.. and then there are people who run. i consider myself someone who runs. running isn't in my blood. i haven't been running for years. i only started running last february actually when i signed up for the Long Island Half-Marathon.. and i only signed up because i needed a challenge and something to force me to work out after getting home from work.

so why haven't i stopped running then? well, i accidentally signed up for the new york city marathon last may. yup, that's right.. ACCIDENTALLY. but whatever, accident or not, i had to follow through. trained for 4 months and ran a marathon. but now what? what do i do with my life now? that's the thing.. i dont know what to do. so i signed up for a 10k.. and a 5 mile turkey trot.. and a 5k run in which i'm a running buddy for a little girl.

does this make me a runner? perhaps. and if it does, well then.. FML.

so here it is then, inspired by mr. martini himself.. my own (non)running blog.. in which i will keep track of all my non-runner activities from now until next years new york city marathon, when i will, once again, run.. as a person who runs (not a runner).

just making that clear.