Chocolate chip bagel

It's been a while... I apologize to those who check in every morning excitedly to see if I have written a new entry, if there are any of you out there :) I figured it was time to write something running-related. Well, bagel and running-related.

Let's just say that New Yorkers are INSANE! No matter what weird thing you do or wear or say, there will always be 20 others who do it weirder. Us, New Yorkers - after 5 years of living here, I can easily proclaim myself one - are rather dedicated to the things we love. Like running. Take this morning's 8000m race in Central Park, for example. The weather people had been forecasting horrible rain for the whole weekend; on Friday evening, there was a little note on the NYRR website titled "Weather advisory" and it said "The race will be held as planned." Phew, god forbid they ever changed anything due to just a few drops of rain. I mean, really, it's much nicer to run in this weather than in 35C and 95% humidity, which can easily happen in the summer. And, just as a side-note, people would rather be taken away by the ambulance than skip one of those races too. We are proud New Yorkers after all. We don't quit!

I have to admit something: I seriously considered not showing up this morning. But in the end, what counts is that I did show up, right? Which would not have been possible without my new friend and running buddy, Daniel, who was nice enough to pick up my race number while I was stuck at work on Friday night, having a hellish day in the lab. The two of us ran a very pleasant although rather hilly 5K last weekend, which turned out to be tons of fun - but the weather was beautiful, sunny, perfect for a nice Sunday morning run along the Hudson.

In any case, after getting over the initial shock of my alarm going off at 6:30 this morning, I was all ready to race, only until I actually got the start line and was already soaked! Ugh! We started off really fast for me - I was cold and wet and just wanted to finish as fast as possible - and I knew I would not be able to keep that up for the whole race. He was nice enough to stick it out with me even though I am sure he could have finished minutes ahead of me. At one point, trying to be positive and encouraging, said that at least the wind wasnt so bad. Naturally, a minute later, I was almost blown away by a biggish wind gust. But, in the end, it was all good, us, along with 2500 other crazies, finished the race, with a pretty good time even for me, who has not been running outside of races at all, with 8:43min miles.

And then, as always, I walked up to the bagel stands and asked the usual "is this raisin?" and to my biggest surprise, it was a chocolate chip bagel, a little soaked, but nonetheless, chocolate chip! This is rather exciting, actually. What could be better than the combination of bagels and chocolate??? When I was in college, the building where all my Biology classes were held had a bagelshop that sold those, and not only that, but they also had a million different flavors of cream cheese. My daily routine included a morning chocolate chip bagel with strawberry cream cheese. Yummy!! No wonder I was not in the best shape then! Then I moved to NY, and even though this is supposed to be bagel capital of the world, it's really hard to find chocolate chip bagels. For a while, years ago, NYRR used to always have them after races, but then they changed something and started giving out raisin bagels instead, which I cannot stand. So I usually just get an apple and a plain bagel. This morning's rather pleasant surprise was just what I needed! It made my day - doesn't take much these days! And I am so glad I woke up and dragged my butt over there and felt truly like a part of why New Yorkers are often called insane.