Back from a great last run before the race. Makes me feel confident and strong! This Sunday is the NYC Half Marathon, which I am very excited about, running in the city, with friends, on my birthday weekend, ahhh, how nice!
This is high fall marathon training time. Especially in NYC I guess, although I wouldn't know about other places. There are so many people in Central Park running, morning, evening, late at night, always! Lots of training groups, super fast people passing me left and right. I prefer going at it alone, or with one other person. It's good to be running with Rachel again more these days. In any case, I am in shape! I am not sure if I was ever before. Even when I was competitively fencing, it was different. I was out of breath after a few 15 touch bouts. Nowdays, I fence once a week or less, and still, I can do 4-5 long bouts without a problem - that it, lung- and -legwise, my arm/hand are killing me! But most importantly, I have been enjoying it all a lot more: running - not in the morning, or in 30C and 95% humidity - and fencing and biking and all exercise. I have also been doing a lot of it. It feels great! Although I am constantly hungry and have been sleeping closer to 9-10 hours a night and still feel like I could go for 10 more hours when I get up in the morning.
It's exciting when there is a goal ahead. Just a few days ago, I got a handbook in the mail, for the marathon, coming up in about 2 and a half months - time flies! It's pretty intense, stressed me out a bit just to look through it. 43 thousand people running in it, so one can imagine how much planning and organization it takes! They have wave starts, they have to, this many people just can't crowd onto NYC streets all at once. But how exciting, the whole city will be shut down for 43 thousand crazy people choosing to suffer for 4 or more hours on the asphalt. But how exciting!! There are very complicated instructions, based on the person's race number, as to how to get to the start - on Staten Island - and then how to exit Central Park once you cross the finish line - seems simple, but they are going to have assigned side streets for people to exit on. Makes sense I guess, all of Central Park might not be able to hold 43 thousand people, let alone the area near the finish at Tavern on the Green. It's definitely going to be an experience - if all goes well, of course. I am trying to not make assumptions and have great expectations. Just take it one day, one race at a time.
Now, on to get food, lots of food, for the weekend, and then lots of healing sleep :)
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Birthday week begins
I don't care too much for birthdays, I guess I am at that age where I feel that it's perfect: I don't wanna be any younger or older. However, I do like the perks that come with it, like an early birthday cake made by Janice, Yummmmyyy!!!!!! Chocolate caramel mousse with bananas and walnuts, or something like that, really pretty and chocolaty and heavenly! Perfect in the middle of a busy day in lab. Although it did feel like we spent most of the day in the lunch room yesterday, although I felt pretty productive too :) Any precedents of cake giving super-powers??
Monday, August 10, 2009
Summer streets
Three weekends in a row - starting this past Saturday - Park Ave is closed to traffic on Saturday mornings 7am-1pm and open to all bikers, roller skaters, pedestrians. What a great idea! It was wonderful riding down from 66th St. all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge and then to Battery Park, then back on the West Side. Sadly, we got to the site of the most recent Hudson river plane crash right after it happened, and watched as a ton of people were staring at the seemingly calm river, as police and firefighters were busy running around. They really need to do something about the air traffic over the rivers!
Friday, August 7, 2009
Abducted by aliens?
...was the question that waited for me in my inbox this morning, from a coworker. It's nice to know that after an unannounced day of absence from lab, people missed me and were wondering where I'd gone. Well, I wasn't abducted by aliens, thank god - although wouldn't mind trying if they were nice - i just spent a lazy day in Brooklyn.
The plan was to go to a free concert, which was part of the Rhythm and Blues Festival, at noon - strange time for a concert, I know. The performer, Zap Mama, was really great. The music is a mix of African, Asian and European sounds, it sounds mostly African most of the time, and she has a very powerful voice and so much energy! They played for almost 2 hours straight, with lots of dancing and jumping and craziness, like her vinyl-hat that kept bouncing around as she was jumping high in the air during her songs. So great to see such an energetic person! The sun even came out during her show, after the day starting out with a few drops of rain and very cloudy skies.
Despite the energy of the music, I had no energy yesterday. I was still really sore from Tuesday's workout and then Wednesday's painful run and could just not wake up all day, even after 2 cups of coffee. After the concert, I was planning to go back to lab, but the 45 minute subway-ride seemed dreadful, and by the time I decided to stay in Brooklyn, all the clouds had passed and it started getting warmer. So I walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to hang out there in the park until the Thursday night "Movies with a View" program started. A few friends were coming to the park later for the movie too, so I just put my blanket down and made myself comfortable on the grass. After playing with my camera and reading a bit, I fell asleep for about an hour until Becky got there and started friendlily kicking me. All of a sudden, I had all this energy and scarfed down 2 huge slices of Grimaldi's pizza (the best pizza in NY, according to many) and watched the rather silly "Return of the Pink Panther" from the 70s.
Lovely day, all in all.
The plan was to go to a free concert, which was part of the Rhythm and Blues Festival, at noon - strange time for a concert, I know. The performer, Zap Mama, was really great. The music is a mix of African, Asian and European sounds, it sounds mostly African most of the time, and she has a very powerful voice and so much energy! They played for almost 2 hours straight, with lots of dancing and jumping and craziness, like her vinyl-hat that kept bouncing around as she was jumping high in the air during her songs. So great to see such an energetic person! The sun even came out during her show, after the day starting out with a few drops of rain and very cloudy skies.
Despite the energy of the music, I had no energy yesterday. I was still really sore from Tuesday's workout and then Wednesday's painful run and could just not wake up all day, even after 2 cups of coffee. After the concert, I was planning to go back to lab, but the 45 minute subway-ride seemed dreadful, and by the time I decided to stay in Brooklyn, all the clouds had passed and it started getting warmer. So I walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to hang out there in the park until the Thursday night "Movies with a View" program started. A few friends were coming to the park later for the movie too, so I just put my blanket down and made myself comfortable on the grass. After playing with my camera and reading a bit, I fell asleep for about an hour until Becky got there and started friendlily kicking me. All of a sudden, I had all this energy and scarfed down 2 huge slices of Grimaldi's pizza (the best pizza in NY, according to many) and watched the rather silly "Return of the Pink Panther" from the 70s.
Lovely day, all in all.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Forgotten muscles
I am currently lying on my couch with an ice-pack wrapped around my thigh - more like my groin actually - near a muscle I managed to pull during my first lunge at my first fencing practice after returning from summer break.
That's all I managed to write last night before passing out on my couch and then later dragging myself over to my bed... all the little muscles that are barely used on a regular bases were screaming at me! Getting out of bed this morning was no easy feat either. Huh, I made it to lab somehow, limping across the street...
Last night, since there weren't too many people fencing (summer break still, I guess) I joined a friend for her workout routine set up for her by her coach. I figured, since I haven't been doing anything but running lately, a little lifting and strength training will do good. We did some shoulder and leg circuits with jump-roping in between and really hardcore ab-work at the end. She's pretty serious about getting into shape for the season, it was so hard! It's crazy that I can run 20 km without much of a problem, but a few lunges and situps totally kill me! I need to start using all my muscles to create a more balanced fitness.
Last night, I also asked one of the coaches at the club for some lessons. I figure I'll start in a couple of weeks - after the half marathon - and try to get weekly lessons to get back into fencing shape, which is very different from general fitness. My hand is weak and I have to find my point, but I think I'll be ok soon.
That's all I managed to write last night before passing out on my couch and then later dragging myself over to my bed... all the little muscles that are barely used on a regular bases were screaming at me! Getting out of bed this morning was no easy feat either. Huh, I made it to lab somehow, limping across the street...
Last night, since there weren't too many people fencing (summer break still, I guess) I joined a friend for her workout routine set up for her by her coach. I figured, since I haven't been doing anything but running lately, a little lifting and strength training will do good. We did some shoulder and leg circuits with jump-roping in between and really hardcore ab-work at the end. She's pretty serious about getting into shape for the season, it was so hard! It's crazy that I can run 20 km without much of a problem, but a few lunges and situps totally kill me! I need to start using all my muscles to create a more balanced fitness.
Last night, I also asked one of the coaches at the club for some lessons. I figure I'll start in a couple of weeks - after the half marathon - and try to get weekly lessons to get back into fencing shape, which is very different from general fitness. My hand is weak and I have to find my point, but I think I'll be ok soon.
Monday, August 3, 2009
The other adventures
I just realized that my previous post was completely focused on the "mudfest" part of my weekend, when in fact, it was only about half a day that I spent there at Liberty State Park. In fact, the rest of my weekend was also quite adventurous. As we were heading to the festival on Sunday, Rachel was getting really excited - she gets REALLY excited about music festivals - she said something that at the time, in my half asleep half trying-to-wake-up state I almost missed, but couldn't agree with more: that while the event in itself is really exciting, the truth is that trying something new, traveling on a ferry, going to New Jersey (wohooo), getting out of the routines are really what make these days so exciting. So true! Sometimes, just going to a place I haven't been before - even if it's to run an errand - taking a subway I haven't taken before, can be exciting among the routines of the weekdays. So, in fact, taking a ferry across the Hudson was almost as exciting as it was to see Coldplay. Ok, maybe not so much, but nearly (shows how exciting being in lab all day can be).
So along these lines, my Saturday crack-of-dawn training run was almost as exciting as seeing Coldplay. The New York Road Runners club organizes 2-3 long training runs in the summer/early fall just in time for marathon training. I had missed the first one of these earlier in July, but at the time, I was still on 6-8 miles for my long runs, which is a little short for these group runs. The point of these is that you can run with a bunch of people without having to join a regular running group or being pressures to run at a specific pace. They provide pacers, water along the park drives and snacks at the end. You can run anywhere from 6-20 miles, start all together in pace groups and then finish wherever you want to. They start at 7am, which is another great thing: it gets me out of bed and running before the heat of the day. Lately, I haven't been able to get myself out of bed on time to run in the mornings on the weekends and I have been more busy than usual on the social side :) which means that evening long runs - which can take as much as 3 hours out of my day - were out of the question. As a consequence, I have been doing 8-10 miles in the midday heat in July, which is really stupid. No wonder I hadn't had a good long run since I ran on the treadmill in Kansas in air conditioning.
Saturday was the perfect day in all kinds of ways. The humidity of last week finally gone after some big storms on Friday night, perfectly sunny, not a cloud in sight, some breeze, what else can we ask for? I had a good dinner on Friday, slept very little (which somehow always helped me when it came to sports), got up early enough to eat, have coffee, stretch, get to the park without rush, go to the bathroom, etc. Everything was perfect in a way. I started with a slow group (10:30 min/mile) that I passed after the first big hill and ended up catching up with 2 other groups (I think they were both 10 min/milers) and finished around 13 miles mostly on my own, which is actually how I prefer it. The biggest help were the water/Gatorade along the course, the mile markers, and the bananas in the middle (I ran the last 3 miles or so with a banana in my hand, since I knew I wasn't gonna finish at the same spot as most people). I felt great the whole time, with a little soreness towards the end, but all in all, it was a great run and now I feel ready for the NYC Half Marathon in 2 weeks!
By the way, I am so excited about the Half! It'll run through the middle of Manhattan (from Central Park down to the Southern tip of the island, Battery Park), which should be a nice preview for the marathon. I also have a friend from Boston who's coming to run and hang out and it's the day after my birthday, which is sort of a bummer, but I decided to have a party after the race, which will be celebration for all different reasons.
Which reminds me, one of Rachel's friends who's also running the half and happened to come with us to the festival yesterday, was born on the exact same day as I was. Year and month and day... never met anyone else before who was born on the exact same day! So as we sat eating pizza, we started wondering what the chances of meeting people who were born on the same exact day were. It turns out that on average, 216 thousand babies are born each day in the world (according to Wiki answers). So, I guess, considering that there are over 6 billion people in the world, it's not so likely to meet someone who was born the same exact day. Then again, most of my friends and their friends are around my age, and so that would increase the likelihood. Also, most babies apparently are born in August. Hmmm, do people really have more sex around the holidays?
So along these lines, my Saturday crack-of-dawn training run was almost as exciting as seeing Coldplay. The New York Road Runners club organizes 2-3 long training runs in the summer/early fall just in time for marathon training. I had missed the first one of these earlier in July, but at the time, I was still on 6-8 miles for my long runs, which is a little short for these group runs. The point of these is that you can run with a bunch of people without having to join a regular running group or being pressures to run at a specific pace. They provide pacers, water along the park drives and snacks at the end. You can run anywhere from 6-20 miles, start all together in pace groups and then finish wherever you want to. They start at 7am, which is another great thing: it gets me out of bed and running before the heat of the day. Lately, I haven't been able to get myself out of bed on time to run in the mornings on the weekends and I have been more busy than usual on the social side :) which means that evening long runs - which can take as much as 3 hours out of my day - were out of the question. As a consequence, I have been doing 8-10 miles in the midday heat in July, which is really stupid. No wonder I hadn't had a good long run since I ran on the treadmill in Kansas in air conditioning.
Saturday was the perfect day in all kinds of ways. The humidity of last week finally gone after some big storms on Friday night, perfectly sunny, not a cloud in sight, some breeze, what else can we ask for? I had a good dinner on Friday, slept very little (which somehow always helped me when it came to sports), got up early enough to eat, have coffee, stretch, get to the park without rush, go to the bathroom, etc. Everything was perfect in a way. I started with a slow group (10:30 min/mile) that I passed after the first big hill and ended up catching up with 2 other groups (I think they were both 10 min/milers) and finished around 13 miles mostly on my own, which is actually how I prefer it. The biggest help were the water/Gatorade along the course, the mile markers, and the bananas in the middle (I ran the last 3 miles or so with a banana in my hand, since I knew I wasn't gonna finish at the same spot as most people). I felt great the whole time, with a little soreness towards the end, but all in all, it was a great run and now I feel ready for the NYC Half Marathon in 2 weeks!
By the way, I am so excited about the Half! It'll run through the middle of Manhattan (from Central Park down to the Southern tip of the island, Battery Park), which should be a nice preview for the marathon. I also have a friend from Boston who's coming to run and hang out and it's the day after my birthday, which is sort of a bummer, but I decided to have a party after the race, which will be celebration for all different reasons.
Which reminds me, one of Rachel's friends who's also running the half and happened to come with us to the festival yesterday, was born on the exact same day as I was. Year and month and day... never met anyone else before who was born on the exact same day! So as we sat eating pizza, we started wondering what the chances of meeting people who were born on the same exact day were. It turns out that on average, 216 thousand babies are born each day in the world (according to Wiki answers). So, I guess, considering that there are over 6 billion people in the world, it's not so likely to meet someone who was born the same exact day. Then again, most of my friends and their friends are around my age, and so that would increase the likelihood. Also, most babies apparently are born in August. Hmmm, do people really have more sex around the holidays?
Mud jacuzzi and other adventures
Monday mornings are never great, especially after a long night of "mud jacuzzi" (more about that later) and a failed experiment, which involved an hour of mad pipetting after which the machine started beeping at me and told me I left something out, but was vague enough so I have to redo the whole thing! Consolation price: Janice's amazing cake-left-over brownie-type chocolate heaven :) It was left over from this amazing thing, her first endeavour to make a wedding cake for a fellow grad student's wedding this weekend:
So now, back to that mud jacuzzi. This weekend's All Points West Festival was quite muddy. It rained a lot on Friday, then was nice on Saturday and again, rained a lot on Sunday and of course, we had tickets for Sunday... we gathered all our rain-gear and headed out to Liberty State Park in New Jersey in the afternoon. By the time we got on the ferry in Battery Park, the sun was out - I am convinced it was the collective result of all those people carrying rain-coats and umbrellas - and after a wonderful ride across the Hudson (or some sort of bay I guess) we arrived in Jersey. The view from the park was spectacular, although my phone's camera doesn't do it any justice - I left my camera home just to be safe with all the water.
I didn't know most of the bands that were playing, we were really there for MGMT and Coldplay, which, it turned out, were playing at the same time, argh! Well, I saw MGMT last year at Sziget in Budapest and they are a smaller Brooklyn band so I will have many more chances to see them. Probably not true for Coldplay... so, it was a pretty easy choice. To go back a bit to our arrival: even from the ferry to the park entrance, it wasn't an easy walk, through wet grass and thick mud, but we had no idea what was waiting at the entrance and inside. People were ditching their sandals and flip-flops left and right, it was so hard to walk in the mud. We had sneakers on but by the time we made it inside, they all looked the same: brown. For some time, we tried to navigate around the deeper parts, but after a couple of hours, we just gave up.
The area in front of the main stage was pretty bad too, but we found a nice spot that was relatively easy to stand/dance on for Coldplay. They put on a really good show! Chris Martin was actually the one who coined the term "mud jacuzzi" as he was up on the dry stage with the spectacular views of the skyline of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty... in any case, they were great! At one point, they got off the stage and walked down the middle of the crowd to the little sound tent in the middle where there was a small, makeshift stage with just a couple of mics on it, very near where we were standing. Once people realized what was going on, the crowd in front of us turned around and started running towards the back, where they were standing. Holy shit that was a little scary! All of a sudden, a gang of 18-year old girls screaming "I love you, Chris!" were pushing us towards the back, through thick mud and deep water - I could feel mud splashing up on my head and going in my pants from the top. In the end, it was all worth it: after all the pushing and shoving, we found ourselves just meters away from the band who sang Billie Jean to tribute Michael Jackson and one other Coldplay song. I wish I had my camera... this is all I have:
So now, back to that mud jacuzzi. This weekend's All Points West Festival was quite muddy. It rained a lot on Friday, then was nice on Saturday and again, rained a lot on Sunday and of course, we had tickets for Sunday... we gathered all our rain-gear and headed out to Liberty State Park in New Jersey in the afternoon. By the time we got on the ferry in Battery Park, the sun was out - I am convinced it was the collective result of all those people carrying rain-coats and umbrellas - and after a wonderful ride across the Hudson (or some sort of bay I guess) we arrived in Jersey. The view from the park was spectacular, although my phone's camera doesn't do it any justice - I left my camera home just to be safe with all the water.
I didn't know most of the bands that were playing, we were really there for MGMT and Coldplay, which, it turned out, were playing at the same time, argh! Well, I saw MGMT last year at Sziget in Budapest and they are a smaller Brooklyn band so I will have many more chances to see them. Probably not true for Coldplay... so, it was a pretty easy choice. To go back a bit to our arrival: even from the ferry to the park entrance, it wasn't an easy walk, through wet grass and thick mud, but we had no idea what was waiting at the entrance and inside. People were ditching their sandals and flip-flops left and right, it was so hard to walk in the mud. We had sneakers on but by the time we made it inside, they all looked the same: brown. For some time, we tried to navigate around the deeper parts, but after a couple of hours, we just gave up.
The area in front of the main stage was pretty bad too, but we found a nice spot that was relatively easy to stand/dance on for Coldplay. They put on a really good show! Chris Martin was actually the one who coined the term "mud jacuzzi" as he was up on the dry stage with the spectacular views of the skyline of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty... in any case, they were great! At one point, they got off the stage and walked down the middle of the crowd to the little sound tent in the middle where there was a small, makeshift stage with just a couple of mics on it, very near where we were standing. Once people realized what was going on, the crowd in front of us turned around and started running towards the back, where they were standing. Holy shit that was a little scary! All of a sudden, a gang of 18-year old girls screaming "I love you, Chris!" were pushing us towards the back, through thick mud and deep water - I could feel mud splashing up on my head and going in my pants from the top. In the end, it was all worth it: after all the pushing and shoving, we found ourselves just meters away from the band who sang Billie Jean to tribute Michael Jackson and one other Coldplay song. I wish I had my camera... this is all I have:
I was just guessin, At numbers and figures, Pullin the puzzles apart
Questions of science, Science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart
Tell me you love me, Come back to haunt me, Oh when I rush to the start
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