Unique Race Alert: The Color Run

Today's Workout: 45 minute elliptical, stretching

 Even though I'm not running right now due to unforeseen circumstances, I'm trying to think positively and hope to be back ASAP. In the meantime, I'm always on the lookout for unique and super cool races to put on my bucket list for the future. I'm not talking just "themed" races like the NYRR Scotland Run (which was totally fun by the way!) but something incredibly original and out there. For example, the crazy Zombie 5K race and obstacle course. This one, of course, will never come close enough to NYC. Why? Because I want it to. Grr.

 Maybe if I ask nicely the race organizers will create an Zombie race near me. I may have to use the puppy dog eyes for this one.

So when I'm totally bored I usually peruse the web aimlessly and see where the wind blows me. Usually it blows me to pinterest, this blog, or to some random video of a baby laughing or something. What can I say, YouTube really gets me hooked!
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Recently in my internet pursuits, I pulled myself away from YouTube and came across a race called the Color Run. For those who haven't heard of it, its a 5K race where you wear a white shirt and basically get sprayed by color as you run the course. According to the website, it works like this: 

Each kilometer of the event is associated with a designated color. 1k is yellow, 2k is blue, 3k is green, 4k is pink, and the 5k finish is a “Color Extravaganza.” As the runners/walkers hit the Kilometer COLOR RUN Zones, they will be blitzed by our volunteers, sponsors, and staff with COLOR.  The color is a special “elf made” recipe of magical color dust.  All products are 100% natural and safe.  You can eat the stuff if you’d like (we have tried it and don’t suggest it, it is surprisingly high in calories and leaves a chalky aftertaste).

To illustrate...

 And I'm guessing this is the "Color Extravaganza". Just a guess.

So I don't know about all of you, but I would LOVE to do this. Definitely a change from the normal Central Park loop, I'd say. This is probably more of a race just to have fun at and not think about a PR, which is probably good for everyone to have every once in a while. A change of pace! Literally. I figured I would mention this race because... drum roll... it is coming to New York City! Yes, a cool race like this is coming to me! While there isn't any information about exactly where it is going to be held, they did say it will be on August 25. So keep your calendars open New Yorkers.

And if you are currently on the fence... tell me this video doesn't make you want to run it.

In other news, be sure to register for the NYC Marathon lottery. Registration is only open until April 23rd so if you are undecided, get a move on it. I'm not running it this year but will be next year (ah!) after I complete my 9+1 for guaranteed entry. Good luck to all the applicants! PS. I totally love their slogan for this year. Who else likes it?

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I know I promised to update you all about the quinoa and black bean burgers I made for dinner yesterday. Well, I'm doing that now and I have to say... they were SO GOOD! I was actually surprised how much I liked them. Karl even told me he would order them over a regular burger (since you don't know him, Karl hates health food and loves meat... so that's a huge compliment coming from him).

The only edit I would make to the recipe would be to add another egg white to the mix just to help it stay together a little better. The ends of the burger kept trying to fall apart. But overall, its a winner. I liked it so much I made the leftover mix into a patty for lunch today. When I like a food, I eat it so much that eventually I get seriously sick of it. That's a habit I need to break or else I'll have nothing left to eat in my life pretty soon! Plus, I want these burgers to stick around..

I had the burger with one of my flaxseed smoothies. So filling!

 Have you run or found out about any unique races?

Are you registering for the NYC Marathon lottery?

Anyone else doing the 9+1 program for the 2013 marathon? What races are you running?

Saturday's Plans: Running and Hiking

 Yesterday's Workout: lower body strengthening for my injury & lots of stretching

Today's Workout: Scotland Run 10K and ~2.5-3 hours hiking

Today I ran the Scotland Run 10K in Central Park and had a blast (and a 10K PR!). I'll write a race review soon and post it ASAP with some photos. It was a gorgeous day and there was great Scottish entertainment. I bought an IT Band strap and it helped a lot to get me through the race without much pain. Now its time to go cold turkey from running for probably around 2 weeks while I stretch and strengthen. Boo! I'm not sure if I'll be ready for the Brooklyn Half Marathon on May 19 but I'm crossing my fingers in the hopes that I'll be able to. Injuries seriously suck! But we will see, I definitely want to rehab this knee right.

I know I've mentioned IT Band Syndrome a lot lately and during my frantic hours of research about causes, treatments, recovery, etc., I found this awesome stretch. Apparently, IT Band treatment is A LOT of foam rolling, icing, and you guessed it... stretching. Unlike some of the others, I feel this one down my whole leg and even on the side of my knee. Check it out!!

 

World's Best IT Band Stretch by Dr. Geoffrey Alan Gray

After the Scotland Run I went to meet up with some undergraduate college friends in Highlands, NJ for a hike. The four of us spent the day walking and wandering around the trails and had a great time catching up. Pretty much I went from running in the morning to walking all afternoon. I am going to sleep well tonight!

During the hike we got lost a few times but to our defense, the trails were really poorly labeled. Seriously! The day was great. Its so nice to see friends you haven't seen in a while, and when you do hang out its as if no time has passed in between meetings! Plus it was a really nice day out weather-wise and these trails were right near the beach, which made it even more pretty.

 A pier near the bay

 This was when we actually found the right trail. This was how the trails were labeled, by having one of these posts every few miles or so.

J, K, and me. 

L was taking this picture and I'm still waiting for one of the four of us!

Between the race and the hiking, this was a very outdoorsy day for me! My body is a bit sore to say the least, but it was totally worth it. After the hike, we had dinner at Chili's then got some fro-yo and Starbucks, with lots of girly chit-chat throughout. Afterwards we went our separate ways and I tried not to fall asleep while driving. If you were wondering... I made it home alive. My knee is not feeling so great at the moment so its time for some serious icing. And since I'm at my parents house for Easter... Easter candy it is! Yum. I think I earned it today.

What did you do this weekend?

Scottish Swag

Today's Workout: stretching & foam rolling all day long

Today I had to trek it up to 89th street to the NYRR office to pick up my stuff for this Saturday's Scotland Run 10K. In all honesty, I probably shouldn't be running this race because of my IT Band, but I have been looking forward to it for so long ( I signed up the day it opened!) that I can't bring myself to skip it. My goal is to run it nice and easy and hopefully I won't have too much pain (crossing my fingers). To prep myself, I'm foam rolling like I've never foam rolled before and icing on and off all day long. Super fun. Add some American Idol results into the mix and its a party! Really though, I really just wish I could just cut the IT Band out of my leg as a quick fix... damn human anatomy.

I hate you IT Band.

So today when I picked up my gear I noticed it wasn't the usual NYRR t-shirt and race bib only. There was an actual "swag bag", which I wasn't expecting at all for a smaller race. Since its a Scotland-themed event, all the items in the bag were based on... you guessed it: Scotland. Even the shirt was cuter than usual. Very nice, NYRR, very nice.

My swag.

I wish I had bought a cute Scottish hat or something when I was over in Edinburgh last May with my sister Jen. I would have had something authentic! But no, I was too cheap that day. I did, however, eat haggis at the insistence of my sister. If you don't know what that is, look here for a description. Thankfully I didn't read that before I ate it, although my haggis looked more like meatloaf than the one on Wiki. Thanks Jen for encouraging me to eat that (it actually did taste good!).

 Yep, that's haggis.

I love me some bagpipes.

On a separate note, I finally watched the makeover episode of the Biggest Loser. Those are my favorite types of episodes because they are so emotional and inspiring! I will say that I teared up like a 2 year old little girl at certain points during the show, but I'm always the first to admit that I can be over-emotional and a wee bit of a crier.

But I really love to see people get rewarded for hard work. And when I complain about those measly 5 pounds I need to lose, I just think of these contestants and how much they worked their assess off to change their lives. I mean imagine how much work it is to lose almost 100 pounds?!! What is my lazy ass complaining about? I mean, isn't this amazing....

Look at that bod! Go Kim!


Have you ever been to Scotland or tried haggis?
What shows inspire you (or get you a little teary eyed.. admit it!!)?

Running My City: 2012 NYC Half Marathon

The NYC Half was my first "big" race and my first half marathon. Before I started training for this race, I literally never ran more than 4 miles in my life. By the end of the morning on March 18, I had run 13.1. Unreal! 

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The 2012 NYC Half had a record number of runners: 15,000. Many of them were from overseas but there were definitely a lot of hometown people. The course started with a full 6 mile loop at Central Park, running through Times Square, down the West Side Highway and ended at the South Street Seaport. Its was like a tour of NY in 2 hours.

Race weekend: 
On Friday I headed to the Expo at the Metropolitan Pavilion and picked up my race bib... #18383. The expo had a bunch of cool vendors and some nice giveaways, including free Tommie Cooper compression socks, Odewlla bars and smoothies, and Luna bars (yum!). I also had to buy myself some official race gear, including the NYC Half running hat. Although it was a bit out of my grad-school budget I thought, "Hey, its my first half and I have to prove I ran it somehow!" So I got a sweatshirt and a hat. Plus the race T-shirt was nice but its SO green. Can't wear that everywhere without accidentally blinding one or two people.

 

So I laid out my clothes and gear the night before, set about 6 alarms, ate some pasta, drank tons of water, and tried to sleep. That was the tricky part, I thought I would never fall asleep and just kind of laid there. I managed to fall asleep at some ungodly hour and woke up at another ungodly hour. Around 4:30 I got dressed, ate my pre-race Clif bar, and headed out the door to the long, lonely subway ride to the park. There were a decent amount of drunk people coming home from St. Patty's day celebrations as I'm sitting there in my compression socks and running shorts. They probably thought that I was the crazy one. Even the ones dressed as leprechauns.

When I got to the park it was still dark, which was kind of eerie. I did a warm up run, stretched, waited on the huge line for the Porta potty and got into my corral. After the "official" start of the race it took me about 20 minutes to get to the starting line. That's what 15,000 runners will do to you. Pretty cool though to see the professional runners on their way out of the park as I just was about to cross the start (yeah, seriously... they were that fast). If you blinked, I think you would have missed them. Including my inspiration, miss Kara Goucher..

 Kara Goucher in the NYC Half. Photo by NYRR (nyrr.org).
She finished in 1:06... what?!! Someone described it as her doing a "13.1 mile sprint through NYC"

The loop of Central Park was not as bad as it could have been. Thankfully I did a bunch of training runs on the hills of the park and trained my quads to get stronger and behave on those hills, otherwise it would have been killer. I saw so many people give up and walk up the Harlem hills but I mentally coached myself not to stop and walk... and I succeeded. Also it just so happened that Yellowcard's "Believe" came on while I was running up the hills which always inspires me to keep running.

Times Square... unreal.

After the loop we exited the park and made our way through Times Square for miles 7-8. I ate my GU gel around this time to try to encourage my second wind to kick in. This stretch was the absolute best part of the race and made the $117 dollar price tag on this race totally worth it. When else can you run through an empty TS with crowds of people cheering you on?! My goal was not to trip and fall over a manhole and embarrass myself. Goal accomplished. Luckily my boyfriend Karl was waiting for me in TS and took the super awesome photo above. In all the professional ones I had my eyes closed and looked like I was having a seizure. Plus I think my legs look pretty damn good in that picture so I thought I'd share it with you.

 

 Crossing the finish line. Love the face on of the lady next to me.

After TS we made our way to the West Side Highway. There was some good race entertainment including DJs and cheerleaders, which was cool. Kept me motivated on that super long stretch of road. We passed Chelsea Piers, then the WTC, and went through the tunnel under the southern tip of Manhattan. I saw people doing downwards and at first I was happy for a downhill. But I quickly realized that if we were going down we would have to go back up at some point... sure enough, coming out of the tunnel there was another hill. I thought "are you kidding me?!", but the signs on the side of the road saying "800 meters to go" kept me going. I pushed on, couldn't believe I actually made it to the end, and cross the finish line.
Final time: 2:06.18 (9:39/mile pace)

Post-race festival at the seaport

The post-race festival was at the South Street Seaport. I was a sight to see all those heat foiled people walking around. Must of looked like the strangest festival ever to all the nearby residents. It was a bit crowded though and the line for medal engravings basically went all the way to my apartment in Brooklyn. I passed on waiting. Overall though, the festival had alot of great entertainment and food. Great place to end a race.

Post-race photo and warming up with my heat foil.

So this was an amazing race, nicely organized, and well worth all the work. I've lived in NY forever but never experienced anything like running through Times Square. I am so happy this was my first half marathon and proud of finishing. A special thanks to all the people and volunteers along the course who cheering me and all the other runners on... you totally kept me going! If you can get in by any means, I would definitely recommend this race and I'll see you there next year :)

Did you run the NYC Half? What was your first half marathon?