More Magazine Half Expo and Flaxseed Smoothies

Today's Workout: yoga, stretching, 25 minute elliptical/bike

Today I volunteered to work at the expo for the More/Fitness Magazine Half Marathon, a women's half marathon being held this coming Sunday in Central Park.

 Welcome to the Expo!

I gave out race bibs as my volunteer credit for the NYRR 9+1 program. The program works like this: if you run 9 NYRR qualifying races and volunteer once in a calendar year, you qualify automatically for the following year's NYC Marathon. So I am doing my 9+1 to qualify for the 2013 NYC Marathon. I think its a pretty good deal... 4+1 down, 5 races to go!

So the More Half Expo was pretty big and vendors were located on two floors, which was more than for the NYC Half. After I was done working, two of the other volunteers and I walked around to take a look at what was being offered. We got some protein bar samples, Fitness and More magazine copies, and a few other goodies. We also got to keep the race shirt we wore during volunteering. In case you wanted to know what it looks like, I provided a wonderful self-portrait below. Actually, I look like a dork as usual but there's the shirt. And the free Fitness Magazine with the flawless Elle Macpherson on the cover.

Dork.

The Expo also had "fashion shows" throughout the day and guest speakers. One of them was Nicole Sullivan. For those of you who don't know, she is an actress who had roles on King of Queens, Sh*t My Dad Says, and she was in Scrubs for a bit too. You'd recognize her if you saw her. She was there talking about her recent weight loss. Overall it was a nice expo and I liked that it was geared towards women (as it should have been). I also briefly met Jess@ Fit Chick in the City while giving out bibs. Have a great race, Jess! And good luck to all the runners this Sunday!

Nicole Sullivan speaking on stage.

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Yesterday I did a little grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. Even though they have some awesome food and cheap prices, it gets seriously crowded in that store! And at the one in Brooklyn people get pretty aggressive about getting all their organic, vegan, super-antioxidant groceries. I think people will seriously run you over with their carts and leave you laying out on the floor just to get the last bag of organic nuts or something. Craziness.

 This is the TJs in Brooklyn. It's in an old bank so its actually really pretty.

The aisles are super super narrow though, which makes everyone crazy and ignites the evil in certain people.

I went there mainly because I had to get myself out of the house somehow and buying food seemed like a good option. I'm one of those weird people who actually loves food shopping. Not sure why that is but I'm guessing its a combination of loving to eat and try new foods and also loving to spend money. What great interests I have. My boyfriend is one lucky guy!

I also really need to eat the right things since my body is in the healing phase, so I decided to get some high-protein foods like tofu and thinkThin bars (20grams of protein! Holy cow). I also need to rid my body of the 20 pounds of Easter candy I probably ate in the last few days and replace it with something healthy. I've been meaning to try to use flaxseed in my foods and eat more Quinoa too. My friend Kristine who I went hiking with recently eats these all the time and suggested I try them out.

thinkThin bars. So tasty, especially for high-protein bars.

Can't wait to eat these!

She even gave me this cool recipe for a flaxseed, banana, and peanut butter smoothie that I tried out this morning before the expo. I used almond butter instead of peanut butter but that's just because I have it in my house. It is yummy!! Once in a while I had to get some of the flaxseed grains out of my mouth in between sips but overall I really like this. Plus, its super healthy for you. Also its filling enough to have for breakfast or during that afternoon time when I'm usually starving while waiting for my boyfriend Karl to come home for dinner. So no matter when you plan on drinking this during the day, you might want to try this one out!

Anyone running the More Magazine Half this weekend? Or any other races?
What new foods have you been eating lately?
Do you have any good recipes for Quinoa or flaxseed?

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?