Nurse on the Run

Alright, I’m not going to lie…while I do thoroughly enjoy marathon training, it is quite nice not to have a long run scheduled for Sunday morning.  I did run twelve miles yesterday, but seeing as I’m no longer training for a marathon, the pressure is off and I don’t feel so inclined to have to get up in the morning to practice my morning fueling routine and such.  Ah, to live like the rest of the non-crazy-running world. 

Anyway, I did wake up this morning, and go for a run!  Easy five miles.  Or…I try to keep it easy and it feels like I’m running slower, but my pace never reflects that.  Oops?  It was an absolutely beautiful day out in NYC…60’s and sunny with sooo many people out walking along the east river.  Sounds good to me!

Sunday, October 17
5.06 miles in 39:11, avg pace of 7:44

For those of you keeping track, that gives me 35 miles for the week after the marathon.  Not too shabby, hm?  I am generally impressed with how fantastic my legs feel, although they did feel a bit sluggish today so I’m calling tomorrow a rest day.  I’m pretty sure I’m due for one. 

Anyway, post-run I ended up heading to the Bears’ bar to catch the second half of the game, which can only be summed up by what happened later in the evening.  I was walking home from the subway, and a man passed me and said, “Bears?” (In regards to my Bears shirt)  I replied with some sort of confirming comment, to which he responded with, “I’m so sorry.”  Hahaha.  Not a pretty game.

The real excitement was after the game. After seeing Allie mentioned Chelsea Market on her blog, I knew I had to check it out!  Food and shops…and food shops!  Sounds good to me.  I headed over to Chelsea, enjoying the beautiful day and then wandered through the market, which is inside.  Lots of different stores ranging from a seafood market to bakeries to kitchen supplies to Italian foods to sandwich places to Thai food.  I manage to escape buying something at the bakeries (I have some cupcake failures at home…), but it was really fun to walk around and look at everything…especially since it involved food.    Of course I couldn’t escape without making purchases, so check out what I got:

Cupcake Wine!!

Allie actually sent me a picture of this wine a few months back, and I knew that I had to find it, but I never could!  I walked into the wine store in Chelsea Market and it was the first thing I spotted.  Must be fate.    I can’t wait to try it!

Chinese soup spoons!

My roommate in Pennsylvania was Chinese, and she had several soup spoon which I learned to love when eating soup!  Lots more room to fill your spoon with yummy soup, so when I saw them in the kitchen supply store, I had to buy some.  They’re actually much more red than they look in the picture, which is fabulous.  Even better:  On Saturday, I found a recipe for a soup I want to make.  Fate again!

Oven Thermometer

Any good baker (um, me?) should have an oven thermometer because you never really know if the dial on the oven is correct and the heat of the oven is quite important to have nicely baked goods.  I learned this lesson when my cupcakes that I made on Saturday were a wee bit burned.    Four dollars later, I will hopefully avoid that for good.

Some pretty good finds, and it was fun to walk around.    Now, time for more football/baseball (so many choices in life!), and then getting ready for my final week of working 8-4 like a normal person.    I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!

Sometimes when I talk about running to other people, I realize what a nerd I sound like.  I even preface certain statement by explaining to people that I’m a huge running nerd and I get excited about things that most people (even some other runners!) have no idea what I’m even talking about.  If you told the general population that Bernard Lagat and Erin Donohue were going to be in town, they’d probably scrunch up their face and say, “Uh, who?”  So therefore, when the New York Running Co (my Wednesday running group!) said that Lagat and Erin would be IN THE STORE on Saturday, it was hard to share my excitement with others.  However, other running people were excited, and admittedly this was the only thing that got me out of bed at nine in the morning on a Saturday.

A little meet and greet area was set up in the running store, and both Lagat and Erin were signing autographs and chatting with the patrons, which was really cool!  Obviously they don’t have the fame of Michael Jordan, but I was still really excited to meet them.  They’re so personable and nice (for lack of any better word…)…and funny!  We were able to snap some pictures, and then we had some group Q&A times where Lagat and Erin talked about their strategy for their past seasons, how they trained for the Fifth Avenue Mile (which was on Sunday and why they were in town…), and gave us some tips on perfecting a race-ending kick.  (Hint:  You need to practice running fast at the end of your runs if you actually want to do it in a race…who knew?  Haha.) 

Erin, me, Lagat!

I’m not going to lie…there’s nothing like being around pro runners to make you feel chubby not skinny!  I don’t think I’m large by any means, but they’re in such great shape!  It’s crazy!  I snagged some autographs in addition to this picture, but they got a little squished in my bad.    I guess I’ll have to meet them again!

After our meet and greet, many of the runners headed to…you guessed it…run!  I had a taper-ific long run to do, which involved 12 miles.  My plan was to head out with the longest group (which was five miles on this lovely Saturday) and then just add on as needed.  It ended up being a bunch of guys and me (no really, it makes me think that everyone else thinks I’m fast!), and instead of doing the planned five miles, we switched it up to seven, so I only had a few more miles to do on my own at the end.  Good deal!  It’s fun to chat with people on the run, and one of the guys was an Brit who now lives in Hong Kong…you meet so many interesting people with such different lives!

One of these days I’ll come off of my NYC high…

Anyway, the run itself was a little painful since it was a bit toasty out.  Also, while I like to think that beer is good for carb-loading, my Friday evening festivities probably didn’t fuel me like I wanted them to.    The first part of the run was definitely faster when I was running with the group, which wasn’t a problem, but I was definitely hot when I split off from them.  I thought about cutting the run short, but I wanted to push through since runs aren’t always easy, and I made it!  Garmin really isn’t friends with the satellites, so my mile splits don’t really make any sense…maybe sometimes it’s better not to know and to just RUN.

Saturday, September 25
12.0-ish miles in 1:35:39, avg pace of 7:58-ish

Sounds about right?  I believe that’s my last double digit run before the Chicago Marathon…crazy!  Luckily I finally bought my plane ticket ($320, yikes!), so I’m good to go. 

magnoliaaaa

My Saturday evening activities (because I’m cool) involved checking out the new Trader Joe’s on the west side (cue gang signs), which happens to be a couple blocks from the famous Magnolia bakery.  Obviously I had to stop in!  I picked up a banana caramel cupcake for my noming pleasure.  Check it out:

Banana cupcake with meringue frosting!

Annnd a carmel-ish center.

Not going to lie, I think mine were better…which I apparently never did a post about (I’m so behind on cupcake/recipe posts…oops?), but here’s a picture of my glory:

Banana cupcakes with chocolate ganache filling and a peanut butter frosting…DIVINE.

I think I win, but nice try Magnolia.