I’m starting to get the jitters, big time for the race on Saturday. So, to distract myself, I thought that I would post a couple of photos of our new apartment. Yeah, we were tired of the walk up and all of our old crappy furniture, so we moved into this place. Psyche! These images are some that I did recently for Curatedmag, of the new items at BoConcept. I love pretty much everything in that store, and not just because I have Danish roots! I didn’t spend as much time as I normally do, squaring up the shots and pulling out lens distortion. But, you get the idea.

One more–

Other cool stuff that I saw on the webz today:

–What it is like to be hit by a speeding car, and live.

–Last week, I mentioned the El Mac exhibit that will be at the Joshua Liner Gallery later this month. Well, El Mac issued a teaser video, that actually shows him working on a piece. Very, very cool.

For the weekend:

Friday: We will be heading out pretty early for a long visit with Piper, on the way to Hartford. The way things ended up shaking out, some of my cousins (the ones who are also running the race on Saturday) are currently in NYC. So, they will be coming to meet Piper and riding to CT with us. I’m pretty excited about it for various reasons. I haven’t seen these cousins for several years, and it is always exciting when Piper has a chance to meet a blood relative.

Saturday: Race hard. Try not to be disappointed with the results. Visit PJ. Drive home. Rest.

Sunday: Picking apples in the country?

I know it was only 3 miles, but it was really hot and I had to fight traffic HARD at the beginning, since it was a free for all (no pace chutes). 6’24″ pace is 5 seconds per mile, better than my previously recorded official NYRR time. Progress feels good. 3 girls still finished ahead of me. I’m ok with that.

Last Name

First Name

Sex/ Age

Bib

Team

City

State

Country

Overall Place

Gender Place

Age Place

Net Time

Pace/ Mile

Breinholt

Jacob

M33

256

NYRC

NEW YORK

NY

USA

96

93

17

0:19:11

06:24

Distance: 3.0 Miles, 4.9 Kilometers
Date/Time: June 24, 2010, 6:45 pm
Location: Financial District, NYC
Weather: 87 Degrees, 57% Humidity, Wind 15MPH, Clear.

Total Finishers: Men – 2555 Women – 2506 Total – 5061

I really really hope that Reagan blobs about how the race went for her. Because it is freaking hilarious.

I have been so freaking bad at running, lately. I haven’t done any running in almost a month. True, Piper has been sick, and I have been sick. But, even when I didn’t have an excuse, I have been extremely bad at keeping with a routine, for this entire winter. Hopefully that will all change, now. Monday, I registered Reagan and myself for this year’s New York City Marathon, in November. We gained automatic entry through the 9+1 program. I have to admit, that the motivation meter was going up a little, just being on the NYRR site, putting in my info.

In addition to running the NYC Marathon, this year. we have also started a club. When I say “we,” I should say Becca. She did almost all of the work. It should be really good for getting in some group runs. Nothing like a little healthy competition, for a pick-me-up. BTW, if you want to be in the club, and are not already on the email list, hit me up. Since we were able to Recruit Carl, I’m pretty sure that we will have the club points championship pretty much in the bag. But, if you would like to be a part of Carl’s entourage, we are currently still recruiting. As of Monday, our name is now officially showing up on the “affiliations” drop down, on the NYRR registration screen. At least it is, if you are registering for the Marathon .

This may sound totally dumb, but, after having so much fun shooting last year’s race, I’m kind of bummed that I can do it again this year. I’m a nerd, I know.

Go NYRC!

Reagan and I have been working all year long to gain guaranteed entry to next year’s New York City Marathon. We have been doing the NYRR 9+1 program. We have had all of our races (plus a few extra) finished for quite some time now. But when we got online to sign up to volunteer, everything was booked except for the last two races of the year. Good thing that we didn’t procrastinate any longer than we did.

Reagan and I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday, so that we could be in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, by 7:30. It was a gorgeous day. The temperature was in the low 20′s but it didn’t feel that cold, because we were bathing in sunlight. The photo above is of Reagan dancing to Madonna’s “Holiday,” which was playing through the PA. So, it is official now. We will be running in Nov. 2010. We also had that chance to talk to another volunteer, who was near us, who has run NYC and Chicago for like the last 15 years straight. He said that they are spread almost perfectly apart. We have wanted to run Chi town for a while now. We are debating possibly doing both of them next year.

In Piper news, the date that she is scheduled to move back to NJ, has now been pushed from Tuesday to Thursday. We took advantage and had a super long and fun visit with her today. She is a clapping and smiling fool, these days. It is really fun to goof around with her and watch her smile and make little squeaks, like she is trying to laugh.

Reagan told me that on Friday, she was clapping Piper’s hands together, and when she stopped Piper kept clapping by herself. I couldn’t wait to see it for myself. To my amazement, I had her bouncing on my knee, clapping her hands, and she totally kept going, when I took my hands away. I was busting up laughing. One of the cutest things I have seen. It is especially cute the way she turns around and looks at me for approval afterward. We took some video today, that I’m hoping to get posted at some point. Anyway, I have rambled too long. Below, is a shot of Piper being so patient while Reagan works on her hair.

Here for a few more shots.

First of all, I had to share this photo, because I’m still laughing over it. If you have ever run a NYRR sponsored race then you have undoubtedly seen all of the course photographers along the way, and received the subsequent email solicitations to purchase the photos. Last Saturday, I figured “why not have a little fun with them?” So I fired off a couple of pretty nice poses as I was passing the photographers. I was pretty much rolling when I received the proofs in the email. This is definitely my favorite one, though. If you have ever seen “American Psycho,” then you know where I got this pose.

Second, the Hartford Marathon is just around the corner. In fact, it is only 2 days away. I am really excited and nervous about it. My best marathon time was on this course, so I’m kind of putting a lot pressure on myself to do well. I have been resting all week. I have even left out going to the gym, except for on Monday. I want to try to have as fresh of legs, as possible. On Tuesday, I had a bit of a scare, when I started sneezing and sniffling a bit. I seriously would have been devastated, had I gotten sick right before the race. I have been swallowing hands full of vitamins for the last couple of days, and knock on wood, I haven’t had any other symptoms. Thanks everyone who sent me suggestions for my playlist. With everyone’s help, I have checked out close to 300 new tracks over the past couple of days. I was able to get some really good ideas to keep me moving on Saturday.

Lastly, I haven’t posted anything in a couple of days. I’m sure that some people may have been worried/hoping that I ran out of things to say. Hahahahah. In actuality, I have been pretty busy on a few other projects, and haven’t had a lot of time to write anything good. About a year ago, I had the privilege of joining a group in my extended family that had undertaken the challenge of organizing genealogy for my mother’s side of the family. For my contribution, I helped them put together a couple of websites to publish their work on, as well as to facilitate networking, etc.. For the past few days, I have been kind of re-working the sites. Here are a couple of screen shots:

Here is the link, if you want to visit: www.christensenfamilyhistory.com

Here is the link, if you want to visit this one: www.whitneyfamilyhistory.com

In addition to those two sites, I have been working with my cousin, who has a candy-bouquet/gift-basket business that she is building a site for. So anyway, between all of that and my “real” job, the hours have pretty much been filled. But, I’m really looking forward to this weekend. I’m hoping to get in a couple of more good poses for the camera guys. “Blue Steel,” maybe?  We’ll see.

I’m trying to build a playlist for the Hartford Marathon, coming up on Saturday, and I’m having severe playlist-maker’s block. I feel like I’m kind of burnt out, for the moment on a lot of the stuff that I would traditionally load into my running playlists. So, today instead of sharing a Musica Coolica track, I’m begging for some suggestions. What are some tracks that help motivate you and/or get you amped?

I am open to pretty much anything, at this point. It would be really great to get some stuff that is fresh to my ears. But it is also awesome to be reminded of some good stuff that has somehow slipped through the cracks over the years. So please, please, share with me some fresh new stuff to keep my legs moving fast during my last race of the year, next week. Many thanks in advance.

I titled this post “Conference Weekend,” because it is the weekend that our church, instead of having local meetings, just has one mega-meeting, that everyone watches on TV/Webcast Billy Graham-style. Okay, not really Billy Graham-style, at all. Lucky for us, everything comes out in print, in a few weeks. Because we missed most of it. We ended up having an insanely busy weekend.

I ran a half marathon in Central Park, Saturday morning. I wouldn’t recommend the course. It is basically just 2 laps of CP Drive. Normally this is fine. But when you are trying to get a good time, the hills at the north end of the park can break your spirit a little bit. Reagan showed up to cheer me on (which helped, immensely) and take some photos. My goal was to score less than 1 hour and 30 mins. I missed it by 5 minutes, but still beat my previous best by almost a minute.

^—-My blistered up feet.

I thought that I was going to have to go into work after the race. It turned out that I didn’t have to. So after having a nice visit with Piper, Reagan and I basically went nuts and tore our entire house apart to accommodate a new shelf that Reagan has been begging to buy for a month or so. In involved moving a 1000 lb. aquarium, dismantling some wall-mounted shelves, patching the wall, painting the wall, re-arranging all of the furniture in 2 rooms and cleaning up a spilled gallon of paint.

^—-Reagan, driving us up to see Piper

We were able to take a break on Sunday morning, while having some superbly delicious homemade cinnamon rolls with a few of our friends, followed by another great visit with our baby. Our house still hasn’t completely recovered from the transition, but it is pretty close. All in all, it was a pretty productive weekend.

With all of this recent noise about U2, surrounding their show in Jersey, they kind of came back onto my radar again. There was the incident with Bloomberg’s helicopter pilot, before the show. There was the appearance on Saturday Night Live. I even had a recent conversation with my friend about U2 and their appearances in the media. There was also the fake Bono incident with Reagan (ask her about it).

Anyway, U2 was probably one of my top 10 favs, through Jr. high, and high school. I haven’t really listened to them much, since. Given all of the buzz, I decided to try them out again, to see if I just forgot how good they are, or what. I accomplished this by adding a few of their songs back into my shuffle playlist.

I have discovered that not only do I not particularly care for U2′s music anymore, but that I was tired of it. Since I have had their songs back on my shuffle, I have found that when a U2 song comes up (particularly during a workout), it literally makes me feel tired. So tired, in fact, that I have to skip their songs, to prevent myself from losing steam/motivation during my workouts.

The funny part is that I own every one of their albums, even some of the imports. Every one of them purchased in hard copy format, complete with tangible plastic and cover art. It is funny how people grow out of, or away from certain things. I’m pretty sure that if someone were to have interviewed me 15 years ago on the subject, I can guess what my response would have been. I would have sworn up and down that I would love the group my entire life. I would have said something like “U2 is such a dynamic group. They are not afraid to let their sound transform with the times. They will always be relevant [to me].” My statement would have been true, to an extent. Jjust take out the bracketed “to me” part, apparently. Which brings rant #1 to a close.

Rant #2: Why has my running suddenly started sucking so bad? Two weeks ago, yesterday, I had the best run of my life. I ran so fast, and felt great afterward. I have not been able to come anywhere near that pace, since then. In fact, during my run yesterday, before it was cut short by rain, I was turning out mile-times that were over a minute slower, than they were 2 weeks ago. I can’t begin to describe how frustrating this is. It is especially frustrating, since I’m running a scored half-marathon this weekend, and the Hartford Marathon, the following weekend. Am I still going to be in this rut for both of those races? Ugghhhhh.

On the bright side (not that anyone is still reading, I mean the U2 thing was just ridiculous), tomorrow night some of our friends got us ticket to see a lecture by Dean Karnazes. He is the dude that wrote “Ultra Marathon Man” and did 50 marathons in 50 days. I posted about his book, earlier this year. So I’m hoping that after his lecture, and cleaning all of the U2 out of my playlists, that I can get back on the upswing. Wish me luck.

Besides having to work all day, Saturday, this weekend was a lot of fun for me (despite how serious I look in the photo, above). We were able to get to know some friends a little bit better on Friday night, by having dinner with them. Saturday night, we attended a party hosted by one of Reagan’s clients (and good friend). Then it was time to do work. Our friend Mike came down from CT to spend the night at our place in anticipation of the Queens Half-Marathon today. We woke up at 4:30, in an attempt to get to Queens in time for the race (7:00 AM start time). Things just got crazy, from there.

We caught the A, around 5:15, or so. The starting line was at College Point, which is not a very easily accessible location by public transportation. But they were going to have all of the roads shut down super early, which is why we opted out of driving. I kind of forgot that the A is still running local, at that ungodly hour. But when we got to 42nd Street, and were waiting for the 7 train, there were still plenty of runners in the same boat as us. So, I thought that surely we would be ok. For the final leg of the journey to the starting line, NYRR had chartered a shuttle service to take runners from the last stop on the 7 train line and take them to the park. We arrived at the shuttle stop around 6:45. With a gun time of 7, we knew that things didn’t bode well, especially accounting for the fact that we still had to pick up our numbers, check bags, etc.

^–Watching the sun come up, from the 7 train

As soon as we came above ground, and saw that the line wrapped around the corner and then went on for roughly 2 blocks, Reagan was ready to throw in the towel, right then. I have to admit that I was considering giving up, myself. 45 minutes later, we were finally at the front of the line. We were just kind of hoping that maybe they had delayed the start a bit, because of the bus debacle. Much to our dismay, after a short bus ride, we arrived at an impasse. I’m sure you can guess what it was. Yes, a solid pack of runners, blocking the roadway. We were like, whoa, that is a pretty thick field, maybe they did delay the start. Nope. It was just because they were already 3 miles into the race. Hahahaha. So we started hoofing it to the starting line, since the bus could go no further. I was basically dragging Reagan, at this point. She was so mad, and just wanted to go home and take a nap. It was going to be Mike’s first half-marathon, so I said it should be his decision.

We had walked for about 1 mile, and weren’t really seeing anymore runners at that point. Mike said that he didn’t really feel like doing it anymore, especially since they had probably shut off the mats. So we started walking back towards the 7, stop. We even tried to get a cab. Then we had a sudden change of heart. We turned around again, and walked back to the start area. Once we had finished our 3+ mile warm up, we were at the registration tent, where everyone was being totally cool, and trying to get us all suited up and ready to go, as quickly as possible. They even took our bags right there, so that we didn’t have to check them. As we were walking to the starting line, we paused to cheer on the winner of the race, as he made his way back into the park! Hahaha. The icing on the cake: the mats were still on. NYRR had totally redeemed themselves (in my eyes) from botching the transportation situation so badly.

As part of the deal to coax Reagan into not going home, I agreed to run the whole race with her and help pace her. It really turned out to be a lot of fun. For the first 8 miles, we were virtually alone, just chatting it up. Around that time, we started to pass some of the stragglers. It was really cool, the way that the course just wound through residential College Point and Whitestone. We saw all kinds of exotic birds that had become wild and nested under power transformers, on telephone poles. It was crazy! Reagan and I almost never get to run together, and I think that this is probably the longest that we ever have done it. I didn’t turn on my headphones once, during the whole race. I know that this story has become extremely long, so I’m wrapping it up.

^–Mike, making the victory call, after the race.

After the race, we picked up our bags and headed to the shuttle line. It was about as long as it was, before the race. You can see it in the background of the photo at the top of the post. I knew that our friend Greg was going to be working in the medical tent at the finish area. So, I had kind of been looking for him. But I didn’t see him. Then he and his friend came walking by as we were waiting in line. They offered us a ride back into Manhattan, which we accepted in a heartbeat. It turns out that Greg’s friend was actually headed back to CT, afterward too, so he offered to give Mike a lift. Holy crap. For a race that could not have started anymore chaotic for us, it certainly wrapped up nicely.

After eating lunch and taking a quick nap, we made a trip up to visit Piper, who was as cute as ever. The end.