We had fantastic weather for the Brooklyn Half-Marathon today. Reagan and I traveled to the race with a bunch of our friends from the running club, which made it a lot of fun. We all had a pretty good race. I didn’t hit my 1:30 goal. But I wasn’t too bummed about it, since I didn’t really deserve it, the way that I have been slacking lately. The race was really fun for me though, and I was ok with my time.

Stats:
Distance: 13.1 Miles, 21.1 Kilometers
Date/Time: May 22, 2010, 7:00 am
Location: Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Weather: 58 Degrees, 86% Humidity, Wind 6MPH
Total Finishers: Men – 3421 Women – 3585 Total – 7006

I had an awesome view, while being stretched out, under the Parachute Drop on the boardwalk at Coney (above). Below: our group chilling out and stretching on the boardwalk after the race.

Reagan’s sister Jody, who is visiting for the weekend, met up with us after the race. Of course we couldn’t go to Coney Island without taking a lap on the Wonder Wheel.

Danger! Hahhaha

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.

The New York Road Runner’s club announced the results of the NYC Marathon today. But Reagan and I were actually both able to login last night and discover that we had not made it in this year. She asked me if I was bummed. I said no. But now that I think about it, I really am kind of bummed. We have kind of been holding off, to see, before committing to any fall races for this year. I think that for now, I will just plan on running the Hartford marathon again, for my fall race. I think that we are also going to do the Philly distance run again, since we liked it so much last year. In the mean time, above are some photos of my dehydrated corpse finishing the BK half marathon.

Me, alone on the 2 train at 6 AM

Coney Island Parachute Jump

This morning was the Brooklyn Half Marathon. It was a lonely ride into the BK, without my running partner. I had a bunch of friends that were all going down together, but I had to go early, to pick up my bib, etc.. It was a bit on the warm side. But, overall, an awesome race. Reagan couldn’t make it, this morning, because she is still getting over a cold. Such a bummer. I did end up running into our friends, after the race though. Unfortunately I was really able to hang out with them, since I had to come into work after the race. Oh well. At least I was able to get a small taste of the beautiful weather this weekend. There are more photos from the race in this folder. Also, check out my write up in the Examiner. My time wasn’t the best. It was about 5 minutes slower than the last 1/2 marathon, I ran. I was able to keep my pace barely under 8 minutes, finishing at 1:42:40.

Here is a photo that Becca took of me, after the race, when I was trying to poke out my gut (check) and look flamboyant (check).

These are some photos that were emailed to me this week. I don’t think that I’ll buy them, but I didn’t mind capturing some screen shots of them.