Our new running club had it’s first club points race, last weekend. Our friend Zach Tolbert came out and shot the race for us. It was perfect weather and a lot of fun. Becca was totally on the ball, with getting our jerseys made and delivered before the race.

It was a bit chilly, before the race, but the sun was out, and it was perfect temperature, for running. Our team did very well. Additionally, we had a mystery person sign up as an NYRC affiliate, who beat everyone else on the team, by almost a minute. Jessica (whoever you are) if that is your way of trying out, you passed. Hahaha.

Yes yes. How many times have I thrown up photos like this one before? Right? As I mentioned earlier this week, my Nike Plus sportband died on me, again. This is the third time it has happened. My cousin Liz suggested that I just abandon the sportband and go with the Garmin. I am almost to that point. I probably would have done just that, if it weren’t for the ever smooth and adept Nike customer service team. That, and the super cool staff at the running store in my building. I called Nike, who quickly trouble shot my watch with me and determined that it was a dud. They suggested that I try returning it where I bought it, before  sending it back to Nike. So I called Urban Athletics, who told me they would trade it straight across, for a new one. So, here we go. Sportband number 4 (pictured above). Treat me right, baby.

Switching gears completely, Reagan and I will be flying out west tomorrow. We have not been to the land of Deseret (yes that is Deseret, not desert), also know as the beehive state, since 2008 for my sister’s wedding. Since that time, one nephew and two nieces have joined the family. We have not met any of them yet. So, we have been anticipating this visit for quite a while.

Reagan and I were having a lot of anxiety about being able to go, because of Piper’s condition. But, it seems like she is on a pretty good plane, at the moment. God willing, things will continue that way, at least until we can return. Additionally, some of our amazing friends have agreed to take care of our car. Our lovely friends, the Alaska/Hofstra missies will be keeping an eye on our pad for us.

We will be taking a notebook computer with us (mostly so Reagan can play the cake building game). But I’m not sure how much posting we will get done over the next week. So, if it tends to be sparse, that is the reason.

Saturday was the first race of 2010 for me. It was a good one to start out the year with, since the weather was beautiful and it was for a good cause (run for Haiti). It was also pretty cool, because it was the first race that our new team “New York Running Club” was listed correctly on the roster/results.

I tried to charge my Nike+ sportband the night before, only to find that it was malfunctioning, again. The display looked like some sort of alien language. Reagan was kind enough to let me borrow hers, since she was sitting this one out. I will be sending it back on Monday Grrrr. The Central Park Races are normally capped at 5000 runners. But since it was for a charity (I guess), they doubled the cap and let 10,000 participants run. It was crrraaazyy. I wasn’t expecting such a crowd, so I showed up at the 9th hour and barely made it starting grid before the gun. As a result, I was way in the back and had no real chance of making it through the pack enough to get a good time. It was ok, though. My friend Mike ran with me, and we just had a relaxing race, and chatted the whole time. It also made me totally pumped for the upcoming running season and nice weather. Woo hoo!

Our Alaska/Hofstra friends also came to visit us, this weekend. Reagan and I pretty much just tagged a long with them through the village to various thrift stores, before hitting Broadway, in SoHo (pretty much Reagan’s dream day). It was a pretty good time, even for me.

We also saw this guy, playing in Washington Square Park. It is the same dude who drags that busted old piano down to the 4th St. A platform in the Subway on the weekends. Pretty awesome.

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.

This year was the 40th New York City Marathon. It was such an awesome race, for so many reasons, including the fact that an American won the mens’ race for the first time, since 1982. For me, though, it was especially cool, because I was able to photograph it from the photo bridge at the finish line. It is a borderline spiritual experience to watch these athletes come through. It was so heartbreaking to see Paula break down in tears, after falling back into fourth place at the end of the race, when she lead, practically the entire way.

^—-Paula and Grete embracing.

Here is a shot of the TV crews that were next to me.

Many mo’ photos over here.

Saturday was marathon #5 for me. It was a fun race, but I definitely did not do as well as I was hoping to. My time ended up being about three minutes slower than I did on this same course last year. So, maybe I should get some consistency points, hahahah. Anyway, I think that I really outpaced myself in the beginning, and it caught up to me a little over half way through the race. After that, I decided to just settle in and finish, because I was seriously hurting.

Our friends Carl and Becca came up with us. Carl ran the race too. Reagan and Becca sat this one out, but were pretty stellar cheerleaders. It was especially nice to have Reagan at the finish line on Saturday, because I was cramping up so bad, I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have her there to help me stretch out my hamstrings. It was kind of a bitter-sweet way to have my last race of the year. But I’m looking forward to next year.

Here are a few more shots that Reagan took:

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.