Brooklyn Half

Last November I had the experience of a lifetime in running the New York City Marathon.  It was the culmination of months and months of training and totally lived up to the billing as one of the best experiences of my life. 

During the training for the Marathon, a funny thing happened - I realized I actually quite enjoyed running for long distances.  The miles and miles traversed in the Park were good for clearing my mind, not to mention helping to keep from putting on too many pounds. 

After a fairly lengthy respite post-Marathon from any sort of training (I call it the Marathon finisher/Miller was born combo), I began running again for pleasure in early 2010.  But when I say pleasure, I mean I was putting in 10-15 mile weeks as opposed to the 25 mile+ weeks of real marathon training. 

I picked things up a little bit in the last month, as I was signed up to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon with my good buddy Stephen Wright.  It wasn’t until last weekend that I realized I hadn’t run more than 7 miles at one time since the marathon.  So I put in a 9-miler last weekend and hoped for the best for the race. 

As it turns out, the Half was a ton of fun, as Stephen and I made it through 2 laps of beautiful Prospect Park before hitting up a 5+ mile home stretch for the finish line along the boardwalk at Coney Island.  We didn’t kill ourselves with our pace and won’t be writing home to brag about our time, but felt great about completing the 13.1 with relative ease.  

After finishing, we somehow found Tracy, Hannah and Miller amongst the crowds, despite not having determined a pre-race meeting place.  It took the three of them an hour and a half in transit on the subways to get to Coney Island, so sadly they didn’t see the finish.  We, of course, attempted to recreate the excitement.

It was a fantastic way to spend a Saturday morning and now that I have another race under my belt, I’m eager to figure out when the next one is.  

(pretty awesome mark on my head from my sweatband, huh?)