Labor Day 2008

It was an overall amazing and relaxing weekend, and I begin to worry that my days are numbered being able to survive in the concrete jungle of NYC. I absolutely love my life and living in New York City, but continue to discover gems of places a stone's throw from the city that I can easily imagine myself falling into a completely different lifestyle without hesitation. So, yeah, when I no longer need to work, I will let you know where I relocate :)

Friday, we rolled into Lake Placid about 6:15 and were in Mirror Lake by 6:45pm, racing the sunset. We quickly realized we had both forgotten wetsuits, but the water was pleasant enough for 1 loop. Finished in 31:55, which was more than enough time to justify beers at the Brewery across the street.

Mirror Lake, Lake Placid

Saturday, a 7-hour ride was on tap for my Kona-training friend. We figured the full Lake Placid course would put her close to that. As much as I wish I could have ridden the entire thing with her, I knew I was not in that kind of biking shape. If it had been a flat course, I would have gutted it out, but there are no detours around the climbing in Lake Placid. So I settled for 1 loop. Well, almost one loop, as we were too busy chatting away and missed the turn-off for the out-and-back section of the course (14miles). By the time we realized, we decided not to back-track, but I was sorta bummed to not ride the entire course. So I ended my day with 42 miles. The course is absolutely amazing and I loved every second of it. I really wished I was in the shape to ride the entire thing, but it will come with time. My hip was ready to call it a day, so I hung around downtown Lake Placid while my friend finished her ride.

After a quick gas station clean up, we were on the road with 1 destination in mind:

My happy place.

We loaded up on beer for the weekend, and headed to the house our friends had rented on Lake Champlain. To reach the house included a bit of off-roading and 10 miles on a dirt road, but it was worth it. The cabin was completely secluded, right on the shore. I spent the day Sunday here:

We got drunk, played Yahtzee and Rummy, and went to bed at 10pm. Girls Gone Wild, Vermont-style :)

Monday, my friend had a 2 hour recovery ride on tap (she ran 3 hours Sunday, as I coached her from the hammock ha). We decided to ride into Burlington, as we were about 15 miles north and figured it was a perfect distance for the recovery. We arrived in Burlington to eat the WORLD'S BEST SANDWICH*, to be greeted by this:

A 4-day stage race in Vermont over the weekend was culminating with the crits in downtown Burlington. Such a fun surprise! We sat in the sun and didn't complain as the Men's Master's 30 year old division passed us 15 times. We rode back to the house, climbed the steepest hill I have ever biked on, and swam a bit in Lake Champlain. After that we packed it up to head back to NYC.

Back to reality, GWB

Today is back to reality. NYC is crowded again after an empty August. The subway was packed. The line for the bus was long. But I had a glorious Marathon-Pace run this morning after the week off running, and all is well.

*I'm not joking that this is the best sandwich I have ever had. Every year we go back, and every year this is confirmed. If you are ever in Burlington, or even within 60 miles, the trip is well worth it.

Bigger Issues.

I have bigger issues that my femur reminding me it was broken-


What does a life-long Redskins fan wear to a Giants-Pats game???

Oh, such hard decisions.

To Whom It May Concern

To Whom It May Concern-

I promise to not run for a week.
I promise to start taking the Fish Oil and Curcumin again, everyday, 2x.
I promise- strength training, twice a week.
I promise- NO MORE MILE REPEATS.

If I promise all this....can you please, please, PLEASE make my hip stop hurting? Just until Nov 2 at around 3pm?

I would be forever grateful.

Yours, Sarah




I'm headed to Lake Placid on Friday to keep my Kona-training friend company. We figured it may help her get excited for the race to ride an actual Ironman course. I am going to ride one loop. If I get stupid and loopy, maybe I'll do two :) Then we will swim. From there, we will spend the rest of the holiday weekend on Lake Champlain, outside Burlington, VT. We will fish. We will hike. Maybe ride our bikes more. However, two things are definite:
1. Much time will be spent at Cabot.
2. Even more time will be spent at Magic Hat (my fave!)

See, running wasn't invited on this holiday weekend ANYWAY!

Random thoughts for the day....

Salt and Vinegar Chips? Not such a good idea when you burned the roof of your mouth on pizza last night.


No matter your politics, you HAVE to admit that Michelle Obama has GREAT hair.


Speaking of great hair, two words: Anderson Cooper.


Still need to get a new tire iron to change my flat. Oh yeah, I'm blaming my lack of tire changing skills on a cheap piece of plastic.


The Hill is like watching a car-wreck. And I can't stop. I'm just glad they obviously planned for Michelle Obama's speech to not start until AFTER The Hills was over. :)


Do you think if Obama gets elected, his name will still show up in spell-check?

My poor bike...

My poor bike, as it has sat since I got home from vacation. Hard to motivate when I have no races left this year :(



...And I think I finally have to admit that I don't know how to change a flat. Well I know the STEPS to change it...I just can't do it!!

16 miles.

I slowed this long run WAY down. I have pretty much been doing my long runs by feel, trying to keep the effort low. After struggling the last 4 miles of my long run last week, party because of dehydration, I decided this morning, no matter how good I was feeling, I was going to try to keep the pace around 10 minute/miles. I wanted to not just 'finish' this long run, but feel OK at the end and feel like I could actually do more if I had to. I also kept Harlem Hill and the West Side hills for the last mile of the run- just for fun :)

I think I accomplished the goals I set out, and am really pleased. I ended up with an overall pace of 10:12. I felt like I was actually able to push it a bit up Harlem hill, which is saying a lot at mile 15.5. And even though my joints and feet were starting to feel the distance, I definitely think I could have done a bit more, which is nice. At the end of my other long runs I couldn't imagine how I was going to run a full marathon, and I'm starting to feel a bit more confident with the distance.

Being my first marathon, it's hard to trust the 'long, slow' run idea. But the tempo and small amount of speed work I have been doing has confirmed that the speed is there, I just have to trust it to come together with the long, slow runs on marathon day!

The noise from above.

I have no right to complain. I live in a huge, rent-stabilized 1 bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. Sure, my rent is still more than my parent's mortgage and could probably buy me a nice little house most places in the world. But my rent is about half of the market value for the size of my apartment. Yes, I'm a lucky sonofabitch, and my friends remind me often.

However...

Over the time I have lived there (about a year and half now), there have been progressively loud noises coming from above. No...not THOSE kind of noises (I hear those on a regular basis from the lady who lives across the alley). The noise above comes in the form of: footsteps (if the person who lived above me was BIGFOOT wearing cowboys boots), furniture moving, drilling, vacuuming, dropping books (no lie)....etc. Pretty much anything loud and annoying you could think of to occur on hardwood floor above you....they had it covered. I really wouldn't care if this noise occurred during the day, or even in the evenings. But, of course, these noises really only happen between 8pm and 7am. Needless to say, I often times have an incredibly hard time falling, and staying asleep.

I almost got fed up before my trip in the spring. But I decided that I was going to be away from 7 weeks, so maybe it would get better when I was gone. No dice. It is literally so bad sometimes I move to the couch and sleep there. That is just plain silly.
So over the past few months, I have tried to go upstairs to introduce myself to my upstairs neighbor. Maybe if I put a face to the person living below, they would maybe feel bad? After three attempts, with LOUD knocking, NO RESPONSE. However, they obviously heard me, as the noise seemed to dissipate enough those nights. Hmmmmmm

But yesterday I had enough. They woke me up at 5am yesterday morning with the banging/walking in cowboy boots/vacuuming (who VACUUMS at 5am?). And when I got home from work, it was still INSANE. So I wrote a note. A nice note.

This morning, I found this in my door:

REJOICE! This is the most amazing thing ever. I am going to go up tonight and introduce myself so she doesn't think I'm a psycho-bitch who lives downstairs. But I am so so happy to hopefully start going to bed when I want to!!!