Rhymes With Foam.

This Sunday, 3/18, is the NYC Half Marathon. I’ve been training for this since mid-December, before I even found out if I had gotten in through the lottery (I think I may have started training before they even opened the lottery.) By some stroke of luck I got picked and this Sunday I’ll be running 13.1 miles through Central Park, Times Square, and down the west side highway to South Street Seaport.

A couple people have asked me where they’d be able to see me, so here’s all the info. Below is a course map from NYRR, with estimated times of when I’ll be where. I’ve been aiming for about a 10:30/mile pace (I am not terribly fast, but my last half was an 11:22 pace so it’s a drastic improvement for me!) but I estimated with a 10:15 mile in case I get swept up in race day adrenaline and can magically run faster.

There also may be a delay depending how long it takes for me to cross the starting line (there are 15,000 people running so we can’t all start exactly at 7:30.) If you have any interest in coming out to watch, I’d recommend being somewhere by the time I’ve estimated here, and please let me know where you’ll be so I can high-five you as I plod jet past.

I will be wearing this: (though since it’s supposed to be 60 degrees on Sunday, presumably no hoodie)

If you intend to be hungover from St Patrick’s Day but still want to know what’s going on, you can track me online or via text. (web link will probably be available on the NYRR website race morning.) There’s also going to be coverage on ABC7 (though coverage ends at 9:00 and I will surely take longer than that to finish) or streaming here.

There’s a lot more info on the NYRR website, so if there are any questions I haven’t answered here, you can look there or ask me! If you feel like getting up early to come watch, please please do let me know, and give me a heads up where you’ll be! I’d hate the thought of someone getting up early on a Sunday and me being in the zone and not knowing you were there. (“in the zone”= dancing in my head to Jessie J “Domino” pumping through my headphones.)

Looking forward to running, and then immediately consuming Artichoke Pizza and beers :)

Hey friends!

At the end of April I’ll be running the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Run For the Wild 5k at the Bronx Zoo. This year, all proceeds go to their efforts to protect lions’ habitats and reduce the human-lion conflict that is threatening lion populations in Africa (i.e. helping livestock herders protect their herds and livelihood without resorting to poisoning lions.)

Obviously, this is a cause that is important to me, as currently one of two items on my bucket list is to cuddle a lion. If there are no lions left, that would be considerably more difficult. Here are some awkwardly photoshopped pictures of what that might look like.

If you’d like to help me raise money for the cause, you can donate here. Thanks for your support!

If you’re feeling charitable but would like to donate to a cause that’s more human-related, I have three friends who are running the NYC Half Marathon to raise money for the American Cancer Society, and my sister’s boyfriend is doing the Rochester Tour de Cure to fight diabetes.

But trust me, it was rough. The fact that I only stopped to walk 3 times made me feel like Wonder Woman…oh wait.

This was the playlist for my half marathon. I wanted to post it in order so I could make commentary on songs that really helped me when I was struggling and stuff, but my blackberry started the playlist over at the beginning when I tried to look. So I put it roughly in order- the first few songs are right, and the last 10 songs were the last 10, and the middle ones were the middle, but this isn’t the exact order they played.

A Loss For Words “I Want You Back”
Butch Walker “The Weight of Her”
Jason Derulo “In My Head”
The Movielife “Hey”
The Starting Line “The World”
Timbaland f/ Keri Hilson “The Way I Are”
Avril Lavigne “What the Hell”
Adele “Right As Rain”
Steel Train “Touch Me Bad”
Fireworks “Seasick”
Christina Aguilera “Come On Over” (remix- single version)
Cobra Starship “Guilty Pleasure”
Jay Sean f/ Nicki Minaj “2012 (It’s Not the End)”
Justin Bieber f/ Ludacris “Baby”
Panic! At the Disco “Bittersweet”
Cobra Starship f/ Sabi “You Make Me Feel”
Katy Perry “Peacock”
Robyn “Dancing On My Own”
I Am the Avalanche “Is This Really Happening?”
Hanson “Waiting For This”
Frank Turner “Live Fast Die Old”
Mann “Buzzin” (remix f/ 50 Cent)
Mathletes “Badstreet USA”
Flo Rida f/ Akon “Who Dat Girl”
Cee Lo Green “Cry Baby”
Katy Perry “Hummingbird Heartbeat”
You, Me and Everyone We Know “Colorful Language”
No Doubt “Different People”
Steel Train “Touch Me Bad”
The Rocket Summer “Hills and Valleys”
fun. “All the Pretty Girls”
Melee “Frequently Baby (She’s a Teenage Maniac)”
Young the Giant “My Body”
Cartel “The Perfect Mistake”
Take Cover “Something Wicked (This Way Comes)”
Hit the Lights “How Will I Know”
Panic! At the Disco “Stall Me”
The Format “Oceans”
Reel Big Fish “Ban the Tube Top”
You, Me and Everyone We Know “A Little Bit More”
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals “Paris (Ooh La La)”
Save Ferris “Mistaken”

Basically my goal was that every song would get me so pumped that I couldn’t bear to stop and walk while it was playing (at least, not walk any more than I was already planning and scheduling to walk.)

I briefly considered just playing “Peacock” on a loop for two and a half hours and running the whole thing to that, since it’s by far my favorite running song, but that seemed ridiculous even for me. I’m not going to lie, I expected “My Body” to be a good motivating song but I got super super bummed when it came on towards the end. I needed some peppy pop punk and just having the words in the chorus of that song to drive me was not enough. That one dud aside, this was a pretty solid running playlist for me.