P: I PR'd on My Half Marathon! + BBQs, 5hrs Average Sleep!

While Annie was on a boat and hiphopping with doctors, I was having a different kind of weekend. Sadly, there were no water activities involved (unless you count water balloons), although there were was much grilled meats involved. So I'm running a half-marathon this coming Sunday, called the Heartbreak Hill Half. It's basically the heartbreak hills of the Boston marathon...except you're running them over, and over, and over. Since they just published the course map and I learned it was an out-and-back, I was PISSED! All I want is to do a half-marathon in under 2 hours before I leave for Korea, so I decided the Boston Run to Remember would be the one to do it in. So 2 days before the race, I decided to buy some guy's bib # off of him and do the race. Also, I knew I would have to do a 10 mile training run this weekend, and I didn't want to do it. So I thought, eh, what's adding 3 more miles to it? So here I was, doing a race. Here's the course map.

Sat: After running 3 miles with my running club, I headed to this fancy spa (Bella Sant. e on Newbury) to get a sports massage. I had a gift certificate for SpaWeek from Xmas that I was planning to use. After this big, blonde what seemed like South Boston guy kneads at my back with oil, then prods at my gluts and legs (if I were a dude, this would have been the moment where I would've sprung a boner) , and then I hang out in the steam room and shower in their amazing Rain-style shower head... I find out they do not honor the coupon. Even though I cleared it on the phone when I made the appt, and they said it'd be okay. Which means I would have to pay for this $90 massage myself. The receptionist was pretty bitchy ("Um, why don't I give you your gratuity envelope now so you can pay the tip" as if I wasn't planning to do that?), the general manager came out, and she was super nice. And due to the misunderstanding, she comped my massage, and gave me back the gift certificate, since they wouldn't be able to honor it. So I left a $20 tip, which to me seemed more than fair, not only because I'm a student, but because that would be more than 20% gratuity. And now I will have to wait until April 2010 for the next spa week to actually use the gift certificate.

Sat afternoon: I was flakily invited to a BBQ that afternoon, but the host never emailed me the directions/details, so I figured it was one of those passive-aggressive invites where you're invited but not. So instead I had a relaxing afternoon post-massage, where I did nothing, and then met with some people from my running club for a pasta-carb-loading dinner before the half-marathon. We went to this tiny mom and pop's Italian restaurant called Ida's in the North End (the Italian distrcit), and it was really cute. And their wine is pretty cheap! Even though I only had one glass, hoping it would help me fall asleep that night. Of course it didn't. But it was really nice to see people from my club outside of the club setting. And I should say, that people clean up well. You can't always recognize people when their hair is pulled back in a ponytail or baseball cap.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie (piece of pie?)... that's Ida's.

After a lovely evening, I couldn't sleep that night, as I kept waking up and panicking. So finally I packed it up, packed it in and left my apt by 6:25am.

RACE DAY!!! I had a PR--a personal record--I ran it in 1:57:29! So I averaged an 8:58 mile per minute, although I thought for sure I ran each mile under 9 minutes. You don't understand--my previous fastest time for a half was the Brooklyn half exactly one year ago. Which I ran in 2 hours, 13 minutes, 30 seconds, averaging a 10min, 11 sec mile. So I shaved 16 minutes off my time, and more than a minute off of my average pace!!! This feels like a huge accomplishment for me, so that's why I had this stupid grin on my face all weekend long.

My pacemakers! Note how the upper left shoulder is a different color from the rest of the shirt--that's 13.1 miles of sweat, baby.

I ran with 2 other girls from running club who were aiming for the same time as I did, and one of them had this souped up Garmin pacemaker watch, so she kept our pace for us. I kept having the urge to shoot ahead fo rthe first 7 miles--I seriously felt like I was running very slowly. I kept thinking, oh, I must burst out now, because I won't have energy to be faster in the second half, so I have to use the adrenaline to my advantage. But instead I held back for the most part, and it seems the old adage of "slow and steady" kind of pays off. That being said, I ran the first 10k in like 52 minutes, and the first 7 miles in one hour. But it was around mile 8 that I started to feel exhausted. But then I randomly saw this guy I'm friends with on the sidelines (incidentally, here's how small-world Boston is--he was this MIT grad student I met on match but it didn't work out, and we decided to be friends, and here he was, on the sidelines. And casually I said hey and called out his name, and he said, "Hey, Patty!" and then that was that. Although he knew I was running the race, so it makes me wonder if he was there for sh*ts and giggles or to cheer me on...hmm...).

By mile 10, I definitely started to feel a little tired. I'm like, God damn the fact that I started running faster at miles 6-7 (because there were a lot of crowds by there). By miles 11-13, I was dog-tired. The last mile sucked because I started cramping up in my right ab/oblique, and there was nothing I could do about it. And the stupid course had only like 4 water stations, total. Bear in mind the day is starting to get really muggy and humid, and it was something like high 60s/low 70s. My T-shirt is completely soaked; it went from heather grey to charcoal. Even my navy blue shorts are soaked--thank God they were dark-colored, because otherwise it could've looked like I wet my pants. So I'm slowing down for the last mile, but then I seriously contemplated slowing down, even though I saw the finish line about a .3 miles away. By the time I was like, .1 miles from the finish, I just sprinted, ignoring the aching pangs of pain in my right ab. And...I got my personal record! But then, in my greedy sort of way, I thought, damn, I should've aimed for running a 1:55 instead of a 1:57, and blah blah blah.

Afterwards, I couldn't really eat. I was too tired to eat. I had a few sips of Pepsi, then ate some of the crust from a bagel, but that was it. But I tried to nap, but I couldn't. And I was averaging something like 5 hours sleep for the past couple of nights. It was kind of frustrating. I then headed to a BBQ in Somerville, hosted by a friend of my roommate's. Although my roommate couldn't make it. I didn't know a soul at this bbq, and I was kind of sweaty from having walked the mile from the subway station, but once again, people in Boston are really nice--they go out of their way to introduce themselves, something that never happens in NY. Because in NY people are too busy attending to their own circle that they can't be bothered to make someone feel comfortable! Sigh. I didn't stay for too, too long, even though my friend Amy came by after she did a 10 mile training run (which I was supposed to do with her, originally). So I jumped on a bus to NY and after 6 hours of subways, bus, cab, LIRR, I got back to Douglaston just before 1am.

Then I headed off to my cousin Spencer's BBQ in his new house i nGreat Neck, and I got doused by a couple of water balloons...smack in the face...delivered by my brother, who went off grinning a Calvin and Hobbes-esque grin......Then left at 6:30am the next morning to catch the bus back to Boston, before heading to a 3 hour class, which I almost fell asleep in, before I got called on by my professor to talk about the religious imagery in a Yeats' poem. Then a rock climbing class, and my legs just wouldn't move, and then I passed out at 10:30pm and slept until 10:11am this morning, and am at the library where all I've been doing is posting photos on this blog, and.... scene.