kitchen complete

We finally "finished" the kitchen a month or two ago with the addition of the kick plates under the cabinets. Since that took 18 months or so, it is only reasonable I wait a while to update the blog.

It's not the most impressive kitchen in the world, but it's what we could do without moving an entire bathroom, stairwell, or losing a bedroom. So some (fabulous cell phone) before/afters...

The view from the back door...

Before....

 

 After,  complete with sippies on the drying rack and lunch bags on the counter.

 You can just see the fridge in the right hand side of this photo. The kitchen didn't HAVE a fridge before - here's the wall where it is now...

back on the wagon

A short 2 week goal to stick to Weight Watchers. Starting at 176.2 yesterday.

motivation? 10k on Memorial Day and my 58:22 time from 2012 to beat.  Based on my last half marathon time, I should be able to hit a 57:12 (9:12 pace) 10k.

So McMillan tells me I should be training at 9:23-9:50 steady state (which is, uh, faster than my run this past weekend), 1:55-2:02 400s and 4:00-4:11 800s.  I guess I should knock out some speedwork this week and next...I'm thinking two interval sessions, a short run and a 6 miler this weekend, and the same next weekend (with the race on Monday). Reasonable? I hope so.

NJ Half Marathon

More later, but a quick recap...

2:07:32.  an over 30 PR by 1:13 (I think, it was at least 60 seconds!). Still 15 minutes over my lifetime PR, but for how little I train, this is ok.

Overall Place

2690

of 5347

Womens Rank

1410

of 3352

Age Grade

51.59%

Pace

9:45

mins/mile

NYC half details

Part 2 of 2. The wordy follow up to the much more exciting picture recap.

The NYC Half is a NYRR race, and has grown a TON since I was first registered for it in 2008 (when it was still in July. And I didn't run it because I broke my foot 3 days prior. Womp Womp.).  As you would expect (marathon debacle aside, though I suspect a lot of that had to do with Bloomberg and not NYRR, but guess who took the fall?), it was what you'd expect from NYRR. Clean, polished, well organized and such.

Pros:

• Terrific course
• great corral set up (including potties in each corral, which made a last minute pit stop enroute to the start line easy)
• relatively fast start for a 20k race (took me about 20 minutes to cross, and the streets were moderately full the whole way, so I think this was appropriate spacing)
• TONS of water, every half mile or so
• Did I mention the awesome course?
• Fair amount of spectators
• Tons of photographers (if you're into springing for race photos. some of mine were ok, but I am not buying)
• Great baggage system
• Good weather (30s, dry, not windy) considering the weird winter we had

Cons:

•  kind of weird demand to be in corrals 30 minutes in advance of start time
• TIGHT finish area
• finisher bag had a sport drink, water, and pretzels. Disappointing. I expected a banana and a bagel.
• Medal was so-so

I had a decent race, especially considering I was only 70% trained or so (running theme with me, pun intended, ha ha). I did 90% of my long runs and 30 or 40% of my midweek runs. My Garmin was all over the place, I assume due to the city influence, but here's my splits:

5k: 29:33
10k: 1:00:10
15k: 1:31:20
20k: 2:02:07
Finish: 2:08:42 (9:50 pace)

Age/Gender: 927/1679
Gender: 4134/7609
Overall: 9402/14535

So overall a somewhat sub-average finish, and still no where near back to my 2008 sub-2 hr half time, but for sub-par training, respectable. And no tears, no frustration, and I enjoyed the race, so that's a win.

NYC Half

Part 1 of 2

Just the photos.

This WAS one of the cooler courses I've ever run. Probably second to the NYC Marathon :)

Times Square

Intrepid (shuttle is covered in tarp things)

West Side Highway/new WTC I can't recall the name of

Brooklyn Battery Tunnel

decent medal. It's silver hued, not gold. Instagram magic.

Hiring it out

While we are pretty dedicated DIYers, we decided to hire out a pretty big project recently. We had our second floor and back entry stars redone, and the door opened. I am not sure i have great before photos (oops), but here's a couple of progress pictures!

view of the backdoor and stairs (from the sink) before

view from the door onto the porch in process (old stairs, but railing gone)

same angle as first photo (but 5 feet closer due to tarping!)

up our new stairs!

rundate

I give last week a C+

I missed a 5 miler, and split my long run into effectively 2 5 milers. So mileage sort of in, but not well.

2, 3, 6 and 11 on the plan for this week.