Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon 2016 Race Recap

I was up at 5:45 on Saturday morning, drank a couple cups of coffee and ate my usual English muffin with peanut butter. I left earlier than I needed to because I would rather be early than late and stressed out.

The race didn't start until 9:30, so I had oodles of time to pick up my number and race shirt. I actually ended up sitting in my car for about 20 minutes after packet pickup to stay warm while I waited.

The Sleepy Hollow Half is run by my weekend running group, Rivertown Runners, so it was fun to have a bunch of runner friends there with me. There was a whole group of us together at the starting line.

My two best running friends and I before the start. It's impossible to get a good picture of all of us.

Photo Credit to Joe Golden

The course was different from the last time I ran it. A couple of years ago we still had snow on the ground, so a lot of the trails were not included.

The first half mile or so is mostly uphill on the road. After that we hit the aqueduct trails which are packed dirt. It was pretty crowded for the first few miles, especially once we were off the road and on the narrower trails. I think some people were a little nervous on the trails, but since I run them every weekend I passed a bunch of people by running on the edge of the trail.

It was mostly rolling hills until just before mile 5, where we were serenaded by a bagpiper as we dragged ourselves up a long, steep hill. My friend kept telling me to pump my arms, but I was not moving very quickly. From mile 5.5 on we were back on the roads.

There's a bit of a stretch out and back on a highway that really seems to drag. The way out was a gentle, but endless uphill, which at least made the way back a long downhill. It's about a mile and a half each way.

Around mile 9.5 is a really stupid hill in a hospital parking lot. It's just so unnecessary.

After running through some neighborhoods, the course runs along the Hudson until the final mile. The last mile is mostly flat until the last .2, which is up the worst hill of the entire race. It's known as the Pocantico Punisher, though I know a few runners with more colorful names for it.

Photo credit to Jared Johnson

My race plan was to just run. I set my watch to show the clock time and didn't look at any of my mile splits. I ended up running the entire race within about 20 feet of one of my weekend running buddies. Our trio all had the goal of just being under 2 hours at the finish line. We naturally alternated who was in the lead and ran side by side from time to time. Sometimes talking, sometimes alone with our music. He told me around mile 9 that we definitely were on track to come in under two hours, and later asked me what my PR time was.

In the last couple of miles he told me it was only going to be a question of how much I would beat my PR by. I was definitely getting tired by the last mile, but nothing really hurt, I was just tired. The last hill took a lot out of me, but I saw 1:56:xx on the clock and broke into a smile and a sprint and finished just behind my friend. We actually ended up with the exact same chip time, my new PR - 1:56:35!

It ended up being a great race day - perfect weather (though I did end up with a bit of a sunburn), zero pain, a fun run with friends and a new PR! Can't ask for much more than that!

An Early Morning Long Run

My alarm went off early this morning.

Like, 5am early.

After a quick coffee (there must always be coffee) and a bowl of oatmeal, I hit the road to meet up with my running friends to get a few miles in before the main Rivertown Runners meet up at 8.

We got a little over 4 miles in and then hit the trails with the big group. There was a really good turn out today for some reason, (maybe because people have races coming up?) and we had around 30 people for our chilly run. Maybe everyone was fooled by the sunny morning. It's that time of year when you expect the sun to be warm, but it's not quite there yet. Although, it's supposed to hit 70 on Wednesday, so spring is not far off!

I attempted to take a picture right as the trail turned, so instead of seeing all the people ahead of us, here's a few.

11 miles for the morning and other than being tired from my early morning wake up, I'm feeling good. Good thing too, because my first half of the year is only 3 weeks away!

This is my current favorite Yoga With Adriene video:

Ignore the "for weight loss" title - I do. I just really enjoy the flow and have done this video several times this week. I also want Adriene's tights.

Buddy has had a busy day of sleeping. It's impressive how exhausting all that sleeping is!

I have a feeling I won't be staying up very late tonight either.

Double Digits

I keep having runs where I drag my feet getting out the door, and for the first mile or so, and then I suddenly feel better and end up having a really good (and fast!) run. It's weird. I guess it's better than being excited to run and having a sluggish run.

Check out this 5 miler from Friday:

I can't believe there's a mile that starts with a 7 in there!

My Saturday started off extra early this morning. 

Some of my weekend running buddies decided to meet up for 3 miles before the regular Saturday 7 miles that we run. I had a 10 miler on my training plan this weekend anyway, and 10 miles with friends always goes faster than 10 solo miles.

It was a brisk 17 degrees out when I left the house, though it warmed up to a toasty 23 by the time I parked the car, tied my shoes and hit the trails. Three of us ran 3 early miles and went back to the parking lot to meet up with the rest of the group.

I kept having to remind myself that we had already run a few miles, because some miles felt tougher than they normally would have. We had to run a bit past our cars to hit 10 miles, but we weren't about to come up short after waking up early to run. I'm happy with the 9:28 pace we managed to maintain.

Plus it's nice to have a recent double digit run. I think the last time I hit 10 miles was on Thanksgiving.

I drove home and waffled up some cinnamon rolls (because we don't have an oven).

Post-long-run breakfast lunch of champions.

What's your run this weekend?

Do you have a go-to post-long-run meal?

Weekend Wrap-up

How was your weekend? Mine went too quickly! Don't they all?

All was right with my Saturday morning again, because this week I was with my people! I went back to my usual group and had a great run on the trails. 

For some reason, my legs really tightened up on the drive home

Buddy tried to get into his bed by himself. He wasn't very successful.

I did my yoga by the fire and got in Buddy's face. He always manages to look away right when I take pictures.

Yoga camp was super relaxing on Saturday - seriously, there was a pillow involved. I like having yoga camp to get in everyday - it helps me actually stretch after my runs. It doesn't matter how many books/articles I read, I still can't get myself to stretch regularly.

We had crazy amounts of rain today, absolute downpours. The last clouds brought insane winds and tons of rain, and then they were suddenly gone - leaving blue sky.

We started watching Making a Murderer on Netflix today. I'm surprised we got anything done. Have you watched it yet? It's completely insane/frustrating/maddening.

What was the best part of your weekend?

A Fiery New Year

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Happy New Year!

We celebrated the new year with some friends the traditional way: by lighting a giant bonfire of Christmas trees collected from surrounding neighborhoods. 

Buddy was more than ready for bed by the time we got home. He doesn't stay up late.

I woke up this morning and couldn't find my Moov anywhere. I shook out my clothes that I wore to the bonfire, and then checked the bed. It was all tangled up in the sheets. I don't know if it got hooked on something or if I took it off in my sleep, but at least I found it.

We'll see if it happens again.

My running group has a New Years day run every year, so I drove down to join them. They're reasonable, and don't meet up until noon. We had a really good turnout, I think there were around 40 people in the group photo before the run.

I bought myself a FlipBelt the other day and hadn't tried it out yet. I put my phone in at the start and it didn't budge the entire 7 mile run - no bouncing! It might be one of my new favorite running accessories. And now I may actually run with my phone like I know I should - safety and whatnot.

I also got in three 30 second planks as a part of my 100 days of fitness challenge. Everyone was being a bunch of overachievers so I didn't just do the bare minimum. That's the good version of peer pressure.

Buddy got a new chew toy from Tom's parents for Christmas.  I think it's safe to say he likes it!

I love when he holds things with his paws like that.

How did you ring in the New Year?

Are you participating in any challenges to jump start 2016?

Jingle All the Way

I saw snow this morning! It didn't stick around or anything, but it was a nice festive start to my day.

My running group (Rivertown Runners) likes to run with jingle bells the weekend before Christmas, so we were a noisy bunch on the trails today.

We had a pretty good turnout, and it was actually cold out!

I swiped this photo from the facebook page - photo credit to Joe Golden. You can see my black headband 4 in from the left.

For some reason, the run felt tougher than usual, but having people to run with always makes things go more quickly than running alone.

In house news, there hasn't been a lot going on that I can really show you pictures of. Rough electrical and plumbing just don't scream photo op.

Our shower base and tub are in now, one of these days we'll take that window out!

That right there is a 6 foot tub. It's going to be awesome to have a tub that you can actually soak in. I hate tubs where you have to choose whether you want your legs or your torso in the water.

Buddy's very excited.

Our weekend project (well, one of them) is to re-watch the Star Wars movies so we can go see the new movie on Monday or Tuesday while kids are still in school.

Have you seen the new Star Wars yet? Are you going to?

What's the last movie you saw in the theater? We pretty much never go. The last movie we saw in the theater was The Martian, but before that it was the third Hunger Games movie - we average about one per year.

I Ran The Farm

Blogging consistency is not my strong point right now.

I ran a really fun trail race called Run the Farm on Sunday. I mostly didn't want to go anywhere, but I had already paid my registration fee and two of my old weekend running buddies were going to be there, so I couldn't back out.

Of course, I'm really glad I went, because it was a lot of fun!

The race was only 5 miles, but that was plenty because it was a serious trail race. There were a lot of single track sections where I kept getting stuck behind people, there were fallen trees and tree roots to jump over, and tons of rocks (the better to twist your ankle with, my dear). It was a really challenging race, partly because I have been running on the roads all summer (nevermind the hills), but it was a beautiful course.

I unintentionally make the best faces in race photos.

They have a farmer's market at the farm every weekend, and race finishers got 5 farm bucks to spend at the market. Mostly I think all the runners were enjoying all the free samples - runners love free food. We did pick up a couple of sausages, and my running buddies went home with a few containers of pickles.

I think we may have convinced Tom to run with us next year.

It was so much fun to run with my people again! I really need to make the drive down for our Saturday run again one of these days.

Mile Repeats and More Mud

I've been all over the place the last few days.  

Thursday's speedwork got pushed to Friday, and I almost didn't run at all. But, as usual, I'm glad I did. I ran 6 miles total, including a 1 mile warm-up, 3 x 1600 @ 7:54 with 800m jogs and a 1 mile cool down. 

I was pretty psyched to get my repeats under an 8:00 pace - as an added bonus, I didn't even want to die at the end! :)

Buddy was a little sleepy and napped while I ran.

This morning I was up dark and early to meet up with the group to run. I started off with some coffee and toast with peanut butter and banana.

It was 38 degrees and raining for our run, but compared to the negative wind chills we've gotten used to, it wasn't too bad out. Plus, there's something fun about running in the mud and rain, once you just commit to being drenched.

We ran a slightly shorter loop than usual, since a lot of the trails are still covered in ice/snow. 5.8 muddy miles at a 9:18 pace.

Buddy is enjoying the fact that some of the snow is finally gone.

With the snow melting we can finally see the damage the plow guy did over the winter. Looks like we need some new curbs.

This afternoon I helped assemble swag bags for the Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon. I'm not running it this year, but since my running club (Rivertown Runners) puts it on, I wanted to help out. We had a bunch of people show up, so stuffing 1,000 bags went pretty quickly. Plus we got to have pizza. There's nothing like carbs to get runners to show up!

Some Saturday Randomness

I meant to write yesterday, but I got home later than I thought I would last night.

Friday we woke up to snow, which I didn't know we were getting.

Rather than do anything productive (ok, I did the dishes), I decided to make cookies instead - snickerdoodles!

I really didn't want to work out, but mostly because I was feeling lazy (which I decided was not a good enough reason), so did a little 30 day shred with Jillian Michaels. I may even make it past level 1 one of these days! ;)

I got a little caffeine boost from some Nuun Energy before heading off to babysit for one of the kiddos from my old class.

I intend to use this holiday glass all year round, and you can't stop me.

I didn't end up getting home until 11:30, and since there's no way I can just go straight to sleep, it was yet another Saturday morning where I woke up way too tired.

It was a little brisk this morning - check out that "feels like" temp!

We had about 14 runners show up this morning for our run. Most of yesterday's snow is gone from the roads, but the trails still have about an inch on them. It definitely slowed us down a bit (especially on the downhills where you don't want to suddenly lose traction), but other than my frozen face, it was a really good run! My gps says we went 6.61 miles in 1:00:32, a 9:09 pace. Not bad considering the weather and the trail conditions.

Any exciting plans for the weekend?

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Happy 2015!

Happy New Year! I hope you did something fun last night (note: going to bed early totally counts as fun too)!

We went to a friend's house and had dinner and a Christmas tree bonfire.

Tom made a couple of pan pizzas that were quickly devoured and we spent a while visiting inside (it was COLD out). We (the boys) started the fire around 11. A surprising number of people in nearby neighborhoods had already put their trees out to get picked up by the garbage trucks, so we had 6 trees at our disposal.

Just in case you were wondering, Christmas trees really are a fire hazard - keep 'em watered!

The boys like big fires.

We also released a couple of lanterns.

It was a really nice, laid-back night!

I started my New Years morning with coffee and a protein smoothie. Smoothies might be my new favorite thing...this week.

My running group has a tradition of meeting up at noon on New Years for a group picture and a run (one claim is that the tradition started in 1972, others disagree). Even though I really just wanted to stay in my pajamas and drink more coffee, I got changed and headed out to meet up with them.

The unofficial count was 35(or 37, or 33, it was very unofficial) people - a pretty good turnout considering it was New Years and 32 degrees out! We hit the trails for just under 7 miles and then enjoyed some champagne and orange juice when we were finished. A pretty excellent alternative to sitting at home in my pajamas!

Buddy was on high alert when Tom went to the grocery store today. Any and all sounds were suspect.

He's now hiding from the scary kitchen while Tom makes dinner. Even when I washed the dishes earlier he was acting weird. I hope this is just a phase and he won't just be scared every time we are in the kitchen now.

Did you go for a New Years run today?

Looking back and Looking ahead

A few weeks ago, I actually won a blog giveaway! I was really excited because I pretty much never win anything. I know everyone says that, but it's totally true.

Anyway, I won a bunch of smoothie making goodies from Jamie and Puritan's Pride and it came in the mail today!

Hooray! I know what I'm making tomorrow!

It feels like this every year, but I can't believe it's the end of December already! (Also: I just typed September...)

Everyone seems to be doing some kind of running year in review post, so I thought I would join in.

In 2014, I:

• Bought a treadmill - best decision ever
• Joined Rivertown Runners - my Saturday group
• Ran 3 half marathons - the most I have run in a single year
• Improved my PR at each race
• Broke 2 hours at the Fall Foliage Half Marathon
• Took 18:21 off my half marathon time - between March and October
• Had my first DNS - because of the threat of snow and my own laziness
• Ran over 1,000 miles! - I'm currently at 1,022

As far as 2015 goes, I want to:

• Run my first full marathon - which one is currently up in the air
• Run at least 2 half marathons - 3 was a good number, but I'm not sure how it will play out if I'm doing a full
• Actually strength train - I say it every year, it's gotta stick sometime!

I'm also thinking about running a few shorter races next year, but don't hold me to it.

It's hard to plan too far ahead when we have some big changes in the works. At some point in the near(ish) future we will be moving and remodeling a house, and I'll be starting a new job (more on that later).

Are you happy with your 2014? What changes are you going to make in 2015?