Long Run Saturday

• 7.5 miles in 1:13:33

Took an ice bath, am now lounging in bed incapable of doing anything remotely productive. I think the combination of upping the distance, running in the heat and the BLAZING sun in Central Park (note to self: do not run in Central Park if it's over 60F - you will die), well it's all just turned me into a limp noodle. Oooh, maybe in celebration of irony, I will make myself pasta for dinner.

This has been a post.

Track Party Thursday

You know what the worst thing is?

(Well, besides injury, death, so-close-yet-not-BQ times and PWs?)

Finding out the track you were running on is short. UGH.

So I dragged my ass out of bed (even though I didn't want to), and got to sprinting (even though I REALLY didn't want to). And it's hard. I officially hate 800s. Mostly, I think it's too early for them, so I think for the sake of my sanity, I'll stick to 400s until I build up some sort of track endurance. But anyways, there I am dragging my ass and huffing and puffing and I'm seeing 3:10's and 3:20's on my Garmin and I'm like,   ok, this might be worth it.

Except then I look after, and each lap is only 0.42. 0.42. Instead of 0.5. And that feeling? It's the WORST.

So I had to recalculate. Turns out I did a much less respectable 3:40, 3:53 and 4:00 (for each actual 800). <-- There's that 4hr marathon I've been promised. But gathering from how I felt running that 800 675 meters, I doubt that's happening any time soon.

Bah humbug.

Also, please send me your favorite track workouts (that do no include 800s, or at least not in great quantity)? So far, I've just been picking random distances with random reps, but I've yet to hit the sweet spot of hard work x satisfaction.

Spectacular Saturday

Saturday is my relax-from-life day. I sleep in (well, not so much today due to crazy people DRAGGING SHEETS OF METAL outside my window at 8am). I pretend to work. Instead, I slow peruse things online and do homey things.

Oh, and I run. Saturdays rock.

It was just the most glorious day for running ever. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the air was a little bit chilly (so you didn't get heatstroke in the sun) and life was wonderful.

I mean, doesn't all that greenery just make you SO happy? No, just me? Ah well ...

I did the big-ish loop of Central Park (although I skipped out on running the Harlem Hills and just ran around the reservoir on the way back). I definitely thing the track training will help with improving pace - in fact, I was already feeling it :) (That may be just in my head, but hey, if it helps, I'm thinking it.) I still have a problem getting all warmed up, so I typically don't get into the zone until around 3 miles, ie. the turnaround at Columbus Circle. I just can't keep my breathing even on the uphills, and the downhills are not that relaxing either. So that's something I'll be working on. Like for longer run days, maybe I'll do a couple of sprints in Riverside Park, which is fairly flat, before hitting Central Park. Thankfully, I'm not there yet.

• 6.76 miles in 1:03 - so 9:30 pace, feeling GREAT
• (except for the fact that every guy running passed me. With ease. GAH. Also, I think the ratio of men to women was 10:1 ... gals, where are you guys? Are you more early-morning people? Sunday people? Non-Central Park people? Where do I find you?)

I'll leave you with my ugly mug (I was pretty runner's-high-ing it at this point and I think I was grinning at every single person whom I ran past, but in retrospect, all they probably saw was a weird grimacing girl).

Also, another picture of the reservoir. I should just call my blog the Reservoir Appreciation Blog, because clearly, that's all I do. But it's just sooooo pretty!

Track Party Thursday

It's baaaaaack. It's been only, what, like a year? Yes, I've brought back Speedwork Thursdays. Mainly because I'm tired of being slow, and somehow in my head, it's easier to run in 400m segments than continuously.

Obviously, once I actually got to the track and had to start running, I dearly wished I could go at an easy 10 minute mile pace instead of this stupid sprinting business, but by then it was too late. Stubborn Anna to the rescue - she wouldn't let me quit ahead of time.

I ran up on the Great Hill and it was really nice and sunny and happy and wonderful up there. Also, it was full of dogs. I guess this is the token dog-walking-and-throwing-dog-balls-and-having-dog-chats spot. I just wish all this dog-socialization didn't happen right on the track ... I had some crazy tangents in my laps.

• 6x400m at 7:18ish pace (ended up being around 1:30 per lap) with 400m very VERY slow jogging in between

By the end, I had a metallicky taste in my mouth and my head hurt like it was hit with a hammer, so I didn't even get the runner's high. Boo. Also, maybe I should've waited to get over that cold. And why would you put a track on a hill? I guess I'm just not ready for all that altitude training.

(I'm just whining here ... of course Track Party Thursdays will be back. As long as my running-in-the-rain and track-party-in-the-cold-wind shenanigans don't land me with pneumonia.)

Because Sometimes, You Just Need a Break

I spent the entire day staring at code today. It only picked up around 5pm, which still left me with 8 hours of just plain old frustrated computer coding beforehand. So I was sooooooo ready for a break by the time evening rolled around.

Thankfully, my friend E is always up for a cafe date. (I should make it a series, really.)

The place was called Jacques Torres cafe on Amsterdam and 73rd (or at least I think that's where it is ... I've been feeling a little loopy lately what with the illness and the staring-at-code-till-my-eyes-bleed). The place is so cute! Seriously, if you're feeling in a chocolate-y mood (and seriously, when wouldn't you be?), you should go here.

I had a classic hot chocolate (coerced by E - but I loved it!). I don't usually have hot chocolate, because I prefer to consume all of my calories in solid form as much as possible, but when somebody peer pressures me, I'm pretty much always likely to cave. Especially to something that basically tasted like melted chocolate having a giant party in my mouth.

I mean, the chocolate ... oh, mah, gawd.

 Oh yea, and there was some nice conversation with E as well ;) It's always great to have someone to just chit chat and do girly stuff with. And speaking of girly ...

Well, we just had to step into Century 21 for a tiny bit of shopping. It didn't hurt that the first floor was devoted to bags, scarves, hats and fur vests. All of my loves all in one space!

 

 

Yea, I may have devolved a bit in the end. E kept her cool but I kind of lost it amongst all the crazy coloured hats. I clearly have a career in modelling in the future ... oh wait, that would be E. I will just be the crazy girl in the bloopers. Ah well, those are the ones that people like best anyways :)

I'm rrrrunning in the rain ... and I am sort of happy again

I actually managed to wake up really easily today, and was all ready to get the run out of the way. So I didn't really check the weather this morning ... and it doesn't help that my windows face a wall.

Guess who was in for a surprise?

 That would be me.

Because by the time I got my slightly-sick-and-not-over-these-sniffles self up to Central Park, I realized that it was actually raining pretty significantly and that this was really stupid in terms of my health. But, as everyone knows, I'm like the most stubborn person alive. Or EVER. So obviously, there was no way I was turning home. Besides, I was already wet by that point, so the whole not-getting-sick bit was probably a lost cause by then.

I did however naturally speed up because ... well ... the raindrops wouldn't fall on me as much if I just ran faster than them! Brilliant! I'm clearly a genius in the morning ...

It did however translate to a stellar run, where I'm proud to report that I managed to log 8:XX miles for the first time since last fall! (Aka the last time I was training consistently; actually following your training plan WORKS, what a concept!).

• 3.41 miles in 29:39, an 8:42 pace

I LOOOOOOOVE running right now. We'll see if this runner's high can last though ... I think if I develop pneumonia, it might put a damper on things.

A Week of Concerts

So Thursday night post rehearsal, I took to the streets of Manhattan to hit up a concert a friend of mine was doing at Lincoln Center. (I can't believe I get to say that! Congratulations Esteli!)

Now since I'm a cheapskate and the night was young, I actually ended up walking all the way from 72nd on the UES to 66th on the UWS. If that doesn't sound far, it isn't - if you cross through the park that is; but of course I'm a weenie and would never cross the park at night, so I had to go the roundabout way. Which wasn't too bad because, well, New York is beautiful.

Plus there's always somebody about, so the city always feels alive. Not that I would know, because usually, this would be my bedtime. Oops, grandma alert! So yes, it was quite a miracle that I even made it to the concert, let alone lasted the whole hour.

The concert was AMAZEBALLS. My friend Esteli is in an up and coming ensemble called Roomful of Teeth. They do some really amazing things with sound, so I would definitely recommend a listen (although it is a little out there, so be prepared!).



But that wasn't the end of it! Friday night was spent crossing off another item off my New York To-Do List (I really should publish that baby at some point, shouldn't I?) - watching a symphony at Fisher Hall. I was actually really excited, because A) it was a chance to dress up, duh and B) Emmanuel Ax was playing and he's really, really good.

Beautiful atrium and hall at Lincoln Center.

 Except that the concert itself wasn't so stellar due to some sound issues the orchestra seemed to be having. Like, oh, playing way louder than the pianist and not keeping in tempo. After 15 years of playing piano (quite seriously, I might add), the little things really stick out and I get to be that annoying person that loudly whispers, I can't believe they just DID that. Thankfully my friend E is a music major and shared my pain. They did fix that problem ... in the second half, when dear Manny wasn't even playing. So there's that. But at least I got to test out a new outfit, which is always a win in my book. What isn't a win is that my friend E convinced me that we should take all the photos on her phone - aka they shall never again see the light of day because it will take her a decade a year to upload them. So look for an outfit post from me in October 2013.

Rrrrrrunning

I'm a lazy butt who hates uploading pictures from her camera onto her laptop, which means that obviously no posts can be written, which means she's a bad bad blogger.

But lo, what post yonder appears? It is a post about running, and running is awesome.

No seriously. I'm finally getting back in the groove after not running the entire summer, and while it's often not pretty, it is getting a bit better. Usually, the getting-better happens after the 3rd mile, which is quite a problem on those short 2-3 mile runs that keep happening (mainly because I don't feel like fracturing my legs again).

Tuesday - as usual, I ran my 3.5 miles in Central Park and of course I ran by the Reservoir, because I'm apparently incapable of running anywhere else.

Old photo, but who wouldn't want to see the beautiful reservoir ONE MORE TIME?!?!

I was going to run again on Thursday, but then I acted like a clumsy fool and slammed my foot into my door frame, resulting in a very purple and swollen toe that refused to fit into a shoe. Any shoe. Walking to work was fuuuuuuun.

So that meant that Saturday, I really HAD to run. I finally got my shit together around 5pm (whoops, what happened to the whole day?) and headed out.

New York, why are you so pretty all the time?

Basically, I headed down the drive, which sucks up until 96th or something and then rocks all the way to 65th because it's all downhill. I love downhills, not gonna lie. I would take downhills over uphills anyday (who wouldn't?) but then again, I realized that the old adage is true.

What goes down, must come up.

Or something like that.

So the whole backside of the loop was all uphill. Which was just grrrrreeat.

• 6 miles at 9:45ish pace

But hey, I have this super sweet secret for dealing with the parts of running that aren't so awesome. Wanna hear wanna hear wanna hear?

I know you do. Well, here goes. You just visualize yourself ... winning a marathon. No seriously. Like running in front of the crowd, epic sprint to the finish, break the course record type of deal. Just on replay for the duration of the run.

Sorry for the defacing, Salina

Totally does the trick. Before you know it, your run's over and you've won the Boston, New York and Chicago Marathons. Twice.

Why Opera could actually be Reality TV

So after all the nastiness of the week, I was very VERY happy to meet up with my friend E for our evening of ...

Seeing Carmen at the Met!

Can I just say how excited I was? I definitely have a list of things I want to do in New York and seeing an opera at the Met was near the top! Now, obviously, we got all dolled up (because duh, any chance to wear nice clothes after bumming it around in grad school) and even hit up a fancy bistro (Epicerie Boulud) beforehand.

Yes, I was definitely camwhoring it up in the fancy mirror at E.B. while E. was off somewhere. Also, I loved my outfit (and I finally got to wear my beautiful silky-smooth red blazer! I mean, it's hard to wear it in the hot and humid NYC summer because of all the unladylike sweating ... and I mean, I can't wash it or anything because then I'd have to iron it out and well, I'll be honest - I'm not going to be doing that). Unfortunately, my nice black Steve Madden heels died after this night by splitting along the seams (which is apparently hinting at that fact that my feet are too fat? Wow. Have to rethink some things now ...). But the blazer lives on in unwashed glory!

Also, this was my first time seeing the interior of the Met and can I just say, OH. MY. GOD. It's just so gorgeous. When I wasn't people watching (and that was also a very fruitful endeavour - my God, people have some VERY nice clothes here ... and also some questionable ones), I was definitely admiring the decor.

I mean, would you look at those chandeliers? Magical. And inside the theater? Also very spacious and very beautiful.

Now let's talk about the opera itself. Here's the thing - Carmen is fucking sexy. It is basically a 3 hour stripping-sexy dancing-singing extravaganza. I mean, that lady was so sexy, I wasn't even sure what to do with myself afterwards ...

Here's the basic plot:
Carmen is a sexy sexy factory girl/gypsy. Everybody wants her. It's not surprising why.

So she gets into a bit of a girl fight with this other factory girl and they have some good old fashion girl-on-girl cat fighting. Interested now?

So this lovely soldier Don Jose has to arrest her except Carmen does her thing and he kinda falls in love with her.

It's really too bad, because he's quite a good boy and he used to love this sweet little thing called Micaela but surprisingly he forgets all about her when Carmen does her thing. He also loves his mother, about which he sings a surprisingly disturbing and long aria. Freud would've loved it.

So Don Jose runs away with Carmen to live as a bandit in the mountains (and kids, this is why, when you want to ride off into the sunset, you better pack a lot of money with you for that rainy day). Then Escamillo, who is this super schnazzy matador and actually almost hooked up with Carmen before she left with Don Jose, appears.

 

By that point, Don Jose is uber-clingy and slightly paranoid, and Carmen dumps his ass. Now, she's quite a little player during this whole little drama, all 'I want you, no, now I don't want you, oh run away with me, no go away now' so basically, she was quite a bitch.

So it's no surprise that in typical dramatic/operatic fashion, a whole bunch of people end up dead.

Remarkably hard to tell. Now throw in some crazy gypsy dancing, some sexy handtowel washing, some more stripping and you've got Carmen! (Basically if she were here now, she'd have her own reality show on E and would be rivaling Kim K for sexy-fame and Lilo for her crazy-girl reputation).

I didn't even notice the time flying by (even though usually, 3.5 hours of sitting would have me looking at my watch every 5 minutes). By the time we left, the whole city was lit up and gorgeous, so obviously, we had to take a few photos. Or like a hundred. Camwhore for life!

Can we just talk about how shit-tastic some weeks are?

Thursday and Friday this week were absolute shit shows.

I just wanted to slog through and get to the fricking weekend. You know why? (You probably don't want to know, but I'll tell you anyway).

I have had this stupid huge assignment looming over me all week so I spent all day Thursday coding.

No, that's not me. I have long hair. Otherwise, it's pretty accurate.

I even came back to the lab after class to keep working on it. And then I basically ran home, grabbed dinner, ran to the shoe repair place to drop off my new shoes to get adjusted and ran to catch the bus to go to rehearsal.

And this is where the shit show starts. I mean, I was already tired and brain dead and just exhausted by that point. And the bus didn't come. So I had to run to the bank and grab some cash to pay for a taxi.

The rehearsal itself went a bit long (but it was good!), so I only got out at 9:45pm, and for some reason the bus didn't come for another 30 minutes, and by the time I made it home, it was inching closer to 11pm ...

... and that's when I found my favorite part of the day - I lost my keys somewhere! Yay. This is excellent news to find out when its 11 at night and you're locked out. Now thankfully, my roommate let me into our apartment, but I couldn't get into my bedroom.

So I called the super and I waited. And I waited. And then I waited some more. Finally, he showed up an hour and a half later (aka, it's past midnight now and I'm seriously crashing from being up since 7am and running and work and rehearsal and everything).

And the fun part is, I had to wake up early on Friday as well for a meeting. So I woke up (slightly braindead though). Thankfully, my friend covered the meeting, but instead, I got to spend the WHOLE morning (a good 4 hours) running around in the torrential downpour that was Friday trying to find my keys (by visiting every single place I had been the previous night) and then trying to find my super (because of course the phone number he gives us is not a mobile phone) and then trying to get a new set of keys.

Joy.

I then spent the next 4 hours in the lab with wet feet (because hey, the campus is built on a hill so trying to get to the building at the highest point means walking through FLOODING RIVERS for fifteen minutes), trying to finish my assignment.

Flooded lawn in front of my building.

You-can't-see-it-but-it's-flooding.

Oh and as soon as I submitted it, I had to run off to meet E. So basically the first 20 minutes of our meet-up were spent venting, pretty much like you read above.

Okay, now that's off my chest I may actually post about all the fun stuff that happened since :)

Cafe Review: Chocobol

I figure, since I pretty much spend half of my life in cafes (scientific fact, right there), I may as well review some for the fun of it (and for my own reference; sometimes I can't remember which ones are good before I've had my coffee ... and since I'm going to the cafes for the coffee ... well, you can see that there's a problem).

Last night I once again met my friend E in the Lincoln Center area (man, I will soon know that place like the back of my hand!) and we wanted to grab some coffee. (Except that this time, she had coffee and I didn't! WHOA. Mind blown, right there).

It's this super cute place called Chocobol. Now I'll be honest and say that it was edging towards expensive on a cafe-price scale (Tim Hortons/Dunkin Donuts is at the bottom, 6-10$ cups of restaurant coffee are at the top). But man, was it cute!

Definitely going there again!

The rest of the evening was sadly not as exciting. I had my weekly Trader Joe's visit, which is always fun. And then I had to tote two bags of groceries uptown, which was not. Not fun, I mean. And then I munched on dried apples and played my guitar (my fingers don't hurt anymore, yay! Now I just can't feel them!) and generally goofed off instead of doing work. Work schmork.

Eh.

What?! Anna, running?

Yep.
It happened.

I actually packed my food the night before. And laid out all my clothes. And woke up at 7am. And actually ran!

3 beautiful morning miles (albeit with some insole pain, yet again! Gah, will it never stop?). Note to self: UM, DON'T TAKE BREAKS FROM RUNNING, YOU FOOL.

Oh also, I was thinking about what Ali on the Run posted about her thoughts during running and I remembered my whole 'see-an-attractive-person-and-speed-up' plan.

EXCEPT ...

Everyone is attractive. And fast. So instead of intervals of sprinting when I see beautiful people and chilling out when I don't, I'm just constantly sprinting. So that's fun.

Also, at the end, when I was in my sprinting daze, I thought I saw Ryan Hall. It obviously wasn't him, but Ali got my mind onto running celebrities so I kept thinking I was seeing famous people.

Oh wait, that happens every time.

This is why I would never ask a celebrity for an autograph unless I actually saw an entourage with them - because chance are, it would actually be a regular person that I was stalking and they would think I was weird.

That is all.

Of New Adventures and Acquisitions

So I am trying to make my life less of a get-up-work-school-collapse-at-home-in-an-exhausted-heap kind of thing - I mean, that's what I did in Montreal, and at the end of three years, my friend who came to visit me ended up seeing more in her 1 week visit than I did in my whole stay there.

And I am NOT going to squander New York City this way!

So I made this whole huge list of all the places I want to visit and all the things I want to do (I basically watched Friends all over again to see what fun things they did and then I googled 'top NYC attractions' ... yes, I am imaginative). And I try to do a new-ish thing every week.

So I walked to the Brooklyn Bridge! (Or rather, I walked cross town, then took the 6, and then walked the bridge). Sooo, the thing about the bridge is that yes, you can have really beautiful views of both Brooklyn and NYC, but it's under construction now (and who knows when they'll be done ... like 2013 or something), so you're actually walking in this tunnel of tarping and steel beams until about the middle, when you suddenly get a bit of the view. So I think I'll definitely come back in a couple of years to see what it's really supposed to look like, but for now, I'm satisfied with my bridge adventure.

And speaking of adventure ... I was walking back home and I realized that I really wanted ... a guitar. So I literally walked into a guitar store (where a really nice young man helped me out ... damn, musicians sure have something about them!) and got myself a guitar.

 

It's my new baby. I'm literally strumming it all the time. Now, the tips of my left-hand fingers feel like they've been through the grater, sure, but it's still fun! I look forward to annoying the Internet in the future with renditions of all the songs that are in my iTunes library played on guitar. (Heads up, there's 2000 of them. Not quite sure how Pitbull will sound played on guitar, but we'll see when we get to that ....).