NYRR Half-Marathon Grand Prix: Manhattan - RunHalf Marathon

I had an absolute blast doing this run. First of all, around mile 3, I passed my parent's house, and there was my mom, with a bag of four dates. It was great to see her, and the dates were amazingly delicious and perfect running food - really boosted my energy! It was also coincidentally great as I dropped one of my gels somewhere, so it would have been a hard race with one gel. Also, I met two girls before the start, and we started chatting. I was struggling to keep up with them for the first six miles, which had me running 10:30's or so. However, one had a hurt hamstring, one had a horrible cold, and they just weren't quite ready for a half-marathon. As for me, after six miles I felt strong and ready to go, but, I made the decision to coach them rather than to just run my fastest, and it was great - I felt really great helping them through, and they were so grateful and finished strong. For the last mile, however, I ran ahead as they wanted to walk, and insisted that they were fine. So, I sprinted to the finish, with Richard the yoga teacher's voice in my head saying, "after this, there is nothing left to do." It was great, and I had such a blast, finishing strong and joyously.

Probably would have run the whole way and not walked if I wanted to be super fast, but I had so much fun that I didn't care!

Walked, did some yoga, ate food, and did trapeze class (crazy, I know.)


A fine Central Park race. I'd love it if they had something besides gatorade on the course, as a lot of halves do - fruit, etc. would be nice. However, great volunteers and 5,000 people makes for a fun