first place (for a couple hours)

guess what ???

after our half marathon at the park this morning, i came back to the apartment and logged in 34,140 steps, skyrocketing me from 4th place into 1st place in my office walking challenge! *GRIN* of course, this was only temporary as MFreel had not yet logged in any steps for the day yet. after dinner, i checked and im back down to 2nd. but it's alright - at least i'm improving and getting closer! :D

first on the leaderboard (for a couple hours)!

so back to the meat of our day, today was another long run day and we were slated to get 18 miles in. since we had a race at central park, we decided to run up to the park to supplement the 13.1 mile race. the weather was great - 46F and 58% humidity at 7:30am. it was a bit nippy actually, but we got warmed up after a couple miles and kevin pushed the pace on the way up, averaging 8:05-8:15 minute mile pace.

grete's great gallop half marathon was a great course - two full clockwise loops around the park and one partial bottom loop. we ran it as a training run, so were not pushing the pace to set records, and finished around 1:48.

best of all, after the race we got to see some familiar faces as our friends jordan, forest, ed, and ed's kids were at the finish line! forest and a friend of theirs, daniel, were also running the race. forest finished in 1:27 ... pretty insanely GOOD. and this is after coming off a 4-6 month hiatus from a hairline fracture in his shin. i haven't seen jordan in a while since she left nomura in may and has been traveling the world since. it was also really nice to see ed and meet his kids, samantha and matthew (who are ridiculously sweet and adorable!), especially since ed (we call him "coach" around the apt) has been grooming me for the upcoming 26.2. we all have the running bug lately!

nyrr grete's great gallop 13.1 runners

my good friend, jordan, and matthew and samantha

and last but not least, here is a photo of Grandma's Lasagna that we made last night - we gobbled down four slices for lunch. it was pretty darn tasty, and relatively healthy ~ full of tomatoes, carrots, celery, onions, beef, ricotta, and mozzarella. we made a large batch so will freeze some for later this week!

Grandma's Lasagna

best thing: seeing my friends after the race! jordan and i used to work on the same team and i didn't realize how much i've missed her until i saw her today! it was difficult when we were separated after our team's restructuring in september 2012, but since she left nomura altogether this summer, it's been difficult pinning her down. looking forward to a good catch up session soon :)

worst thing: unreliable trains :/ the L train was halted at bedford ave after some rail issues at sixth ave. we had rushed out of the apt after lunch to get into the city to check out an open house in our new building, but just ended up spending 15 minutes sitting on a halted train. since the conductor had no idea how long the repair would take, we just decided to go home. this is the third time in over a week that we've been delayed/affected by train issues on the L.

smiles: during the race, we were running around the same pace as an achilles volunteer guide and an achilles runner (legally blind), joined by holding a 12-14" rubber rope. about halfway thru the race, a third achilles volunteer guide joined them and took the place of the volunteer guide in leading the runner. we finished altogether. it's amazing to see the product of mutual respect, commitment, and teamwork. and to top it all off, the volunteer guides were a man and a woman no younger than 65 years of age. inspirational! i hope we can give back to the community like that one day, sooner rather than later.