I’m very lucky in that I live a couple of blocks from the best Farmers’ Market in New York City – the one that most of the chefs in town send their staff to buy the freshest in-season produce (a few hours before I ever get there). As it starts to get cooler, I often cook all kinds of good vegetables to make soups and stews to freeze. Here are some pics of the first effort this year.
Well, the application is in for the NYC marathon next year and (unless I manage to screw something up), I should be in automatically with the 9+1 program through NY Road Runners. I have run 6 races so far this year and and I have three more to go – a 4 mile on Nov 21, a 10k on december 5, and a 15k on December 19. I even managed to register twice for the Kleinermann 10k! Maybe I’ll get two shirts.
I also registered for the NYC half in March, which I ran last year, but that’s a lottery and no guarantees.
Who would ever have thought I’d be able to even think of running those distances? But almost 400 training and race miles this year so far (and another hundred or so left in the year) and a couple of setbacks with a hip injury in the summer and a nasty chest infection in the fall, I guess I’m getting to be somewhat serious about this.
And to make a change from the bitching about people like AT&T and AmEX – something positive.
I finished the Norway Run last weekend in 16:07 which is a 9:28 / mile pace. Granted that’s a short race, but I’m getting back to the pace I ran in the spring in Brooklyn, so I think I just do much better with cooler weather.
I have three more races still scheduled for the year -
I’ll probably throw a couple of extras in there too to make doubly sure I hit the 9+1 requirement for the 2011 marathon and then it’s right into training for that. So even with three weeks off for this blasted bronchitis and sinus infection (which still isn’t cleared) I’m feeling like I’m on the right path.
So here are some more Goals:
Always a pain. Heading back to the US tomorrow and very much looking forward to getting home, rested and back to my usual diet, sleep habits and workouts. I’ve been in Townsville, Cairns, back to Townsville, Melbourne, and now Sydney. Hasn’t helped that it’s been cold and rainy here in Sydney and I’m coming down with a bad cold right before my flights home. Oh well….
Townsville is a nice-ish quiet town with a great seafront called the Strand. 5km out and back which added up to 4 miles with the distance to and from the hotel (Holiday Inn salt shaker building if you’ve ever been to Townsville). Then up to Cairns to visit my cousin Robert and his family up there. Quite a bit further to drive than I thought but I had a great time – they made me feel very welcome and shared their wonderful house with me. They really are living the Aussie dream up there although the sun and humidity kicked my ass!
Melbourne was cold and damp, but I finally got to run the Tan Track and really enjoyed that, although I was starting to feel rundown even then, so the hill halfway round was a bear. Track itself is just short of 4km, but distance to and from my hotel at the far end of Flinders Lane in docklands meant that it added up to 5 miles total. I was out there early Saturday morning after some joker rang my room at 5am and woke me up; and then flew to Sydney that morning – that’s probably where the downward spiral began because a hard run in the cold and damp followed by a packed flight is a great recipe for respiratory infections.
One thing, though, in both places was the high number of walkers and runners out there which made me feel really good about being a part of that. It’s probably why I should be heading to the east or west sides to run along the river rather than just stay on the treadmill at the gym next door.
“If your body measurement is on the borderline between two sizes, order the smaller size for a tighter fit or the larger size for a looser fit.”
Wow. Add this to the list of things that really should never need to be articulated.
Apologies for not updating in a while. New job, new laptop, lots of things going on. I was in Steamboat springs skiing for a week in early April (fantastic – will definitely be back there next year), then down in Melbourne for a couple of weeks as soon as I started with TEAM, Been back almost two weeks and I’m heading back to Aus on Monday.
I’ll update with some pics over the next week or so, but I did want to reflect on a couple of things.
I posted some goals in late February and have already achieved 1 1/2 of them:
The other thing is that the pile of paperwork, bills, files, and stress that has squatted like an ogre in the corner of my dining table for almost 6 months is finally gone. The process of reclaiming order in my life is well underway!
It’s hardly original to criticize airline and airport food, but why not add to the voluminous literature on the subject?
Well, airline food has pretty much disappeared so that rules out that area. Except for international flights – but it’s been so long since they actually remembered to load a vegetarian meal for me that I can’t really judge the quality as much as I can the total absence. (And can I thank the stewardesses, sorry flight attendants, who just shrug with disinterest when you tell them you ordered a vegetarian meal. OK then, I guess I’ll just go hungry for the next 9 hours, thanks for your concern).
So I noticed a trend this bright new year. Let’s start at Manchester airport, terminal 1 where I spent four hours longer than I planned to last week. I don’t think it’s a exaggeration to say that I’d rather have scavenged the garbage bins out back than eat any of the food on offer there. I did purchase a brie and cranberry sandwich eventually, but through some miracle all the possible taste and texture had been stripped from both ingredients leaving only the fat, the calories and the unpleasant feeling of having spent six pounds / $10 for nothing.
Next we visit terminal three at Heathrow Airport – the UK’s gateway to the rest of the world. The proud gateway that says (unless you fly into terminal five): “we stopped cleaning or doing maintenance ten years ago. Feel free to walk hundreds of yards to your gates that are located somewhere in Surrey. The main purpose of this airport is to sell you duty-free goods that are more expensive than your local shops.”
Let’s list the options for vegetarian or healthy food that are available in terminal three:
Veggie burger at TGIF – the worst veggie burger in the world served on a stale white bun. I guarantee the cardboard box the burger came in had more flavour and better texture than that sorry excuse for a sandwich. But at least it was only 9 pounds / $14, so that’s ok.
Er, that’s it.
And so to Indianapolis’ brand new airport where I’m sitting right now. What a big, bright shiny airport this is. And what a lot of chicken there is on the menus of all the various “restaurants”.
Let’s look at the Wolfgang Puck’s Express food choices:
This is not an edited list – this is all the sandwich and salad choices. Now they do have a four cheese pizza, but I think that might be otherwise named “the gut buster”.
So the one vegetarian food choice on all of the B concourse is a four cheese pizza.
I rest my case and ordered another Bass to go with my clif bar. Thanks, Clif, and fuck you very much to airport food concessionaires throughout the world.
First race as I head towards the NYC half marathon and marathon is this weekend. 4 miles in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.
It will be cold….
Keep your fingers crossed for me.