A Running Year in Review; or, Yay Me.

We recently passed the one-year anniversary of my first marathon-training run - it was on Halloween, 2009.

I have run 4 marathons since that day, within about 9 months.

I have run over 383 miles since then. That's not a big number for a runner, but I'm not a runner; I'm a girl who decided to do a couple few several marathons. Four of those miles occurred after my last marathon, but I still don't really intend to do much more running. It's on to biking for me - much better for the knees!

An extremely important fact I'd like you to know: over the course of this whole temporary insanity, I have not lost even one toenail. None have turned black, ever. I hear constantly about this phenomenon and I just skipped it entirely, thank you.

I ran two of these marathons for friendship and two for charities. For the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society I raised over $5000. For the Blue Card Fund (for needy Holocaust survivors) I raised another $2500. If you helped make that happen, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The NYC marathon was a really hard one for me physically. I was tired, jetlagged, sick, and not well-trained. It was still a glorious day and it meant the world to me that my family came out to support me (did you see that amazing video???? I am so obsessed with it) and that a dear friend flew into town just to be there for me. I am so grateful and I will never forget it.

I posted my marathon playlist after the LA marathon and I won't repeat it, but I did add a few songs for this one, for example:
Go Go Erica Yaa Yeah / Goldma Family 1:25
(the audio from that video!!)

In honor of running NY:
The Only Living Boy In New York / Simon & Garfunkel 4:02
New York State Of Mind / Billy Joel 6:03
New York Mining Disaster / The Bee Gees 2:09
An Englishman In New York / Sting 4:27
New York City / They Might Be Giants 3:02
The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) / Simon & Garfunkel 1:43
I kind of threw them into the mix wherever, without calculation, but don't you know THE 59TH STREET BRIDGE SONG CAME ON WHILE I WAS RUNNING ACROSS THE 59TH STREET BRIDGE!! Oh yes.

(Empire State of Mind (Jay-Z and Alicia Keys) was already on there)

And, in honor of having come straight from a yoga and mediation tour of India, a few mantras and related songs:
Mahamrityunjaya Mantra 4:28
Lokah Samasta 1:07
Om Tryambakam with Swami Vishnu-devananda 1:14
Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu 1:08
Gobinda Gobinda Hari Hari / Snatam Kaur Khalsa 10:47

And that's the end of my marathon career! Right?

Best. Family. Ever.

Running NYC!!

Well, here we go again! I, along with about 45,000 other maniacs, am running the NYC Marathon tomorrow!! I'm starting in the third wave at around 10:40am Eastern, orange, and my bib number is 53-679. If you're in the area, come cheer for me!! Send me a text with where you are (which mile) and I'll look out for you.

You can track me with text messages or online or whatever you want - details here. I'd like to do a sub-5-hour marathon, but I haven't exactly trained, or slept, or hydrated or... so who knows!

There's so much I want to write about this right now, but I'm super jetlagged from two weeks on the other side of the world, literally, and not done packing for L.A. or getting ready for the race or... acccckkk!!

See you at the finish.

Undeniable Proof That I Am (Still, Always) a New Yorker:

Things I Love:
Twizzlers

Things I Hate:
Red Vines


The End.

Donate your frequent flyer miles HERE!!!

Oh man. Have I ever wanted to still be on the East Coast more? If you know me, you know I have one or two minor obsessions. No, ASIDE from ice cream, thank you. Have you seen my profile icon? Have you seen my watch? My apartment?

The whole love of Wonder Woman began for me with Lynda Carter. There is no other. Please please please don't you want to buy me a plane ticket?

Hapworth 3, 2007

I've never really been a newspaper reader, a fact that has brought me varying levels of embarrassment over the years. Now that I listen to NPR for hours every day, I have no problem with my non-newspaper habits. I also have never subscribed to the New Yorker, although I spent many years living with various people who did, so I got to read it a lot. Now I subscribe to Harper's Magazine, and that's enough for me, thank you; it's monthly and it's dense, and if I attempted to read a weekly or a daily or probably even an additional monthly, I'd never read anything else. I much prefer to continue my book habit as it currently stands.

Anyway, so since I've never read any newspaper regularly, I've of course never read The New York Times regularly, though I've also lived with subscribers to that on and off for many years. For a while, I was very into the Sunday New York Times Magazine, and a lazy Sunday morning spent reading it. I used to joke that I didn't have to read the whole thing; the game was to find the inevitable reference to J D Salinger and then I could stop. Honestly, it was *always* there. Always. Once it was on the very last page, in the crossword puzzle, but it was there.

So, a friend of mine has read New York magazine for years, and every time I look at that one, I sort of sigh and wish that I read it (and that I still lived in New York). It seems to be just my flavor of humor and pseudo-intellectualness and snarkiness and artsiness and well, perhaps if I did live in NY, I'd subscribe. This friend visited me here in LA recently and left behind a few issues for me to read. I was just now finishing up one of them, having enjoyed it but still feeling relieved that I didn't have to do it every week. I felt a sense of total freedom to page very quickly through and past all the "this week in NY" listings, since a) it's from about two months ago and b) I'm not in NY... and then there it was: a call-out box entitled "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". Do *all* publications with NY in their names have to contain a Salinger reference?? Does this really happen every week in this one too? Do I get to play the game again with the other three issues she left me? Oh, the joy :)

Home Sweet Home: summary style

Well, a whirlwind of East Coast experiences behind me once again. Spent ten days; saw about a zillion old friends. Visited old locales that haunt my memories (Levittown!) checked out some places I'd never been before (Coney Island!). Met a great many babies and babies-to-be. In close proximity, got to dip my nose into the lives of so many people living their lives differently from one another... these just bought a 200-acre farm in New Hampshire; these are spending their free time canning fruit and freezing vegetables so they can live on only locally-grown food all year long even though they live in cold cold Boston; this one is going back to school as an undergrad at age 34; this one is younger than I am and is a successful lawyer who also happens to have a artistic/creative outlet in dancing, the output of which alone would be a successful career for someone employed in dance. These have grown or growing kids and 9-to-5 jobs and spend their free time fixing up their houses and enjoying the American dream, each in their own special way. This one is eight months pregnant, that one had a little boy two weeks ago, these just had their daughter on their son's first birthday.

And then there's me, constantly absorbed in the question of How To Live. And meanwhile, living.

And as always, wanting.

NY state of mind

A quickie - I'm in New York and Boston for the next ten days, visiting everyone I've ever known. Do we have plans yet? I'm not bringing my laptop (ouch!!) but I should have occasional access to computers so... look for east coast updates when I can, or big bunch o' stories when I get back.

thanks for reading! seriously.