No sleep 'til Brooklyn!

I had made some arbitrary goal of running 5 half marathons this year.  After finishing my first, and looking at my second one in one short week, I am questioning who's bright idea this was...

First race of the year--the Brooklyn half.  Currently a very popular race.  It's hip to run now you know.  It's even more hip to just stand on the sidelines and cheer simply through your presence, but not actually opening up your mouth to cheer (tongue in cheek, I would probably love to live in Brooklyn).  Unfortunately the race is also a huge pain in the ass, which was unknown to myself when I signed up.  You have to *go* to Brooklyn to pick you your bib, and thankfully for my friend Robin in my running group, she did this for me.  It otherwise probably would have taken me over 3 hours just to go and sign in and get the darn thing.  Secondly, the race started at 7 am, which is great in my book.  Except again, you have to *go* to Brooklyn to start the race.  It is not a start/finish at the same point and so the best thing for me was to drive to Coney Island where it finished and take the train in. Corrals closed at 6:40 and they made it seem like if you weren't there by 6 am, you might not get to run the race.  Who the hell wants to stand around for 1 hr before the race starts?  Especially when they put the port-a-potties in the corrals and ahem, some people have nervous bowels before races.  The downwind smell was enough to make me vomit.

All in all, it actually wasn't that terrible getting there and we had to jump the fence to get into the corral, but no harm, no foul.  The weather was gorgeous and Robin and I had agreed to run together.  It seemed like it would be easy, peasy, just a regular weekend run.

Um, no.  I felt like death at the end and couldn't understand how I was going to do this all over again in 2 weeks.  The last 6 miles was a straightaway, which I have now declared my nemesis.  I love hills.  Up, down, all around, anything but straight.  Official time was 1:48:48, definitely respectable, but too painful for my liking.  I would've thought I could run that without it hurting so badly for the last 3 miles.  Oh well.

Next up--Covered Bridges Half in VT.  Also a logistical nightmare not well thought out but oh well!

Some NewRo runners before the race.  Carrie, Robin, myself and Chris

I can't actually take credit for this picture.  Yana took it but I love it.  Not entirely sure what it is, but it was at the end of the race near the amusement park I think.