13.1 NY recap

My race weekend started with a drive to Long Island to crash with Gigi from Running on Candy. It was so kind of her to let me crash, and save me from having to make the drive on race morning!

I was proud of myself for making that drive, I have never driven that close to NYC before, it was stressful, but I managed it with no problems!

We got up at a nice, reasonable hour and hopped right over to Flushing Meadows Park to pick up our bibs and tees. The line was long but it moved quickly! We soon had our bibs, our tech shirts, and our bags and met up with some of Gigi's running friends and Kaseedee, a fellow Swirlgear sister and Running Buddy lover!

We posed for a billion pics, and stowed our stuff with Jeff, the Team Boyfriend, who so kindly held everyone's crap and took tons of pictures. He was a good sport! I gladly handed over my beer ticket in exchange for his services :) Well, I gave it to his wife, but that's the same thing. Right?

For real, all the stuff in my jacket pockets made me look preggers and this pic is splashed all over social media! Too funny! This is the Half Fanatic picture!

It was super cold so we decide to use the ball park bathrooms, which were gloriously heated. We never wanted to leave!

After hanging out a bit more it was time to hit the start, and then pose for a bunch more pictures.

We began the race, knowing in advance we would be doing a 3:1 run/walk. Gigi's friend wanted to take it slow and Kaseedee has been sick the week before, so we stuck together and decide to just have fun!

The course was a series of loops, so we actually crossed several areas twice. 

We passed a lot of great photo ops!

This was at mile 3 or so, I believe. We stopped to take a mile marker photo and I couldn't resist this pic. The sky looked amazing!

These giant globes were right after the ship! I don't know what purpose they served, They were off to the side. We rounded a corner to find some animal statues, and being mature human beings, we jumped right on!

We passed the zoo right after, which smelled like cows, and approached this amazing structure! Do you know what movie used this structure?

There was some more silliness, and of course we took pics!

We crossed a bridge, one that we would cross four times during the race, and Laurie decided to use the porta potty. There  was a DJ, so of course the rest of us started dancing. No pics though, sorry! This was also about the time we started getting lapped by the front runners!

We moved on and around a lake, where the wind really picked up! Yikes it got cold! After the lake we headed back to that bridge. Yay.

We saw this amazing drum band, they had such energy and they really cheered us up!! 

Around another corner and we finally got a close up of the giant globe that we could see during the race.

Time to loop back and right near the rocket at mile 3, we snapped this pic at what was now mile 8.5

Back over the bridge for the third time and I stopped at the area of the porta potty to snap this photo of an upcoming race of mine (I am doing the half):

I actually took the pic because that star is where I live, but I noticed something funny...... Can you tell what it is?

We posed for one last mile marker photo, all together for this one thanks to a volunteer.

Back around the lake, over the bridge for the fourth and final time. We started to notice the course being taken down around us. This was a little frustrating. All of the course volunteers were gone and we had to follow cones to figure out the course. Good thing Gigi ran this race last year and knew where to go!

We approached a large pond, and knew we were almost done. Mostly because a girl who had already finished came back to cheer on her friend. She was upbeat and perky and whenever we stopped to walk she told us to pick up our feet and finish strong. I'm pretty sure we all wanted to squish her.

We reached the final stretch, and our friends were all there cheering. Danielle took our jackets so we wouldn't have them on our waist in the finish line photos.

The finish was great. They had volunteers putting medals around our necks while another was handing us water. They had fruit cups, bananas, oranges, strawberries, muffins, Oreos, and pretzels. We loaded up and headed out to take pics and search for chocolate milk.

Alas, no milk was to be found, but I will be sure to get some for after the Love Run. It was a very fun race, with amazing ladies, and so worth the long drive.

What did you do this weekend to keep your body moving?