Swim (kind of)! Run! Bike! (posted early September-not July)

Last post was late 2011 following the NYC Marathon! Wow, I have neglected this blog so badly and so did my sister! Oh well, it's not that we have 3000 followers asking for more. The blog is  like a scrapbook full of memories for ourselves and hopefully will inspire some readers to adore their siblings and stay fit, sane and healthy. I'm trying to keep the narrative limited (yeah right!) and will give an update of fun and memorable happenings paired with some pictures. Here are 2012 and the first 8+ months of 2013:

After the marathon in 2011 I recovered and ran my first turkey trot on Thanksgiving (awesome) and had a job interview the day before. I landed the job and I'm beyond happy with the challenges, responsibilities and environment I get to experience on a daily basis in the world of the United Nations as well as the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In this picture I'm giving a speech for my departing Ambassador and the UN Secretary General! I was part of secret operation bike rack, where we arranged a bike rack donation in the name of Herman Schaper, aka the Cycling Ambassador. 

I qualified for the 2012 NYC marathon and then...I didn't feel like running that race in 2012, so I decided to find a race early 2013 instead, which gave me more time to focus on my first Ministerial Week during the Opening of the General Debate, which was quite the (overtime) experience! 

I was so happy to NOT log the 18-20 milers yet and enjoyed running fun races including the 5th Ave Mile and Reach the Beach relay!

In October I was totally ready to up my game and I couldn't have picked my 3rd marathon better: the last weekend of January 2013, in Carlsbad, CA. Fantastic fall season to train in and an escape from NYC when loads of snow came down and everybody was freezing their butt off. Very thankful for awesome friends like Susan, Michelle, Liz E, Liz T and Annette, who either logged longer training runs with me or speedwork and tempos or easy runs. Loved my training season, prior to and during the holidays. I didn't get injured either since Susan's kickass Plyometrics class kept me strong and balanced and my core benefits from this workout, I wouldn't engage it at all if I hadn't been taking these bootcamp style classes with lots of attention for form and injury prevention, strength, flexibility and turnover. Did I mention I LOVE my Monday night plyo??? 

Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast badly and many people lost power, some neighborhoods were flooded, some people lost  everything. That was such a shock for the tri-state area and it happened right before the NYC Marathon, which got canceled. A strange time, but it put things into perspective for sure. Not always so classy to sweat a bad race or worry about nailing that PR. I wasn't running the NYC Marathon to begin with, but this situation showed me there's so much more than a race. Never forget that! Plus...there's always another.

Volunteering Harriers to clean up flooded East 6th St track on (canceled) marathon day.

So the holidays came and went, I visited my family in Holland, ran around, and had a wonderful time. Quality time with friends and family in the Netherlands. 

the top of this ruler is sea level, my parents live near the lowest point of Holland: 20 feet below sea level

Xmas time in Gouda

With my lil' sis after her New Year's Concert with her Wind Ensemble.

I looooved my First Time in California. I stayed with my friend Cindy, who showed me around and cheered me on. Terrific host! The course was beautiful and I ran a 6 minute PR, 3.49ish, I was very happy with my time. There were quite some lonely stretches of the run and challenging hills and many rolling hills. Priceless feeling to be running next to the Pacific Ocean for a while.

Spring was good too! I recovered, eased back into speed with the Harriers and participated in some fun races in and outside New York. 

Age group awards after a local 5K in LI!

My sister, YES, Judith, from this blog, got married June 1st so I spent almost 2 weeks in Holland for her bachelorette party and the wedding. Fantastic time and beautiful wedding day! The entire trip was special and filled with wealth in terms of family, health and friends. My 'American sister' came for a week and was a special guest at the wedding. So great to be able to share the experience with a good friend. 

The gorgeous couple and me signing (witness).

Late spring I also discovered a gem of a boutique cycling studio, named Revolve, at Union Square. I love this community, every single person working there is professional and friendly and the instructors are top notch! I took my first class from Kristin Kenney, named Real Ride and now I need to go at least once a week. Real Ride is based on an outdoor ride, taught by Kristin, a pro cyclist, who  knows how to push everybody out of their comfort zone to the next level. She got me inspired, during a workshop, to finally do something with my desire to take outdoor riding to the next level and sign up for the CRCA. It's late in the season, but come next spring I'll definitely benefit from the club's coaching sessions and will try bike racing. 

Riding in Lake Placid, gorgeous! 

With my birthday I had claimed that this year I really wanted to do a sprint triathlon. Guess what? I did it! and I'm not even a swimmer. Swimming is something I'm going to work on over the winter.  During the Smith Point triathlon I felt great on the bike and in the run, the swim was very chaotic. 

In any case, I loved it! All the training paid off, my Plyometrics, the RealRide, the speed workouts with the team, my swim sessions, double workouts, bike rides in the park and on 9W; it all came together.

Beautiful race and the weather was great. I know what to work on next time. Yes, I would do one again!

I'm definitely on the market for more triathlons, maybe Olympic distance next year, as well as Duathlons. 

The variety in workouts in a week suits me well.

Marathon training starts in October once I make up my mind which one to do in 2014. Phoenix, Surf City or LA??

Club team championships on August 3rd! PR on my 5 mile!

It took me a while to finally do it, but I dropped Equinox recently. It's a great gym, but with all the running, cycling, plyo, and Revolve classes I'd rather go to, I wasn't spending enough time inside Equinox to justify the price I paid there.

I love the flexibility I have now to go to the best of the best all over the city. It makes me happy to have found great teams, studios and above all, friends who enjoy this as much as I do; health is wealth!

www.revolvefitness.com

www.rateyourburn.com/instructor/kristin-kenney/26

www.carlsbadmarathon.com

www.susanbayat.com

www.newyorkharriers.com

www.eventpowerli.com

The 2011 ING NYC Marathon

Passing the Harriers Cheering Zone at mile 18

On NYRR locals gallery

Wonderful marathon weather and great support on the sidelines.  All in all I enjoyed my 2nd marathon experience! I was a little disappointed about my time (3:55:07), since I felt I was in shape to shave off a couple more minutes. Wave 2 was way more crowded than last year and whenever I was in a good rhythm I was forced to slow down and weave through, which cost me precious time.  I still ended up with a little P.R. and I'm pleased with that, especially after a summer with a big muscle strain, P.T. and a shortened and modified training plan. There were times I thought I would have to defer. Overall I felt stronger, recovered quicker and I am looking forward to more marathons in New York and other cities. Congratulations to all NY Harriers who ran. Passing the Harrier Cheering Zone is the best moment of the race, I sincerely love my team. 

Special shout-outs to Gemma, my steady training buddy and friend, who did great and will be missed once she's back in the UK. My NY sista for all her support and training guidance as well as Liz E., Cindy, Brigid and Zeina for long runs and brunches. A big thank you to my P.T. Gabe at Paspa who worked miracles, but common sense about strengthening, stretching, prevention.
After the marathon I had the pleasure of meeting a Dutch group of runners from the Rotterdam Running Ambassadors, who contacted me earlier this year through a business contact in order to get some help with post-race dinner reservations and activities and fieldtrips before the race. They invited me to meet them during dinner post-marathon and they were so nice to welcome my friends as well and spoiled me with delicious chocolate from Rotterdam as well as a neon orange technical club tee, which I was wearing at Equinox gym yesterday and definitely did make some heads turn!
Another great moment post-marathon was listening to my parents' and their good friends' voicemail messages congratulating me and finding out people had been tracking me and tweeting about my progress. So fun. I am thankful I finished sub-4 again and did not let them down by hitting a major wall and adding another half hour or so...

I had been in the Netherlands the week prior to the marathon to spend some good quality time with my family, taper, see friends and most importantly to attend my brother's wedding on Friday November 4th. It was such a beautiful day. The weather was extremely nice for Dutch standards and the ceremony was beautiful as well as the dinner and party afterwards. Many people were surprised I was traveling back to NY the very next morning, so I only caught a couple hours of sleep in a hotel airport room and continued my sleep successfully during my flight. Back in New York my arrival was smooth and I had to go to the Expo to pick up my number for the marathon on Sunday. I also picked up an orange glitter no-slip headband, which lived up to its name. It stayed on throughout all 26.2 miles and matched my Dutchie orange armwarmers! Despite what people were projecting, I wasn't that jet-lagged, but it's true I felt pretty bad-ass for running a marathon the next day. I am a crazy nasty-ass honeybadger after all. (see previous post)
My next race seems to be a fun run; a turkey trot on Thanksgiving Day. I have enough to be thankful for and what better way to remind myself of that when running. Always a great way to think, analyze, reflect and set goals.

The summer of the weird tan lines

The summer of 2011 is officially over. For me it was the summer of the weird tan lines, reminding me of how stupid I can get when it comes to listening to my body and ignoring a muscle strain. After a good spring with lots of fun, beautiful races and some nice PRs, I might have picked one race too many and since I only had 2 more planned, I kept on running and training after my adductor muscle felt quite tight (I blame that ONE night I did not warm up properly!) and hurt more and more, except when running. This led to compensating and a big muscle strain in my entire adductor plus quad. After a couple of weeks of no running at all I was a spin class junkie until I was allowed to slowly increase mileage and ease back into it and slowly integrate marathon training a couple weeks into the 16 week plan I wanted to follow.
The day I was supposed to run the Fairfield Half I was cheering on my Harrier friends followed by a couple hours of tanning at Jennings Beach. The Fairfield Half is so much fun and well organized. Since I limped around, some nice physical therapists assessed me quickly and referred me to the massage tent where I got a good deep tissue massage and splendid pink KT tape (kinesio tape) applied on my upper leg. After all of that I limped a little less and knew it was time to call my own PT back in New York since I realized this was going to take longer than a few weeks.
We had a terrific day of sun and I got a very visible tan line from the KT tape. It was the start of the summer and it raised some questions and comments. One 5 year old girl told me I had a funny tan-line. I was surprised she knew exactly what a tan-line was at that age and that she was concerned for me looking funny. The line slowly faded away and was barely visible towards the end of the summer. Quite symbolic, because by the end of the summer I was back at reasonable mileage and ready to run the Hood to Coast Relay in Oregon with a terrific group of people, who called themselves the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badgers (inspired by a famous YouTube video by Randall). I made fantastic new friends, ran down Mt. Hood in a 5:58 first mile and experienced complete soreness and tightness of the calves thanks to a 6 mile downhill run.
I ran through Portland waterfront with a headlamp, then through some sketchy industrial area where I had to run fast in fear of scary pickup trucks stopping for no reason. I had my last leg through beautiful rolling hills countryside. I slept in the van, in a High School gym, ate peanut butter banana sandwiches and cheered on my teammates including spontaneous dance jam sessions while Black Eyed Peas blasted from the speakers.
After finishing in Seaside, OR, the trip wasn't over yet. I had a few more days of Portland, OR fun together with some other honey badgers, who were now really good friends. We visited vineyards and tasted wine, checked out waterfalls and drove through the Gorge. Beautiful!!
Back in New York I got back into long runs by applying a generous 10% rule in order to resume my marathon schedule. It all went much better until a few weeks ago, when I got completely caught up in the schedule and forgot to include proper rest time. I felt good and forgot that the barely visible crazy tan line ironically resembled a muscle that was not completely back to normal yet and I pushed that muscle a little too far. The PT thought I strained it again and recommended an MRI. Luckily no stress fracture, but a stress reaction, which is an inflammation of muscle tissue which can lead to a stress fracture. To avoid this I was told to run a little less miles, avoid speed- and hill-work to prevent further flare-ups.
Thank goodness, that after logging an 18 miler and 20 miler I don't need to be sidelined on November 6th! A week of rest did the trick and when my friend and I were in Chicago during the weekend of the Chicago Marathon, I was allowed to run and build up mileage leading to one final long run this upcoming weekend. After my final long run, two weeks of taper will start and a week later I'll be in Holland visiting my family and attending my brother's wedding, so exciting! Plus I will be running some easy flat roads 20 feet below sea level where my parents live. Can't wait to run with my 'little' sister! This blog was started by the two of us after all and I heard she picked up running again after taking a little break. On November 5th I'll be flying back to NYC, pick up my number at the expo and if nothing gets screwed up, I'll run the NYC Marathon the next day.
Personal Record? I hope so and I'll give it my all, but considering the injury setbacks and traveling schedule, I am first and foremost very happy to be able to participate. It's like a special holiday to me, I can't wait to run all 5 boroughs for the 2nd time and I plan and hope to smile as much as last year.
This year, I've made some great new friends through my running team the New York Harriers, besides the ones I'm already blessed to call my friends for the past years, since I joined the team. We've had some really enjoyable training runs, injury frustrations, tough workouts and tasty post-run brunches together. So I'm going to be thankful for all my friends, fun and health benefits that come with running. Inside and out!

Wishing all Marathon runner friends an amazing race and supporters / cheerleaders a great time as well as successful other races, since there's more than just the marathon of course, which is sometimes hard to remember when at the peak of training and excitement!