A Fine Balance

We are about to embark on our eight day trip which will bring us out to Idaho then back to Boston before returning to NYC.  I am petrified slightly anxious about flying with Ben across all these miles because, well, he isn’t that fun to fly with.  My previous flight ALONE with him was only up to Boston and every last one of those 42 air flying minutes was painful. PAINFUL. 

On the way there, I decided to try and bring the car seat on the plane because we had a seat for him.  Bad idea.  Car seats just move your little foot closer to the seat in front of you which makes the ease of kicking that seat so much better.  Luckily it wasn’t a packed flight so nobody was actually in the seat.  Also, the car seat only fit in the middle sit thus taking Ben away from his favorite plane activity, opening and shutting the window shade.  While the opening and shutting of the shade could be classified as “annoying” to those around us, it’s not nearly as annoying as 42 straight minutes of shrieking is.  Trust me.  (also, please note, while flying time was 42 minutes, runway time was EASILY also 42 minutes and you better believe that shrieking also happened on the runway). 

On the way back, Josh was with me and we went car seat-less.  This also isn’t super fun because trying to explain why we wear our seat belt on a plane to a 2 year old who still speaks in one word sentences doesn’t go over that well. 

We are flying in 2 segments:  NYC to Minneapolis then Minneapolis to Spokane.  From Spokane we drive what I has been told is another 3 hours.  So if you followed along with the math, that is 3 + 3 + 3 hours of sitting and being “a good boy” for NINE HOURS in one day.  Yeah. 

I am open to any and all suggestions so send them my way.  *Please note:  1) Ben does not have any concept of rewards-I cannot tell him to be quiet because I will give him xyz if he is.  He just doesn’t get it. 2) Ben does not care if you take things away from him.  Still no concept of rewards.  Please reference #1 for further clarification 3) Ben’s attention span is approximately 1-2 minutes (if that) 4) Ben DOES NOT care about TV.  Please reference # 3 for further clarification.

 I apologize in advance to our fellow passengers.  I’m hoping we all survive. 

I didn’t give advance warning of my 10 Mile race this weekend because I wasn’t positive I would actually be running it.  I made a quick trip to DC on Friday night for a Saturday afternoon baby shower and returned back to NYC right afterwards.  Usually running after spending 10-12 hours cramped in a car isn’t ideal.  This was also coupled with the fact that I hadn’t actually trained for the 10 mile distance.  Sure, I have been running consistently for the past few months, but 10 miles would be my longest race to date and I had not followed any sort of schedule to build up to it.  Luckily, I am coming off the heels of the BRUTAL training schedule inflicted by the Runner’s World 10k training that ended just over a month ago.  This was the training group that would have us run a mile warm up and a mile cool down with the goal run being six miles.  Yes, all together that equals an eight mile training run for an ultimate goal of running a 10k.  For those who don’t speak K’s, it’s just over a six mile distance.  Ugh.  We also had a famous night of hill work that my Garmin clocked at around 8.5 miles.  So, while I hadn’t intended to train for a 10 mile, it seemed as though I already had.

I woke up at 5:45a Sunday morning which was a mere 3 hours since I had been awoken by Josh returning home for the night.  I think it’s clear where both of our priorities lie.  My running buddy Tracy texted she was up and on her way out the door.  I ran around my apartment gathering a bag for the run as rain was predicted that morning.  20 minutes later I was out the door with two spare t-shirts, an umbrella, flip flops and a towel to dry myself off if necessary.  Two long train rides later we arrived in Brooklyn where I still had to register for the race.  I actually made the correct decision in not registering until race day as the line for race number Pick up was practically back to the subway entrance.  I quickly registered and checked my bag then met up with some of Tracy’s friends who were also running the race.  I quickly realized a lot of people had registered as a 3 person relay team and was jealous they were only running a 5k to my 10 miles.  It also meant that people with fresh legs would always be on the course which is somewhat inspiring/demoralizing.

The race start time was pushed back by 10 minutes so we didn’t actually take off until 8:10 after a cannon was sounded.  It is the first race I have every been in where we all RAN to the course start but I think that was morebecause nobody had any idea where the actual start was.  Not the most organized race…

The course was three loops of Prospect Park and all was well until Tracy mentioned there is a very LONG hill at some point.  Great.   Three passes of a long hill.  Ugh.  Tracy has been nursing some leg issues and fell back about a mile and a half in so the rest of the race I was running solo.  I felt strong at first but it was an extremely humid day and I knew it was going to take a lot of energy to complete.  There were two water stations on course which meant 6 places to grab water overall.  They also were giving out Gatorade and sports gel.  I’ve never trained with gel so I passed that up for both a cup of water and a cup of Gatorade at every single stop except for the first one.  I made myself walk through the stations(who are we kidding, I rewarded myself with a walk) so I could make sure I was able to drink both.

I felt good after the first lap and most of the way through the second.  I had found a rhythm and a group of 6 or so runners who were always around me.  We traded walk breaks so it seemed there was always someone to chase at my pace.  At the start of the third lap,my legs started to tingle as if there were about to go numb.  Uh-oh.  I was pretty much at my longest every distance of consecutive running and wasn’t quite sure what to do if they actually went numb.  They sprung back after about a half mile but then my arms started to tingle.  I shook them above my head and was able to get them back in gear as well.  I walked up the final lap of the hill and then ran the remainder of the race.  It started to rain the final mile and I couldn’t decide if I was happy about this or not.  I was tired and just wanted it to be done.  I contemplated walking once again when a spectator started alerting us there was only a quarter mile left.  I figured I could suck it up for a quarter mile and pressed on.  After 1:46:36 it was finally done.  Was it the worst race ever?  No, it actually wasn’t.  The conditions were far from ideal but I didn’t feel exhausted at the end and this gives me confidence to get myself signed up for a half.  My pace was very slow, even for me but I tried to hold back to be sure I would finish strong.  My Garmin died around mile 5 so I don’t have my splits but my guess is I kept it under 10’s for the first half and then fell in the second.  For my first attempt at this distance, I am okay with this. 

An impromptu brunch followed (always the best part of a race) and I was back in Manhattan by noon.

Some people can track blog vies down to the IP address and know how many times a day a particular person visits their site.  Don’t worry readers, I cannot.  Well, I shouldn’t say that because I’m sure I actually can, but I have no idea how to do this and my patience for tedious technology based tasks is low.  So if you are visiting 10 times a day, your secret is safe. 

What I do use is Google Analytics to see how many readers I have overall in a day and where they come from.  I may be able to tell someone in a certain town is reading, but its not always completely accurate.  I find numbers and analytics interesting overall and thought I would share some traffic info.

On days I post, I average 100 unique readers.  On days I don’t, the number drops to about 25.  This surprises me because I have taken to linking on Facebook and Twitter when a new post is up so I figured most people rely on these alerts to know when to check.  In fact, only 16% of readers come from Facebook and 3% come directly from Twitter.  68% come directly to my webpage. 

I have readers in 13 countries.  Yes.  13.  Amazing.  We have family outside of the US and my college roommate also recently moved outside the US so that counts for 2 countries, but that means people in 11 other countries are actually interested in the daily events in Ben’s life.  I am quite certain they probably are not actually interested in my running updates.

I have readers in 36 states. I’m not sure I have even been to 36 states.  I am severely under serving the middle of the country so I apologize to Iowa, Nebraska, both Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming.  Clearly I don’t understand what interests you and I will work harder on that in the future.  Also, West Virgina.  Now, one of my closest friends boyfriend is from W. Virgina and he has even made appearances in blog stories.  I am looking at you Vince in severe disappointment that you have not forced your family to read your adventures on my blog.

The states that check in the most are, in order, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio.  All the states were have lived in recently with the exception of New Jersey.  I’m just going to assume the JC crowd is counted in NY.  That, or they don’t like us.  Could be either.

The most page views I had in one day was on a day I didn’t actually post, and I can’t remember why that would have been but I must have been linked somewhere.  My most popular post?  The nanny cam post. 

We are taking advantage of one of the weekends we actually are IN Manhattan this summer and decided to picnic in Cental Park. It’s a beautiful day, we have wine in our solo cups and Ben is running around like a crazy person. It doesn’t get much better than this!