First of all, happy birthday to my dad!

Second of all, I made my New York Road Runners racing debut this morning! It was the Thomas G. Labrecque Classic and proceeds from the race went toward lung cancer research. Going into the race I had very low expectations for several reasons : first race, never ran 4 miles at a time before, hadn't run AT ALL in several weeks, getting over a stomach flu. And despite all of that, I not only finished the race but experienced a run that was far more comfortable than any of my practices. My final time was 43 minutes and 19 seconds - a 10:49 minute per mile pace. I am very happy about that!

When I arrived at Central Park this morning, it was cold. I wore a t-shirt underneath a sweatshirt and was planning on taking the sweatshirt off prior to the race, but it was way too cold for that. Most of the other runners seemed to be bundled up pretty good as well. When I arrived at the registration area, I heard someone say my name. I turned around and it was a former classmate of mine from Vassar. She was also running in her first race, her reason being that her roommate is involved with the lung cancer charity and basically forced her to. So I pinned my race number to my sweatshirt, attached the scoring chip to my shoe and was ready to go.

I lined up at the 11-minute per mile marker and it was crowded. They announced that 7000 people were running. The website later said that 5368 people finished the race. Lots of no-shows or were lots of people unable to finish? Anyway five minutes passed between the blowing of the horn and the time that my group was able to get to the starting line. And from there, we were off! The first mile seemed to be endless. Part of it was uphill but besides that, it seemed to be excessively long. I later saw NYFlyGirl and she told me that the mile markers were in the wrong places, so the first mile seemed longer than the second. The second mile was more fun because it involved turning a bend. When I got to the second mile marker, I raised my arms in victory which elicited some laughs from the people nearby. Each mile marker had a water station so I took advantage of the H2O. Those were the only times I stopped during the race - to drink - which surprised me because I had to often stop and walk during my practices. I think that all in all it was easier because I was running alongside thousands of other people. That made it motivating to keep on going and more fun than practicing alone. Finally, I arrived at the finish line. Victory! Well, not "victory"... that went to an Ethiopian guy who ran the 4 miles in 19 minutes. But I finished and felt good doing so. Which, I consider to be a huge victory.

Next race - two weeks - the Adidas Run for the Parks!