NYC Half

Yesterday, Sean and I ran the NYC Half.  I really wanted to run a race in the city before we move, and it was a blast.  I am so thankful to so many wonderful family and friends who helped me get through all the training...Michelle, Lynette, Lindsay, Suzanne, Haley, Ryan, and my pace man yesterday, Sean.  My dear husband trained by running a total of 3 miles before this race, and he was still able to stay in front of me the whole time...how is that fair?)

I had mixed emotions when I was selected in the lottery for the race as I was dreading training, in the winter no less, and while I was sick (I seemed to have something wrong during most of the training...but that is a whole post in and of itself!), breastfeeding, etc.  BUT...I really needed some motivation to lose some baby weight. 

The course was absolutely fabulous.  I took pictures throughout the run and tweeted them (only b/c that was the fastest/easiest way that I could figure out for posting pics).

I didn't 'PR' as my runner friends talk about, but we ran much faster than I had trained or thought I would...2:22. 

A special thanks to my dad who came out to watch the kiddos while we went to the race...thanks so much, Dad :)

scenes from yesterday...

getting ready to run!

 good morning, central park...

 guggenheim...

 so many gorgeous buildings to check out as we went by...

 Hello, NYC. 

 When will we ever have the chance to leave Central Park and run straight up 7th avenue to times square with no cars around again? 

 Pretty sure we stayed at this hotel for one of the dance weekends back in the day...

 we are still moving!

 times square, here we come!

 hard to see, but we had just made it out to the west side highway, right by the Intrepid...

 this was a long stretch...all the way down to battery park...

 I liked this 'You go, girl' message...I needed it right about then!

 Oh, how I was hoping the Novogratz's were outside (not even sure that they still live here)...but if they were there, I was going to try to go sneak a pic with them :)

 I got choked up around the new Freedom Tower that was disappearing up into the fog.  There is truly nothing sweeter than our great, free country.

 Nearing the end...the acoustics in the tunnel were perfect for the end of a race...

 here we go!

 there is the light at the end of the tunnel!

 

800 M to go!!  Yippie!

 Brooklyn Bridge...one of my favorite NYC sites.

 getting the medal...

Now...will I keep running or quit cold turkey? :)

Sunburst!

After Jenny posted about DIY Sunburst mirrors (by the way, Jenny, when are you going to have your own book?  You need one, and I would pre-order!), and we heard of an impending snow in, Michelle and I decided we would get our glue on and attempt to make these suckers!

All you need is a good friend, a glass of wine, a LOT of shims, and a LOT of wood glue :)

We followed this tutorial the most.  I won't recreate all the wonderful tutorials that exist, but just a few extra notes...

--Holding rays together - some people recommended craft tape - we just used rubberbands, and they worked just fine...

--To prime or not prime: I had some extra half used cans of white spray paint laying around, so I used those as a pseudo-primer.  The shims, especially the large ones, are very porous, and I just wanted to make sure that the gold really popped.  I don't think this step is necessary though...Michelle did not prime, and hers looks fantastic.

 -Assembling the rays:  We spent a LOT of time trying to figure out how to push the rays perfectly into the middle and not have gaps around the sunburst.  We did break off some of the long shims that were pointing into the middle to allow the longer rays to fit more snugly. We finally decided that 80/20 was good enough, and we both had some gaps in between the rays, but once the mirror was on, the gaps didn't bother us.

-Hanging:  We both just had our husbands put some screws into the back of the mirror.  Sean screwed right into the shims, and it seems to be pretty solid.  They didn't screw the screws all the way down to allow us some space to wrap hanging wire around the screws. 

 We are both happy with how our mirrors turned out.  It cost us about $42 to do the whole project.   Michelle painted hers silver, and I went for gold.  I made this knowing that I didn't have a huge open wall to hang this on right now, but hoping that in our next place, it may find the perfect home!

For now, it spices up the basement a bit...