High Excitement

Friday night I had the pleasure of going to see the 99th Annual Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. Many of the biggest names in the sport of track and field were there. In my world, these people are the equivalent of what movie stars are to most people. I was able to talk two of my good friend, Maggie and Andrew, into sitting through the whole meet with me. I think they actually enjoyed themselves and were at least amused by my constant blabbering of track stats. The best event of the night was saved for last, as Bernard Lagat (a two-time Olympic medalist in the 1500m) took on Kenenisa Bekele (arguably the most talented long distance runner in history) in his professional mile debut. For the last race the three of us managed to sneak down to much better, nearly track-side seats. Lagat won by a pretty fair margin, so the race wasn't super exciting, but I was absolutely ecstatic to be seeing Bekele race in person. So now I've seen Lagat, Bekele and Tergat race in person. The only other big stars I would really still like to see are Haile Gebrselassie and Hicham El Guerrouj. I'll keep my fingers crossed they come to NYC to race sometime in the next few years.

After all of that excitement, I was really inspired this morning for my 4 mile race in Central Park. I had decided to be extra cautious with any exercise I do these days, so I did a lot of stretching and a tiny bit of very slow jogging before the race. I ran for four minutes at a very easy pace and then walked the rest. I finished in 50:48. It was a pretty day and there were 5000+ runners, so it was still exciting to be out there. My knee hurt a bit this afternoon, but after two rounds of icing and four times the recommended dosage of Alleve, I'm feeling much better. One down and only eight more to go until I get an automatic entrance into the NYC Marathon 2007! I've got over a year and a half to de-gimp myself.

In other news, I recently found out that my friend, who works at Bloomingdale's, is a coworker of the roommate of Daniel V. from Project Runway. I never go to any of the Bloomingdale's parties when asked, but I may have to just start. Maybe Daniel V. can take my measurements and whip me up a nice little spring dress. I could get a flashy gimp-stick (i.e. cane) to go with it too.