July 2011

How on earth is it August already?!? This summer is just FLYING by and I'm not ready for it to end yet! Eeek! I had grand intentions of taking a photo a day every day in July and being great at posting them for a whole month of summertime fun. And then that definitely didn't happen. Oops.

July was a great month! I took the first 2 weeks off from work which was so wonderful. I had a lovely 4th of July weekend in the city complete with a family party, trip out to Long Beach, and watching the Macy's Fireworks from a friend's awesome rooftop.



Me and my grandmother!



BBQ time on the roof!



Our view of the fireworks over the Hudson



Then it was home to SLC to hang out with the fam for a week and a half and for my friend Tawni's wedding (which I didn't take any photos of. boo.) Home was SO great. I spent some time in Park City at our time share with the padres, ate lots of Cafe Rio, saw friends I hadn't seen for like 2 years, had a daddy-daughter golf date with my dad, Caroline and her dad, Hiked the Y with sister, celebrated Megan's birthday with her, and crashed the parents' empty-nester dinner. It was sure hard to come back to work...

YUM! So happy to have Rio again!



Allison, Me, and Lara-we were lucky enough to all be in SLC at the same time for one day!



Daddy-Daughter golf time! Considering I hadn't golfed in about 2 years, I did pretty decent...



Caroline and I with our signature pose-we have 10 years worth of photos doing this same pose

Me and Sister on our way up Y mountain! There is a reason I only did that once in college

Me, Jennica, Camilla and Megan

The rest of the month was fine. Nothing to crazy-work, hanging out, birthday dinners, going to the beach, etc. It has been a great summer in the city! One more month to live it up!!

I'm a marathoner!!

Last weekend was quite the weekend! It was finally time for the Mayor's Marathon in Anchorage Alaska!! Way back in February I joined Deloitte's Team in Training team and signed up to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society while training to run my very first marathon!! Well, after four and a half months of training, including training runs in Central Park, Iceland, the basement of my hotel in Mexico (apparently it's not safe to be running about the city?), North Carolina, and the bridges of NYC, all of my hard work paid off!

I flew up to Alaska on Thursday 16 June and met up with the rest of the NYC TNT group. We spent Thursday and Friday exploring the city (more like small town) of Anchorage Alaska. Some highlights included a trolley tour of the city, crazy Alaskans all over the place, eating delicious halibut, salmon, and reindeer sausage (not that wonderful...poor Rudolph), sunshine all day and well into the night, and a love affair with an incredible black mink fur coat (seriously LOVED the coat and it fit like a dream! obviously it was made for me!).

(the Anchorage city skyline behind the trees)

(me and a reindeer sausage...mehr. not that fabulous, despite my excited face)

(THE COAT. my one true Alaskan love!)

Obviously the main event of the weekend was the race. I had laid out my race outfit, fuel, shoes, etc the night before and woke up excited and surprisingly not nervous at all! There were buses at the hotel to take us to the marathon start line. We got there a few hours early so we had time to hang out, eat breakfast, get our last bits of rest in. It was a very small race-all of us fit into a little section of a high school parking lot. Quite a change from the NY road runners races of 10,000+ people! Around 7:30 we finally lined up in the starting coral and by 8am we were on our way! It was almost surreal that I was actually running the marathon!

(Amanda, Me, Jenny, and Nick at the starting line!)

The course was really beautiful. For the first part we ran along the highway, which sounds terrible, but it was not busy at all and the surroundings were really pretty. We ran past a cool river and a really green foresty area. I ran the first 10 miles without music which is a little bit unusual. I usually have to have my music but the energy of the people around me and the beautiful scenery kept me entertained. Around mile 7 we left the nice paved road for a wide, rocky, gravely road called the Tank Trail. I think it's called the Tank Trail because actual army tranks train on it? Not quite sure. The tank trail was not my favorite but not the horror situation I had imagined it to be. We ran on that trail for 5 or 6 miles then turned into an actual wooded trail-as in a hiking, one lane trail. Again, I was super nervous about the trail but it actually turned out to be better than the tank trail because it was not rocky. Finalemente around mile 16 we were done with the trails and back on paved ground! I had a tiny moment around mile 17 at the bottom of a large hill but I told myself to suck it up and keep going-I still had 9 miles to go!

(me and the river-about 4 miles in)

(the tank trail)

(the hiking path)

I make my race playlists according to the mileage. Everyone had said that miles 18-24ish are the worst so I saved all my best songs for that playlist. It was seriously a lifesave and got me through those miles! Around mile 20 I started to actually feel really good and kept a pretty good pace. I still haven't loaded my garmin stats so I'm interested to see all of my splits! The course after mile 20 was nice-we ran through some parks and on paved trails through the woods. We ran around this really pretty lake. Around mile 25 my ipod died! AH! I was so glad that I went without it the first 10ish miles because that would've been so terrible if it had died around mile 16. Also, around mile 25.5 there was an enormous hill. Rude and rude. I think I literally stopped and said out loud "are you kidding me?!?" Our TNT coaches were there and got me up and over the hill. And then just like that, the finish line was right there! I ran strong to the finish and ended with a smile on my face!

(me shortly after finishing! 26.2 miles!!)

All in all I had a really great time. The course was beautiful. The weather was great. And I had fun running!! It was fun being there with TNT and a group of friends, all running for the same cause. A HUGE thank you to all who donated to LLS in support of my race!! Seriously, you are so great. And if you didn't donate and still want do-good news! You still can!!

http://pages.teamintraining.org/nyc/anchor11/emasihdas

(me at the finish backdrop with my medal!)

Now that the race is over, it's time to start thinking about my next one...Rome 2012...Here I come!!!

Spotted: Glenn Close on the UWS

Spotted on 73rd bewteen Broadway and Amsterdam, on my way to work (late of course)

A Night with Elton

So Wednesday morning as I was riding the subway to work, reading the Metro, I came across an interesting article. It talked about the Tribeca Film Festival and events that were going on to celebrate the opening of the festival. Well, one of the events of opening night was a showing of the documentary The Union followed by a performance by Sir Elton John! Even better news-he was playing right in the World Financial Center (where I work) and anyone could get tickets! When I got into the office I told my coworkers and after convincing them that I was not making it up, a group of us decided to take a field trip during work to see if we could get tickets.

We waited in line for longer than anticipated, but we ended up getting in! YAY!! Excitment was in the air the rest of the afternoon as we anxiously awaited Elton time!! They showed the movie outside by the water.Thankfully it was not raining but it was colder than cold, and I was unprepared to spend an entire evening outside so I froze my face off. The movie was interesting- it talked about Elton and Leon Russell (who I had never heard of) and their colaboration for their recent album. By the end of the movie, I was freezing and anxious for it to be over.

When EJ came on and started singing though, it was worth it! He started off with Tiny Dancer, one of my favorites. Then played an interesting rendition of Rocket Man, a few songs from his new album, I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues, and ended with Your Song, one of my favorites. He is such a great performer and is so amazing on the piano! I am convinced that I must see a full Elton concert. It was a great night and definitely worth the wait in the cold!!

This is a photo of the screen-we were kind of far away but you can see tiny live Elton in the bottom left corner...ha ha

Weekend Recap

I had a wonderful, busy weekend at home (one in which I took zero photos. oops). Thanks Deloitte for sponsoring my trip!! Let me just say that I hate flying. I hate sitting in those seats and watching the airplane on the map creep across the country slower than slow. I get too antsy to read, to bored to watch TV. So I end up just sitting there, wishing I could fall asleep, or urging the plane to go faster. To top things off, on this flight I was sitting in the row in front of the exit row which meant my seat did not recline! Ah! I survived the flight and got into UT around 11.

Saturday:

• I ran the Salt Lake 10 miler! More to come on that race...
• Went to visit my Abuelita and helped get her house ready for my Aunt Patty who is moving to UT from Colombia!
• Quick shower/conference/after race nap
• Shopping with sister! I made it out without purchasing anything. Yay me!
• Cafe Rio-definitely a must while at home
• Michael Jackson Just Dance with the fam. SO FUNNY watching the parents play

Sunday:

• Delicious breakfast cooked by my mamma-she made bacon. YUM.
• Conference time
• Delicious dinner cooked by my mamma (the weekend involved a lot of eating)
• Dessert night with some of my favorite Utah friends-It's always so fun to see them when I'm in town! I have such great friends-I am so lucky!
• Trip down to Provo to spend the night at sister's place. So strange to be back in Provo and back at BYU off-campus housing. What?!? This entire building is just full of girls? Strange.

Monday:

• Paid a visit to my old favorite spin class!! It was so great-and totally worth waking up at 5am for. Camilla posted a great summary of Todd's spin class on her blog here.
• Ran errands with Mamma
• Trip #2 to Cafe Rio. Still so delicious.
• Nap time!
• Deloitte Final Four event at Sundance (the reason I got to go to UT in the first place)-It was so funny to be on the other side of the whole recruiting thing. I saw a lot of old accounting friends, BYU professors, and even the people who interviewed me for my internship at Deloitte!
• Back to SLC to pack and rush to the airport. Made it just in time to get in line to get on the plane.
• Bumpiest, most turbulent plane ride ever. And on the landing we hit the ground so hard I thought we had crash landed (my judgement may have been impaired in my sleepy state...)

It was a really great couple days at home! I only wish that I had been able to be there longer!!

NYC Half Marathon Finisher!! (a few weeks late but better late than never right?)

I did it! I finished the NYC Half Marathon!! I actually had a really great race. The NYC half is a fun one. You run a loop and a half of central park, then run down 7th Avenue through Times Square, and then finish the run by running down the West Side Highway along the Hudson to downtown NYC.

It was the first half that I have run in 2 years so I was a little bit nervous. The longest training run that I had done previous was 8 miles so 13.1 miles felt like a big jump. Of course I bought a new running outfit. Ha. Unfortunately, in purchasing my new outfit I overestimated how warm it would be outside and ended up wearing my black jacket over it.

(Yes, this is me at 5:30 am self portraiting in Andrea's room)



After a breakfast of half a banana and half of an english muffin with peanut butter I headed out my door to catch a cab to the start line. My cab driver was very chatty and wanted to know all about the race. He also told me that I didn't sleep enough and probably wouldn't be able to finish! Thanks buddy. Ha. I got to my starting corral and had about 45 min until the race started. Don't worry that it was 37 degrees at the start line. I have never been so anxious to start running!

I love races! I love the energy of everyone around you and the excitement in the air. I was so glad that it was not raining and even though it was freezing, it was looking like it would be a nice day. It was fun to see the crowd, see what other people were wearing, and just to see all the different kinds of people that were running. The NYC Half Marathon had about 10,000 participants-people from all around the world. So fun!

The running itself was actually fun. The first couple miles are always the hardest for me. I have to give myself major pep talks for most of the first few miles and then after that I get into the groove and can keep going. My dear friend Jane was there to cheer me on right before the terrible hills at the north end of the park. Goodness, I need to practice running hills because I hate them so much. Thankfully we only ran the hills once and the rest of the course was flat/slightly downhill. Anita and Julia were cheering for me around mile 8 with fun, colorful signs. My dad, Aunt Camille and cousin Chris greeted me around mile 12-one more mile to go! Then I saw Anita and Julia again right before the finish line.

It felt so great to finish!! It was barely faster than my slowest half time but I felt really great at the end as opposed to feeing like I was going to die like I have in my other races. I had a great time running and it was so fun to have so many friendly faces along the way! I have such fantastic friends!! I got my foil blanket thing and my medal (the most important part) and met up with Anita, Julia, Jen, Russ and Eric. We all made our way over to the WFC to meet up with the fam and then headed towards the subway.

Friends all made their way to church/naptime and me and the fam went to brunch at Good. I had my traditional after race tacos and my much anticipated Diet Coke (I had given up all carbonation and candy for the 2.5 months before the race)! All-in-all it was a great race and I had a good time!! Can't wait to run another!

I'm coming home!

See you tonight SLC!