Preppy Runner – Theodora Blanchfield

So Lilly for Target launched this morning, and the Internet lost its collective shit, eh? Good god. Did any of you get anything good/have any crazy stories?

In between reading too much on the Internet about all of this, I went out and did some running!

Yesterday, I ran the Pin Down Bladder Cancer Spring Fling 10K. I know bladder cancer is really serious, and upon Googling I just learned that “Pin Down Bladder Cancer” is the name of a charity that is doing research to end bladder cancer…but I still think it’s an awkward name.

That said, yesterday morning, I woke up bright and early to run up to the tram at 59th Street to head out to Roosevelt Island for the race. I needed to do a total of 9 miles, and I went back and forth over whether I should run it out there, ALSO run the 5K or just run to the tram. Running to the tram seemed the easiest and least boring, so I did that and met Heather there to tram over.

Tram: super fast, super pretty view! 10/10, would ride again.

The awesome thing about NYC Runs races is how small they are. We showed up there with so much time to kill and just spent some time basking in the sun before the race.

And then…it was time to run. Since this was technically supposed be part of my long run, I wasn’t gunning for a PR. (My 10K PR was kind of a surprise — I got it running “for fun” in the Run 10 Feed 10 10K in the fall.) Neither was my coworker Tamara, so we decided to run together. We said we’d run “easy,” which I was thinking would be right around 9:00 miles, give or take a few seconds on either side.

My Garmin flashed 8:35 at me for the first mile. Well! Okay then. This wasn’t the first time I’d run on Roosevelt Island — Ashley and I did a 4th of July race out there a few years ago — so I knew that I was in for a lot of kind of boring straightaways. While my friends and I picked this race because of its late start at 9:30, we kind of regretted it because of the heat. It was in the 70s by the time we began running, which none of us were used to yet. 

Synchronized running?

Tamara and I began the race pretty chatty, but as the sun bore down on us, we talked less and less. (Though it was usually me to break the silence when silence was broken. I just really like having a captive audience sometimes.) 

We stayed together until probably about mile 5.8, where she got a decent kick, and I tried to just keep up our same pace. For the next .2 miles, I stayed probably within 10-20 feet of her, but while I would have loved to kick it up at mile 6, I was still struggling to just maintain our current pace, and she picked it up even more. DAMNIT! 

About 50 feet from the finish line, I noticed a girl just ahead of me and decided to try to pick her off. She was on to me, and she picked it up, too. FINE, YOU WIN, TOO. I crossed about a foot behind her.

I generally all-out race races or completely run them for fun, so for a race I knew I wasn’t going to PR, it was still really satisfying to run a solid run on a hot day.

Afterwards, we obviously went to brunch.

We went to the Bar Room on the Upper East Side (pretty near the tram), where everything was delicious, and brunch cocktails were only $6. #priorities

Tamara and our other coworker Alison were heading into the office, so I convinced them to walk with me since it was so nice out. I don’t use my FitBit any more, but I have been checking my Health app on my phone lately, and I logged 26K steps yesterday. WOOT.

How was your weekend? And tell me about your last race.