Guys, do you Timehop? I’ve gone on and off the Timehop sauce, but over the past few months, Ashley has texted me a number of gems, and, well, I had to sign back up. (If you’re not familiar with Timehop, it’s an app that connects to your social media accounts and sends you what you were doing on that day x years ago.)

Yesterday, it sent me notifications about friends who’d posted on my wall asking how my big move went.

For those of you who don’t know, I went to school at American University in D.C. and stayed there for three years after I graduated. I’d never been crazy about D.C., had always compared it to NYC, and it had always fallen short. My last six months or so in D.C., I was really unhappy and decided it was time to head off to NYC. 

I packed up my stuff, sobbed hysterically for a good hour from memories and fear of leaving the familiar, and drove up to NJ with my mom and my sweet little Bailey.

Why yes, he does have a car harness, thank you for asking.

I had no idea what would await me but I was hopeful for the future.

There have been some amazing highs and some devastating lows over the past seven years in NYC, but the highs far outnumber the lows.

I’ve built a life I’m proud of and found some amazing people to include in it along the way. 

This city will chew you up and spit you out if you let it, but I won’t let it.

You know those runs you have where everything FINALLY feels like it’s coming together? All the miles you’ve put on your legs thank you with a great run? I had that yesterday. 

My training has been much better for the Brooklyn Half than it was for the D.C. Half, though that doesn’t take much, quite honestly.

Jess gave me an aggressive training plan, but I gave her an aggressive goal: 1:47. (My current PR is 1:50.) To be perfectly honest, that goal was only based on wanting to beat my boss, who’d just beat my PR. If I can do that, GREAT. If not, I’m just happy to PR. (Although she went from a 1:54 to a 1:47, so anything’s possible?)

The workouts Jess has been giving me are based on that time goal — my tempos have all been at 8:00 – 8:10 paces. It makes me nervous to think about trying to hold that pace for an hour and forty-something minutes, but I’m just trying to tell myself I’m etching that pace into my muscles so that they’ll know it well on race day.

YESTERDAY, though, my schedule had a tempo with two miles warm-up, 3 miles 7:45 – 8:00 (as in under race pace), 2 miles cool-down. Yikes. I hemmed and hawed and was nervous and finally just trotted out there. My Garmin takes forever to get satellites, so I usually start and let it pick up during my first mile and reset it after that. It requires more mental math: ok, so if I’m doing a total of 7, out-and-back, I need to turn around at 2.5 (which is really 3.5) and I can cool down at mile 4?

I took off and my easy warm-up miles were around an 8:58. Not “fast” but I was encouraged to see that my easy pace had dropped — it used to be more like 9:15-9:20. I tried to hold back a little to save all my energy for the tempo. Two miles in, I hit it. My phone hadn’t charged overnight so I was music-less for the first time in a while, but I don’t usually race with music so I knew it was good practice. 7:55, 8:00, 7:55. BAM. My cool-down felt like I was running through quicksand, but I chugged my way home and resisted all urges to collapse on my couch all day. I feel good about my race next week.

Have you had a game-changing run like this?