Madonna at Yankee Stadium!

If I had sat down to write this post an hour or two ago, I would have sort of tried to be cheery, but you probably would have seen right through it.

After late nights and early mornings at work this week and the Madonna concert last night, I was EXHAUSTED. I had 9 miles on my plan today, but I made the executive decision earlier in the week to save it for tonight. I knew I’d be exhausted after Madonna, and if Tina was only here for a short period of time, I didn’t want to spend an hour and a half of that running while she was hanging at my apartment without me.

After leaving work, oh, four hours later than I expected to today, I was freaking exhausted and decided to switch today’s run with tomorrow’s 3-miler. I dragged myself down to the treadmill in my little apartment gym and busted out three miles catching up with my man Anderson Cooper. About halfway through, I got a surge in energy. I even did some weights after. (Who the hell am I and what have I done with Theodora?)

(By the way, while writing this post, I read this awesome post from Sweaty Emily about the ugly side of ultra running. I may not be training for an ultra now, or ever, but I can definitely appreciate the sentiment of this post.)

More fun than running…

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I went to the Madonna concert last night at Yankee Stadium!

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But first, Tina and I met some of my friends at The Long Room, near Lacey’s office. (Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.)

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We all split some sliders and hummus (pro tip: don’t get the hummus there, it was really thick and weird) and I had some wine.

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And then it was up to Yankee Stadium to see Madonna! This is actually the fourth time I’ve seen her in concert, but the best venue yet.

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$12 beers with calorie counts? Not cool. I generally don’t think providing calorie counts is a bad thing…except when I want to indulge and really don’t need to know that my beer is 250 calories, because I’m still going to get it anyway.

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Our tans can only go downhill from here.

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Shockingly, two orders of sliders and an order of hummus between four girls didn’t do much for my hunger. But the last of Lacey’s cheese fries helped a bit.

Sometimes people ask me how I still maintain a pretty active social life (which, as you can see involves eating crap sometimes) and maintain my weight. I really don’t let one indulgent meal–or even a day of indulging–bother me, or turn into a pattern. I just try to get back to my normal as quickly as I can. Sure, I had beer and cheese fries last night, but I just got back to normal eating today.

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We were in 300-level seats, but we still had a decent view.

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And we were able to see Madge on the jumbotron, obviously.

Our tickets said 8:00, but she didn’t go on until after 10. (Setlist.) The first set included a lot of her new stuff, and was fairly dark. The Gang Bang song had gunshot sound effects and blood spattering on the screen and was pretty damn graphic. Like Everyone Who Ever Went to a Madonna Concert, I wished she played more old stuff, but she did play Papa Don’t Preach, Express Yourself, Vogue, (a weird version of) Like a Virgin, and Like a Prayer, and I sung my heart to those songs. There’s a hilarious review on Racked that’s pretty spot-on.

I don’t want to say this was a disappointment–because it was still fun–but I’ve enjoyed some of her other concerts more, like the Sticky & Sweet Tour in 2009.

Favorite concert ever? (Mine was seeing Something Corporate at the 9:30 Club in D.C. when I was in college, perhaps followed by Ben Kweller there.)

Favorite Madonna song?

First Marathon Story: Shannon

Literally, all I have to say to you right now is that I am having a crazy week at work, I had a hard 8-mile tempo run yesterday and I’m going to see Madonna tonight (!!!), soooo, how about another first-time marathoner story? Yeah? Great.

This one comes from Shannon, a college student training for the New York Marathon. I can’t imagine having trained for a marathon during college (um, partially because it would have taken away from my beloved beer and pizza time), so mad props to her!



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Name
Shannon

Blog
Mon Amour (http://mon-amour-xoxo.blogspot.com/)

Years running
One

Marathon training for
ING NYC Marathon

Why I decided to run a marathon
I was a competitive swimmer up until my freshman year of college when injury forced me to quit. I felt like I lost a part of me and tried everything I could think of to feel like myself again. I decided to sign up for a half marathon but hardly trained for it. I had always been intrigued by the marathon but had never given it much thought until my cousin mentioned he could get me guaranteed entry in the NYC Marathon. New York is one of my favorite places so being able to run my first marathon there had me convinced almost instantly.

How is marathon training measuring up to your expectations? What’s better or worse than you
expected?
I was a little worried about the training since I had hardly any motivation to train for a half marathon. Luckily training has been going better than I could have imagined. The more I run the more I crave running. I finally feel like I am training with a purpose again, and that feeling alone is enough to make me love training for this beast. So far my hunger is much better than I expected. I was anticipating being constantly hungry and eating everything in sight but luckily that is hardly the case. I haven’t made it to the 16-20 mile training runs yet so we’ll see how my hunger levels are then. I wouldn’t necessarily say anything is worse than I expected, although training for a marathon as a college student is definitely proving to be a challenge.

Number of days running per week
Four. If I run more than four days a week my legs get cranky. I am also doing a fair amount of cross training (swimming, biking, yoga, strength training) to prevent burnout and injury.

What are you most excited about for the race?
I am most excited for literally everything about running a marathon. I want to take in the whole experience and enjoy every moment of it. I think I am especially excited about running a once in a lifetime race and feeling the pride of crossing the finish line though.

What are you most terrified of?
Probably of getting injured. I was frequently injured as a swimmer and already have had some minor IT band issues. I would hate to make it all this way and then be set back by an injury.

Do you think you’ll ever run another marathon?
Absolutely. I am from Pennsylvania and go to school in Maryland so I already want to run the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh Marathons.

Number of black toenails so far
None! And I am hoping to keep it that way!
None! I did almost lose a toenail after my first half marathon, though, so I am trying to be careful to keep them all intact.

Leave Shannon some love, tips or tell me about your first marathon or long-distance race.