Queens Half marathon

3rd Boro in the Half Marathon Grand Prix series!

When most of us think of Queens, whats your first thought? the comedy show King of Queens? Thats mine. And sure enough, the race was in Corona Park. So, was my experience as nice as the show portrays it to be? HA NO! Waking up at 5am, the temperature was already 85 degrees with a forecast to reach the upper 90's with 80% humidity. Yowzas!

The start of the race was in Corona Park... Okay... I get it... its a park. Soccer fields, some fountains, tennis courts, a big giant globe, ya know, a pretty nice NYC park.

Enough of the nice things about this race. This race was absolutely miserable! From the moment the race started until the end, it was probably the most miserating race I have ever done! the course looped in and out of all these crazy streets and through some foreign terrain. Every road we went down, we came back up. They were painting some fountain, so all you can smell was turpentine for like a mile on the way out and for the last mile coming back to the finish. We ran through a swamp parallel to a highway, they claimed there was going to be music "all" along the course but it was only at mile 6... Oh, and did I mention it was like 90 degrees already? uhh yeah! Any PR's? no. about 10 min off the norm to be exact.

What I can say about this race is that I finished it. I felt great considering the circumstances and really took it easy not to "race" this race. I felt accomplished and so did all of my teammates. We all felt as if we finished that race in the oppressive heat and humidity, we can conquer much much more!

All in all, the day was great! Jackie Vanessa and I planned a weekend down the shore and couldnt wait to get out of the city for the weekend. A stinky car ride over the Verrazzano bridge, through "The Rock" and into Jersey to spend the weekend with Ken and Sue. We spent an awesome day on the boat lunching in front of Bon Jovi's house waiting, or should I say stalking him with Ken's binoculars to see if he was home; cruised the bay; watched some prissy rich kids party on their boats; tried to swim a little and ended the day with a nice Jelly fish sting. Good thing we had beer! Wash away the pain with a little Amstel Light please...

A nice run in the summer heat followed by another road trip. This is definitely a benefit to living in the City. You can ALWAYS escape for the weekend, whether mentally through a run or physically to basically anywhere...