This Wednesday I ran my second 5k race this week.  This one was the Downtown Westfield 5k And Pizza Extravaganza.  Tonight's 5k had easily the largest field I've been involved with for a 5k. The previous largest one was a Turkey Trot last November, which also happened to be where I got my PR, 22:23. That one had 894 people. This one had an announced field of over 2000!! I had gone into this race hoping for a PR, but when I saw how crowded the field was, I thought it might be difficult.
  

Sure enough, it was slow going at the beginning. That's always a bit frustrating. According to my Garmin, I finished the first mile in 7:22. Not terrible, but slow enough that it would be hard to PR. Second mile had a teeny little hill, but nothing too bad. Still, I only managed to increase my pace to 7:16. Seeing that kinda surprised me, because I felt like I ran much faster in that second mile once I was mostly free from the crowd, but I guess not. Finally, I did the third mile in 7:06, which is really where I wanted to be all along.

 

So bottom line... 22:51.  One second faster than on Saturday. Well, at least I'm consistent.

 

Nothing thrilling to report, but there's been a little bit going on.  I ran my first 5k race of the year this past weekend.  It was the Teterboro NJ Airport 5k.  The race is run on the runway of the airport.  That means it's straight and flat, of course.  But the tarmac has a way of soaking up the heat, and thus it can get quite hot.  I ran it last year, and it certainly was really hot that day.  But this year was much better.  I finished in 22:53, which is 30 seconds off my best 5k time, but is more than I minute than I did last year on this course.  I'll take it. 

 

My next 5k will be tomorrow night.  I've never run a race on a weekday evening.  This one is the Westfield 5k And Pizza Extravaganza.  It should be fun.  Especially the part about the pizza...

 

Tomorrow also happens to be Maggie's birthday.  So if you see her, make sure you wish her a Happy Birthday. 

 

And the last bit of minor news is that I spent about 36 hours in Las Vegas last week.  I flew out there to attend a conference for work.  No big deal.  Unfortunately, I didn't win any money.  I did find just a little time to gamble, but I came home a few bucks poorer than I went out there.  But it wasn't too bad...

 

Maggie and I had another visit to the doctor last week, and we got another ultrasound.  This time, the image we got was a 3D composite, constructed from a bunch of 2D images.  The leve of detail is pretty amazing.  Well, this is the best picture we've seen of our daughter yet.  And it'll still be 3 months before we get to meet her in person.  But so far, the doctors still say everything is normal, and that sounds good to us. 

 

In other happenings from the past week, I made good use of my day off on the Fourth of July.  I went for the longest bike ride I ever attempted.  I usually do a version of this ride with my friend Dan, but this time I did it solo.  I drove my bike to Hoboken and parked the car on a side street there.  I then rode up to the George Washington Bridge and over into Manhattan. 

 

Typically, Dan and I work our way south down Manhattan until we can get to a subway station that will bring us back to Hoboken.  The ride usually totals between 30 and 35 miles.  But this time, I made a point of riding through all 5 boroughs of Manhattan.  The only difficulty was Staten Island, since there is no connection to another borough that a bike can use.  (The Verazzano-Narrows bridge connects to Brooklyn, but bikes aren't allowed on it).  So I took the Staten Island Ferry from Battery Park.  Then I rode thru Staten Island to the Bayonne Bridge, where I rode back into Jersey, and finally back to Hoboken.  All in all, my Garmin logged the ride at 55.76 miles, by far the farthest I have ever gone in one day.  It was quite enjoyable.  A map of my route can be seen here, although this map counts the distance I travelled on the ferry and logs my ride at 61.67 miles. 

 

I believe this was the first time I ever stepped foot on Staten Island.  to be honest, I wasn't impressed.  There wasn't much to see, at least not on the route I took.  Oh well...

Wow, it's already July.  That means 2007 is halfway over.  Time sure flies, doesn't it?

 

My first half running numbers: 685.7 miles in 4 days 7 hours 23 min 07 sec.  That works out to a 9:03 pace.  And it puts me ahead of last year's pace (1202 total miles) and ahead of this year's goal (1350 miles).  All this despite having a very down month in June.  Not bad, I'll take it.  I've also logged 123.0 miles on my bike...

 

In other news, Maggie and I have started to get our guest room ready for the baby.  First step was to remove the bed that was there.  Now we can paint and buy a crib and decorate...  There's still a lot to do...