• Sunshine! It’s Time to run!

    Week of February 20-26

    NEW MEMBER RUN and ORIENTATION


    Okay, you filled out our New Member Form, read all our FAQs and took a look at the run schedule. Now all you have to do is come out and meet us. This Saturday February 25th at 9am, come on out to the New Member Run and Orientation (an easy conversational, no pressure 2-3miles), then learn all about how you can become a part of the warm CHRC community and family. Find out how you can get involved with our #CHRC or #CHRCTrails teams at races, become a #CHRCNegativeSplit Banana, volunteer with us at #GOTR events, become a run leader or meet your Crown Heights running neighbors #RunningRoyalty.

    You may also join us 10:00am at Berg’n for the Orientation and coffee if you are unable to attend the run.

    Look for our amazing Royal Council Members, Elly and Kristen to be inducted as Royalty!

    BROOKLYN HALF TRAINING KICK-OFF!

    On Saturday February 25th, we will be 12 weeks away from the Airbnb Brooklyn Half Marathon. This big event starts in our neighborhood and celebrates all things Brooklyn like no other event. Don’t be left behind, let’s kick-off the spring training season with friends and run buddies. Join us for the New Member Run (see above) or our regularly scheduled Long One before you come on out and get some training tips from (Coach) Nate!

    Nate is a seasoned long-distance runner who has seen racing from both a runner’s and organizer’s perspectives. He’ll be providing 6 tips to build toward a successful race and a quick summary of resources to support each runner’s goals.

    You will have the chance to meet other members and neighbors getting ready for the race. Whether this is your first or 30th Half Marathon, we’ll support you through the coming weeks of training!  Want some inspiration? Check out our members’ recaps from the 2016 Brooklyn Half!

    OMG!!! ITS HAPPENING AGAIN!!!

    Do you love split squats? Do you love pike push ups? Do you love bear crawls BACKWARDS? Thankfully here’s your chance to experience the magic!!

    Joe is leading his Pop Up Strength and Conditioning Workout again on Wednesday February 22 @7:30 PM. We will be strengthening all of you to keep you injury free this race season. Meet at Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park at the Flatbush side bike racks.

    Get Strong! No injuries!

    CHRC TRAILS to BREAKNECK POINT TRAIL RACE

    Just a reminder if you want to be in on the planning for accommodations, food and transportation up to the race, send us an email at contact@crownheightsrunningclub.nyc to be in on the CHRC group plans. We will be planning 2 pre-race trips up by train to run parts of the course which will be either Saturday March 11/18 (let us know if you have any strong preferences) and on Sunday March 26. All members welcome to join!

    All our regular runs are ongoing as usual.

    Laugh and come play outside with us

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • This week’s Announcements

    Week of February 13-19

    VALENTINE STAMINA WORKOUT and DRIIIINKS!
    Join James for Tuesday Night Stamina workout on February 14 (7:45pm at Grand Army Plaza bike racks) and head over to Bar Sepia after for some Valentine Day Drinks! For Singles, Couples…Everyone!
    Stamina workout will end around 9pm to head over to Bar. Join in for the workout or just the Afterglow 🙂

    https://www.facebook.com/events/377565752606166/

     

    BROOKLYN HALF ENTRY. YOUR SECOND CHANCE!

    If you are nterested in running the 2017 Airbnb Brooklyn Half (but didn’t sign up within the 26minutes before it sold out!), we have some additional opportunities for you to race for the club.

    Come out to one of our group runs or socials and chat with a run leader about your interest!

    Requirements and Recommendations*:

    1. Being affiliated with CHRC under NYRR (it’s free!)
    2. Having run a club points race for CHRC in the past 12 months
    3. Wear your favorite CHRC gear to run the race in!

    We’ll do a lottery to see who gets the bibs. Don’t miss this opportunity! Contact Kristen or Kay by February 15th in order for you to be entered in the lottery. If you have any questions, please contact: external@crownheightsrunningclub.nyc

    *Your selection for the Brooklyn Half is subject to the CHRC Royal Council’s discretion.

    CHRC TRAILS to BREAKNECK POINT TRAIL RACE

    Did you miss out on our planning meeting this past weekend? Let us know if you want to be in on the planning for accommodations, food and transportation up to the race. We are a 11person strong team and we’re so excited for this opportunity to enjoy Breakneck Ridge and Beacon, NY together in April.

    What we need:

    1. Send us an email at contact@crownheightsrunningclub.nyc to be in on the CHRC group plans.
    2. Contact DAVID right away if you want in on the Airbnb House we’ve booked for April 14-16 (limit is 9 people, first come first in). If you don’t know David’s contact info, send us an email at contact@crownheightsrunningclub.nyc.

    We are also planning on 2 pre-race trips up by train to run parts of the course which will be either Saturday March 11/18 (let us know if you have any strong preferences) and on Sunday March 26.

    Let’s go CHRC Trails!

    RACE LIST

    Our Webmaster, Spencer has set up a Master Race List which includes all the major races that our Royal Members are running in 2017! Use this to see who is running with you and learn about other races you might like to run with CHRC. Please note that this spreadsheet is public.

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EboyHrPJYBnNK7AerXRWVh37rbs-mFe2Iv6Bwtugg_M/edit#gid=0

    SPEAKING OF RACES…. 

    The TCS NYC Marathon application period closes THIS FRIDAY. For folks who have earned guaranteed entry, you must register by February 17. For those who are marathon hopefuls, you have until February 17 to enter your name in to the lottery.

    Join over 50,000 runners take the streets of Manhattan every November for 26.2 glorious miles. Will you be one of them this Fall? Do you have questions or want to talk out your pros and cons of signing up? Feel free to chat with us at our events and runs this week.

    After a few snowy, slushy, icy days — the weather looks like it may brighten up this week and allow for outdoor miles and cardio. Have a wonderful week CHRC and let’s hang out soon!

     

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  • NEW in CHRC Running Calendar

    Important Announcement in regard to our Weekly, Regularly Scheduled Group Runs from our Amazing Group Run Leader (aka Safety Squire), Liz:

    Hello CHRC!

    Our group has been growing a lot which is super exciting! To that end, we will NOT be posting regularly scheduled group runs to the Facebook group going forward. Pop up runs and special run events will still be posted

    “Oh no, how will you find out when the next run is??” you ask?

    Two options:

    1. Go to our homepage! All group runs are posted here: http://crownheightsrunningclub.nyc/ and in the event of a cancellation, this will reflect that as well.
    2. Add us to your calendar app! You can use the following website to integrate us into your own Google calendar (which works on Android) and also your iCal! https://calendar.google.com/…/runningroyal…/public/basic.ics
    Our current schedule:
 Tuesday 7:45pm: Stamina
 Thursday 6:30am: Run & Some
 Friday 6:30am: Five (miles or km)
 Saturday 9:00am: Long Run
 Sunday 11:00am: Trail Run

    As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Liz —> run@crownheightsrunningclub.nyc

     

     

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  • Brooke’s Marathon Journey: The Finish

    **Before you read the final chapter of Brooke’s Journey, make sure you have read Parts 1 (The Beginning), 2 (Training) and 3 (Starting Miles)! Follow the links to view.**

     

    According to Runkeeper, which tracked me as running a total of 27.10 miles, Mile 18 was a 16:29 mile. But Mile 19 was a 9:07 mile! I felt so much better. Then, at Mile 23, I felt worse. And found myself–NYRR please take note–in a vast Porta Potty Desert. With the 40-year face of Moses, I hobbled up to a gas station only to be told by the cop outside that there was no bathroom. I wandered a long ways down a desolate street deliriously hoping a bathroom would materialize. I considered the penalties, personal and legal, of the public defecation law. I returned to the race course and asked a course marshal, “How far to the next porta-potty?” They didn’t know. I speed-walked for what felt like eons before, Hallelujah, a porta-potty with no line! Mile 23 was an 18:13 mile.     

    Jen and Miki, my lost lovelies at Mile 24: Jason’s Bedford Avenue Pop-Up Magic did not work for us. While you wandered all over Central Park, battling crowds, cops, and course marshals to secure a cheering spot, you received monosyllabic text-barks from me: “where”. In my frozen-fingered exhaustion, that was all I could manage. As was my brief pause and whimper of “Jen Fellman!” beneath the Mile 24 marker.

    I was fairly ravenous for our hug.

    Strangers seeing my woebegone look as I futilely scanned the crowd called out reassuringly, “You’ve got this, Brooke!” Thankfully I was too dehydrated to cry.
    I know you guys went through your own hellish marathon to be there and it meant so much to me. I love you.

    After that Mile 24 Heartbreak, I was so worried about finding my family at Mile 25 that I hugged the fence, furiously scanning, for the whole of that mile. I was dog-tired by that point and my mom told me later that I looked it. The final mile was powered purely by my family’s hugs. My mom’s hug, especially, regained the magical restorative powers it had held when I was a child. 

    My dad and stepmom were tracking me from Florida and called when I crossed the finish line. They were with my 92-year-old grandfather, my only living grandparent, and put him on the phone. This call was pretty special for a lot of reasons. My father was an incredible athlete until he became a quadriplegic in an accident when I was ten. He won a football scholarship to the University of Arizona, and when he injured himself, transferred to the University of Florida on a wrestling scholarship. He loved to run. My mom says I have his stride.

    “I always wanted to run a marathon,” he said.

    Because of him, I’m always grateful for my ability to run. My love of running, and so much of my undauntable life lust, come from my father. And my grandfather, who sailed around the world after he retired from law. Less than a month before, I drove up to rural Maine to visit him and do some outdoor adventuring at the height of leaf-peeping season with CHRC-mate Sunny. CHRC-mates Spencer and Zhanna were supposed to come, too, but work got in the way. So it was just Sunny and I who found my sweet, funny, fiercely independent grandfather fallen, bleeding, and deliriously rambling. Sunny helped me to call an ambulance and remembered all of the details that I was too shaken to remember. After driving all day, he waited at the hospital with me late into the night to hear the doctor’s determination. Can I again sing the praises of the unparalleled hearts of the CHRC Royals? My grandpa pulled through a minor heart attack, sepsis, and severe abrasions to tackle rehabilitation. “How long do you think I’d been down when you found me?” he asked when we spoke after the marathon. “We don’t know,” I said, “but you’d had your own hellish marathon.” 

    That night I brought my mom and stepdad to the CHRC Post-Marathon Potluck at Mostest Hostess Gideon’s apartment.

    My Texas family met my CHRC family.

    What a cat’s cradle of connections November 6th was. I loved all of the messages from folks near and far. A shout out to Katie Chisholm, who’s now running the streets of Philly, and her beautiful email. I’m so glad we met on that subway to the 2012 Joe Kleinerman 10K. Someday we’ll run a marathon together. 

    A shout out to the five beautiful boroughs of this diverse, boisterous, fiercely loving city. Thank you for showing me, two days before the election, the stand we can be for each other. That when we’re running on empty, love can propel us forward.   

       

    Written by Brooke Shaffner – one of our dear members of Running Royalty and former Marathon Water Wench. You can meet this loving athlete, brilliant writer and now powerhouse marathoner running with the group usually on Tuesday Stamina Runs, Saturday Long Ones and Sunday Trail Runs. 

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  • Brooke’s Marathon Journey: Starting miles

    The marathon was two days after Josh’s birthday and one week before the anniversary of his death. I’d packed Lara bars, sports beans, and a bag of toasted white sesame seeds, which Josh put on everything and now I do, too.

    It was a stunning day of sunny blue skies–no garbage bag poncho needed.

    As Sebastian and I ran across the freshly paved Verrazano Bridge, sunlight glinted off of the Narrows and we had a pristine view of the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty. A fireboat shot off celebratory arcs of water, a rainbow hanging in their mist. We were part of an ecstatic mass of over 50,000 runners from around the world. “This is so cool, Sebastian,” I kept saying. “This is just so cool!“   

    I usually run with headphones, but there was such wonderful people watching, music, and fanfare that I didn’t miss my music at all for the first half of the marathon. The first stop was at 4th Avenue and 8th Street, where my friends Mackenzie and Jared had come out to cheer with the two little boys they were babysitting. All four of them were holding signs. I hugged them all, including the two little boys, who were not so into hugging a sweaty stranger, but my enthusiasm could not be contained. I met Mackenzie at my first race, the freezing Joe Kleinerman 10K in January 2012, riding the subway up from Crown Heights to Central Park. We’d stayed close even after an injury prevented her from running. In the 4 years since, I’d seen her marry Jared, and now, five months pregnant, she’d stood out in the cold to cheer for me.

    Stephanie and Erwin were at Lafayette and Claremont, Erwin holding up a massive blackboard sign. Right after Josh died, a friend from London, the wonderful Brenda Lyons, connected me to Stephanie, who’d recently moved here from London. Brenda thought we’d make good cycling partners and, likely, that it would be good for me to get out on some rides. While Stephanie’s a far more serious cyclist than I am, we rode to Nyack together. I told her about Josh and she told me that her boyfriend Erwin, an even more serious cyclist and tri-athlete, had been recently diagnosed with PSC. Given the rarity of PSC, it was a startling connection. Even more impressive was Stephanie’s story of how Erwin’s diagnosis had inspired them to uproot their lives and take huge career risks to move to New York. We’ve had wonderful adventures and conversations ever since. We were so worried about not finding each other that when we did, we went in for a double hug. Stephanie and Erwin not only cheered me on, but took me out for a celebratory dinner. Stephanie and I laughed about how our hug felt like we’d crossed an ocean to find each other. All of my marathon hugs felt like that. There was–again–that heightened sense of connection that I felt in the wake of Josh’s death.

    The awesome CHRC cheering squad was at Mile 9.

    They speed-inked personalized signs when they saw Sebastian and I approaching on their marathon apps, showered us with cheers and high-fives, and captured our dorky euphoria on film.

    Jason, Josh’s best friend, whom I’d cried with when Josh was dying and stayed close to after he was gone, popped up out of nowhere on Bedford Avenue. Jason hadn’t told me he was coming and it was a miracle that he found me. Especially, he pointed out later, as I was wearing “all black with a strip of masking tape.” An artist good at making things, he said, “Next year, I’m making your name tag.” I hugged Jason, the best surprise and Where’s Waldo Winner of the marathon, and then Sebastian and I were off.

    My mom, stepdad, and sister were at Mile 12.

    My mom and stepdad flew in from South Texas, my sister from London, to spend the weekend carb-loading with me and to embarrass me with signs like, “Run Brookster the Hipster”. Sebastian and I posed holding a poster that read, “Brooke is leaving Trump behind and going NASTY!” Sebastian, in his saintliness, waited for probably 5 minutes while my mom got a stranger to take multiple mother-daughter pictures. My sister, who’d sailed through last year’s marathon, guided my parents around Brooklyn and Manhattan, to meet me at Miles 12 and 25. My stepdad has Alzheimer’s and it was a lot for him to run around the city like that. My sister took a red-eye back to London that night and had to work the next morning.

    Sebastian doing all of the pacing while I rode in the sidecar, blowing kisses at the crowds, worked out great for me until Mile 18 when a bathroom stop became immediately mandatory. Having PSC means having stomach problems. It can mean a lot more debilitating things, but I’ve been very lucky. “Keep going–good luck!” I called to Sebastian as I frantically climbed over the barricade and ran into Le Pain Quotidien. My legs were shaky, but spectators helped me over the fence. A policeman waiting in line for the bathroom let me go first. Until this point, Sebastian and I had smoothly hit or beat our goal of a 10-minute mile. Even with all of my hugging delays, Sebastian would continue on to a brilliant finish, beating his previous year’s time and his goal for  this year. I was so proud of him.

    Written by Brooke Shaffner – one of our dear members of Running Royalty and former Marathon Water Wench.

    **Read parts 1 and 2 of Brooke’s Marathon Journey HERE and HERE. Come back and read how Brooke finishes her first marathon tomorrow in the last chapter.**

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  • Brooke’s Marathon Journey: Training

    Though my marathon training didn’t officially begin until the Fourth of July, it began for me three days after Josh died, when CHRC Cardinal of Community Connection, Aliza got me out for a morning run. We ran through Prospect Park and light poured through the trees, which hadn’t yet shed their leaves. That beauty felt profound.

    Then an older man biking in front of us fell. He wasn’t badly hurt, just shaken and bruised. Aliza and I held his hands, helped him up, and waited with him for an ambulance. His name was Ted Erhardt, a dance therapist who worked with psychiatric patients. He described how movement can shift things locked inside these patients when language fails.

    When I got home, I watched this lecture he gave.

    In it, he talks about a young woman so depressed that she would reach for something and fall into a catatonic state, frozen for a half hour in that bent position. They did a group therapy session where other patients mirrored her frozen state until she felt held and could shift out of it. Then Ted asked, “What are we reaching for?” One patient said, “Home.” The young woman shifted out of her frozen state and reached for the hands of the patients beside her. 

    That story is emblematic of what training for and running the marathon with the Crown Heights Running Club meant to me. Being a writer means liking the company of your own mind. But in the weeks after Josh died, I wasn’t able to work on my novel and I wasn’t doing well alone. Mine wasn’t a flat-line grieving: I had a heightened sense of the connective threads between all human beings, an awareness which Josh created, even in his dying days, that our lives are most beautiful  in relation to one another. While I wasn’t yet comfortable with solitude, connections to friends, family, strangers, and the singular CHRC Royals felt incredibly healing.

    CHRC was a community that was exceptionally present for me in those days.

    Not just on runs; there were friendsgivings, birthdays, ice skating ventures, royal courts, holiday parties, calls, texts, brunches, and dinners. I’ve never been in another running club, so I have no means of comparison. But I’ve found the Royals to be people uniquely reflective about not just how to move forward as individuals, but how to carry the people around them forward.

    Liz and Nate, two Royals dear to my heart, have poked gentle fun at me for managing to get into a “deep conversation” with someone on every single long run. That’s true, but in my defense, it doesn’t take much to get these conversations rolling. A few questions. A curious ear. When you ask a Royal a question, they answer thoughtfully and openly. They listen with that same openness and reflection. So I’d find myself in conversations about job, relationship, and geographic changes; art, politics, religion, and love. Punctuated by lots of laughter. That’s how I worked my way up not just to 22 miles, but to publishing an essay about Josh, finishing a draft of my novel, dating again, and running toward a future as large as what I had run through: In the “caboose group”, at a comfortable conversational pace, covering miles physical and metaphysical.

    When not doing CHRC runs, I run when I’m done working on my novel, as a palate cleanser before I switch over to work-work. Sometimes I write in my head as I run. Or daydream. Or work through emotions. I slip back into my body and the world. Or into a meditative state where I’m largely unconscious of time, landscape, or the whereabouts of my mind. That happens in the latter half of races. Because I work from home and tutor students long-distance by phone, running races answers some primal need. What I like most about races is the sense of oneness–descent into a massive swish of legs and ponytails. In that zoned out state, my strides feel smoothest, but Royals have told me I’ve failed to notice them running beside me. Between them, CHRC-mates Danielle and Dave have crept up beside me on the Prospect Park jogging path and nudged into my shoulder at least 5 times. Every single time, I think, “Who is this Creeper running me off the path?”

    Given that Type A attention to details has never been my strong-suit, all of the CHRC marathon-prep sessions were helpful.

    Still, I left the final prep session feeling a little overwhelmed by all of the information. I devoted a day to ticking things off a marathon To Do list. There was a good chance it would rain and my greatest fear was being cold and wet. Royals in the know recommended wearing a garbage bag that you could throw away before the race started. In the midst of my To Do List multitasking the Friday before the marathon, I tried on a kitchen-size garbage bag over my sweatshirt to see whether it would suffice or whether I needed to buy the 33-gallon size. It was so comfortable that I forgot I was wearing it. I checked my mail and took my trash out in this garbage-bag poncho. After sorting the recycling, I discovered that the door of the recycling room, through some malfunction, had locked.

    There I was, midday in my building, locked in the recycling room, wearing a garbage bag. I didn’t have my phone with me, so I banged on the door and shouted, “Help!” until the only neighbor not at work came to my rescue. She found the super, who unlocked the door. Thankfully, I enjoyed enough solitary time in the recycling room to remember to take my garbage bag poncho off before I was rescued. Liz and I had a good laugh over this. Being a master of all the details that I am not, Liz also figured out that my best running buddy pace-wise and start-time-wise for the marathon was the brilliantly steady pacer Sebastian.   

     

    Written by Brooke Shaffner – one of our dear members of Running Royalty and former Marathon Water Wench.

    **Read the beginning of Brooke’s Marathon Journey starting with her commitment to run. Come back and read the rest of Brooke’s Marathon story this week!**

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  • Brooke’s Marathon Journey: The beginning

    The last two miles of the marathon, I listened to “When I Was Done Dying” by Dan Deacon on repeat. When I crossed the finish line, I felt tired and alive. Reborn.

    I never wanted to run a marathon.

    It seemed a nice but rather dull thing for other people to do. I liked mixing my runs with kickboxing, spinning, and boot camp classes. I was happy to plateau at half-marathon. Waiting for the Brooklyn Half to begin one year, I overheard two 20-something women talking. “Training for a half is time consuming,” one of them said. “I don’t know how people find time to train for a marathon. Maybe when all of my friends get married, have babies, and move to the suburbs, I’ll have a marathon and a dog.” I was middle-aged and a number of my friends were having babies, though they hadn’t moved to the suburbs. Yet. I also wanted a dog. ‘Maybe,’ I thought.

    Then I was charged with heading up a team of 20 CHRC volunteers at the Mile 8 water station for the November 1st 2015 NYC marathon. I’m working on a novel that deals with the intersection of the immigrant and LGBTQ communities. I’d done some related advocacy projects that connected me to organizations I wanted to devote my free time to. I lacked the same enthusiasm about volunteering at the marathon with its $255 entry fee. But I was committed to contributing to a running club I’d loved since my first winter run with Danielle. A club made up of warm, kind, funny, fascinating people, every one of whom I felt unequivocal affection for. So I believed I was doing it for CHRC.     

    I didn’t know that the man I’d hoped to spend my life with would begin dying that Day.

    After 7 years of besting cancer, it came back. The day before the 2015 marathon he’d told me he wasn’t strong enough to undergo the experimental treatment we’d stored so much hope in. When your life falls apart, it’s good to have things you’ve committed to do for others. It’s good to have simple things to do with your hands and eyes, heart and brain.

    I looked in the eyes of every marathon runner I handed water to. I smiled and called out their names. I absorbed all of that life rushing toward me.

    On November 5th, a day after his 43rd birthday, my boyfriend left for L.A., where he would start home hospice care with his family. In the two days before I could fly out to be with him, I frantically researched alternative treatments and contacted macrobiotic counselors who said they’d seen cancer patients turn around. 

    And I decided to run the 2016 marathon.

    I knew that training for 26 miles with a club of people I loved would offer me community and structure. When I could no longer deny the fact that Josh was going to die, the marathon was a path forward.

    I was diagnosed with the liver disease primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) 16 years ago. Josh and I didn’t identify with our diseases. Symptoms punctuated our days, but we’d made wonderful lives around them. We identified as writers, teachers, and Brooklyn flâneurs. We didn’t want to march in parades or attend conferences about our diseases. I didn’t want to run the marathon for cancer. Or PSC. I wanted to run it in celebration of life in all of its wonder, absurdity, and heartbreak, which Josh had loved like he’d loved me. Life exactly as it is and exactly as it isn’t. He told his hospice doctor that he loved his family, friends, work, and life so much. He just wished he had more of it.

    I scrambled to complete the 3 races and 1 volunteer activity needed to gain 9+1 entry into the 2016 marathon. My ninth race was the New Year’s Eve Midnight Run.There were no volunteer activities left, so CHRC-mate Kaitlyn transferred her extra volunteer spot to me. I volunteered the day after Josh died.

    Written by Brooke Shaffner – one of our dear members of Running Royalty and former Marathon Water Wench.

    **Come back and read the rest of Brooke’s Marathon story this week!**

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  • Holiday Hooooopla!

    Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we have officially entered the beginning of the Holiday Season and we’re about to whoop it up ourselves this Saturday December 3rd from 7pm into the starry night!!

    Let’s celebrate those wins, challenges and conquests; let’s recognize what we value both in the club and in each of you that has made 2016 such a BIG success on SO many fronts.

    Please START by RSVP-ing (YES)! You can do so via our Facebook Event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/354449858242326/  OR
    by emailing contact@crownheightsrunningclub.nyc.

    If you RSVP (YES) by the end of day December 1, 2016 – our Safety Squire will ensure there’s a special surprise for you! Are you still new to the club? Don’t be shy! Many of our newbies in the past started their Royal experience at our Holiday Party. Some might say this is the best point of entry 😀

    Second, we are having a lovely TACO BAR potluck. Please consider contributing to our communal food table by looking over this amazing spreadsheet. NO nuts please.

    AND dear friends, Nota Bene:
    socks— Shoes will be left at the door. We will be hosting a “who can wear the most festive pair of socks” competition. Extra points should they also be running socks. GAME-ON!

    — There is a friendly kitty in residence…Anti-histamines recommended if you are allergic.

    — Q train is running that weekend, and the stop is Avenue J.

    Come one, come all! The Royal Hooooopla is a coming!

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  • Picking Cider Donuts, Apple Pies and Strudels

    On a perfect Autumn day, crisp and golden, #CHRC ran the Farm!rtfscene4     rtfscene

    On October 23rd this year, #CHRCTrails made an impression with our amazing crown jerseys and fast finishes. We put #brooklyn on the map as a trails-stronghold. Thank you to Run the Farm organizers for a truly fun event and morning! We can’t wait to come back.

    Congratulations to Shivani for her age-group 1st place finish, Kay and Jess for their respective age group 2nd place finishes!


    We were also quite taken by the delicious goodies at the Farmer’s Market and afterward, we went donut-picking at a nearby mill and apple farm. Wei was there to document how we came upon the FRESHEST DONUT ever!  Run The Farm   img_3731

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  • Staten Island was My First Half Marathon

    #CHRC Member Dave shares his experience at the Staten Island Half Marathon on October 9. Dave started running this year in an effort to improve his health. His running journey is chronicled on his blog:The Lazy Dog Jog Blog. Congratulations Dave! We are so proud of you!

     

    The Staten Island Half Marathon was my first Half and my longest run to date.  I started to train in July right after breaking my toe (which had upset my routine for 6 weeks).  I had built up a lot of miles before I broke my toe and had even managed to run 8 miles one Sunday.  Starting all over again was tough, but I had a lot of support from members of CHRC and that truly helped a great deal.dave-1

    The SIHM was a challenge from the moment we got to the Ferry Terminal in downtown Manhattan.   We (15, or so, members of the CHRC) missed the first Ferry and had a bit of a challenge getting on the second.  When we got to Staten Island I was not prepared for the cold, wet and altogether dismal conditions in which we were to race.  By the time we started shuffling to our starts I was frozen.  When we finally started running I felt horrible.  My legs hurt, I was cold, I couldn’t seem to find a comfortable pace.  All in all it just plain sucked being out there.

    I was pretty much no fun to be around until mile 3 when the first hill basically warmed up my legs and gave me some motivation.  That hill saved my butt.  On the downhill following I lengthened my stride and really started to feel like I might make a race of this.  Of course, like all hubris, that thought would later bite me in the ass.

    From Mile 3 to Mile 10 I felt strong. My pace was better than I had planned and I pushed and cheered and basically was having a good ‘ole time.  Come Mile 11 I started to lag a little and Mile 12 was probably the toughest Mile I have ever run. Period.

    Mile 12 was cruelty defined.  The head wind, rain and lakes of rainwater that were waterlogging my shoes were almost too much to bear.  I considered quitting every 15 seconds.  I just kept telling myself that I had come this far.  My Mantra; “Almostdonealmostdonealmostdone.”.

    The last Half Mile I went all out.  I got into the stadium and got my medal.  My legs were shaking and my teeth were chattering and I was muddy, cold and miserable. The bag check took forever and I felt like I was one shiver away from hypothermia.  I cursed Staten Island and I bitched and moaned for, what felt like, hours.

    I ended up running at a 9:53 pace. Which is faster than I had planned.  I beat my goal time and it has motivated me to start adding Tempo Runs, Hills and Fartleks to my future training.

    After all that misery and complaining all I want to do I run another one.

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    CHRC

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