I was contacted this week by the New York Road Runners. I have no idea how they got my work email address, but they did. They sent a sponsorship query. Maybe my company would like to affiliate its brands with the marathon?
The letter was much more personal than most of the sponsorship requests I get. It wished me good luck at the race next week and referenced a relationship with my boss' boss' boss. I followed protocol for processing through another department, but couldn't resist responding as well myself.
Almost immediately, I received another letter from the New York Road Runners, this time copying a larger group. I'm apparently "just the type of runner" they are hoping to entice to participate in the marathon, someone who goes through significant lifestyle changes in preparation for the big race.
They went on to explain the meaning behind their slogan, "I'm in! We're in!" The "I'm in!" part is about what the runner does after they are accepted and the "We're in!" part refers to how your family supports you as you prepare.
I wanted to write back and say how ironic it was that they were contacting me now because, actually, I did not "get in" through them. And that slogan absolutely tortured me for weeks after I found out, and before I knew I'd have a spot through my angel. "I'm in!" sounded pretty arrogant when most of the people I knew who had applied had not actually gotten in. I'm guessing they didn't run that copy through any focus groups.
The NYRR Business Development team wanted to get on the phone with me right away to talk. They read my blog and thought it was funny. I let them know it's a crazy time for me at work, with the pep rally coming up, not to mention, the marathon; and I told them we could talk later in the month.
I received one more email after that, from the EVP, with a little bit of a sales pitch, appreciation for my enthusiasm, and affirmation that they'd be happy to wait to talk to me until after things have calmed down. I'm looking forward to that.
Life is really weird. You can go from being on the outside, to being on the inside, over night - all because you have a little bit of budget and some booze at your disposal. Apparently, sneakers aren't enough.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
8: Hustle & Flow
12 months of hustle, and now, it's just flow. I'm flowing through the days leading up to the marathon, trying to rest, trying not to freak out. I'm also trying not to get sick or fall down a flight of stairs. If you knew how klutzy I am you'd understand that's a real project!
Today a friend asked me if I'm still preparing and I sort of burst back, "Oh no! Not doing a thing! Haven't run since Saturday!" His eyes bugged out. Am I supposed to be running now? Probably. I mean, not long runs but short little ones or something. I've stopped looking at my schedule. I've even stopped entering data into my Training Peaks online training program. Really, none of it matters now. Right? All that crap was just stuff I used to get me to today. And I'm here.
I'm really good at hustle but, truth be told, I prefer flow. Flow is when my creative juices bubble up and I make huge leaps of progress in self-awareness and actualization. I let myself have radical plans. And that's a very good thing.
For example, running was the progeny of flow... I'd just quit a terribly intense job this time last year and I was going home after work to an empty apartment, bored to death. I had no idea what to do with my time. Running stopped the gap.
Right now in this period of flow I'm planning a party, planning my life, and feeling excited about all the things I still have left to experience. I have some ideas about what I'll hustle for next, but I'm not committing to anything yet. I don't need to. Still another week to go with flow... and I'm not done dreaming yet.
Today a friend asked me if I'm still preparing and I sort of burst back, "Oh no! Not doing a thing! Haven't run since Saturday!" His eyes bugged out. Am I supposed to be running now? Probably. I mean, not long runs but short little ones or something. I've stopped looking at my schedule. I've even stopped entering data into my Training Peaks online training program. Really, none of it matters now. Right? All that crap was just stuff I used to get me to today. And I'm here.
I'm really good at hustle but, truth be told, I prefer flow. Flow is when my creative juices bubble up and I make huge leaps of progress in self-awareness and actualization. I let myself have radical plans. And that's a very good thing.
For example, running was the progeny of flow... I'd just quit a terribly intense job this time last year and I was going home after work to an empty apartment, bored to death. I had no idea what to do with my time. Running stopped the gap.
Right now in this period of flow I'm planning a party, planning my life, and feeling excited about all the things I still have left to experience. I have some ideas about what I'll hustle for next, but I'm not committing to anything yet. I don't need to. Still another week to go with flow... and I'm not done dreaming yet.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
9: Cheers!
Only nine days to go!!! I need to start getting more sleep. And I need to stop drinking! I'm not doing any more social drinking until the marathon is over; but I am still drinking at work.
I look after a spirits brand and one of my job responsibilities is to evaluate beverage alcohol samples from the lab. Just this week, I had a 10AM meeting in which I needed to taste twenty new liquid prototypes! For serious. Thank goodness I've got that behind me and now I can get on to a week of clean living!
I'm still not quite clear on why everyone says you have to stop drinking so far ahead of a race, though. I've been asking people for their theories. The most likely ones I've heard are that drinking dehydrates you, and that over consumption can lead to tomfoolery and bodily injury. If anyone knows of any other reasons, I'd be curious to hear.
For now, I'm dry... but there's a bottle of bubbly already chilling in my fridge for one week from Sunday! Even if I don't make it to the finish line - OK maybe especially if I don't make it to the finish line - I'm popping that puppy open the minute I get back to my apartment! Even before the ice bath.
I look after a spirits brand and one of my job responsibilities is to evaluate beverage alcohol samples from the lab. Just this week, I had a 10AM meeting in which I needed to taste twenty new liquid prototypes! For serious. Thank goodness I've got that behind me and now I can get on to a week of clean living!
I'm still not quite clear on why everyone says you have to stop drinking so far ahead of a race, though. I've been asking people for their theories. The most likely ones I've heard are that drinking dehydrates you, and that over consumption can lead to tomfoolery and bodily injury. If anyone knows of any other reasons, I'd be curious to hear.
For now, I'm dry... but there's a bottle of bubbly already chilling in my fridge for one week from Sunday! Even if I don't make it to the finish line - OK maybe especially if I don't make it to the finish line - I'm popping that puppy open the minute I get back to my apartment! Even before the ice bath.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
10: Write What You Know
The end is near; and I don't mean the running. I mean the blog.
After tonight I'll have just 9 more entries to write. I feel like I have a million topics I still want to putter around on. How did the time go so quickly?
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that for every blog entry I've posted, I've written two. Some days more. Sometimes it's hard to commit to one topic. Others I pick a topic that's so big it could go on forever, and I have to shut it down and switch back to something simple, like bananas... or socks. If I'm writing about socks, you can be sure that's just a front for something much longer and deeper that I couldn't put a bow on before bedtime.
There are a few things I want to say about what it's been like to have written a blog every single day for a year. First and foremost, the discipline of doing anything for a year, whether you want to or not, without a break, has taught me how (mechanically) to cast off fear. Just do whatever you're anxious about over and over again. Eventually, you'll forget why you were afraid, and you'll just start showing up for business, ready to play. You can't work on your skills until that fear is pushed to the side.
Next, I've had a bit of a coming of age with this blog, creatively. I've finally stopped making shit up and trying to sound important when I write. Finally, finally, finally I'm writing what I know! Every arts professor I've ever had has tried to drum this message into me. I didn't listen because I felt I didn't know anything. If I wrote what I knew it would have been a page with the sentence, "I have nothing to say," over and over on it. Quite literally.
So, instead of writing what I knew, I wrote what I thought sounded deep and literary. I made sure the words were beautifully organized, as a foil for the hollowness inside. In the studio arts, I focused on the quality of the components, their originality, the lines... I picked a meaningful theme with known emotions I could attach to. Not my emotions! Just some obvious universal emotions.
In writing I've always picked topics I found interesting but had no experience with. Protagonists dying of cancer, one with dissociative personality disorder, the woman painted in Degas' "Woman with Chrysanthemums," a few TV pilots with nobody remotely like me in the ensemble.
In the studio arts, I didn't just create around themes I didn't understand, I liked to employ shock value. For my sculpture class, I welded like a mad woman, poured aluminum, and hung mobiles from campus trees. It was fun. As my final project I picked a theme I thought I could project myself into - a woman's conflict between working and staying home to care for her children. I appropriated objects. There was a full size oven that I'd found at a junk yard and filled (literally filled) with cookies. On the range (which was lit) there was a seamstress' bust with a headless plastic baby stuck on top. Horrifying! I got an A+. Honestly, I should have gotten an F. What was I talking about? This was not my dilemma yet... It's still not my dilemma, even. That wasn't a topic for me to have tackled at 21.
My superficiality came to a head in college in my photography class. I finally had a professor who really called me out in an arresting way. I was a fine photographer by then; I'd started in high school, in the dark room, the whole thing. I was paid to do portraits. I shot a few Bat Mitzvahs. So, by college, I had to really deliver on content. For my final project senior year, like with sculpture, I was into being shocking. I created a series I called "Back Alley Abortion." Get ready. This is bad! I bought dead fish from the grocery store, butchered them with scalpels, lay the bloody mess on the white snow in the parking lot behind my apartment building, with a brick wall in the background, and then photographed the whole thing in black and white. It was so beautiful to look at! Haunting. The composition was perfect! I did my presentation Cooper Union style, with everyone in the class there for the critique; and I got reamed. What the fuck was I talking about! The teacher seemed very mad... Why hadn't I picked a subject I knew anything about? I remember how scared the other kids in my class looked for me when I was receiving my critique. They knew I was good. Was the teacher being unfair?
The teacher wasn't being unfair. She was expecting more of me. She wanted me to use my voice. I could be artful and clever, even shocking. But all my stories were flat because ultimately, I STILL HAD NOTHING TO SAY. Or, I thought, what I really had to say would be completely uninteresting to other people.
In writing for a year now about uninteresting things like running, and about what's happened to me because of running, I've finally tapped into what it means to write what you know. It surprises me daily that I haven't created imaginary characters to bulk up my story, or done anything to enhance the reader's experience, and I'm still writing. This exercise has been all about being genuine, and practicing sharing that in words.
There is a great responsibility in offering up wordsmithery for public viewing. You can't just say shit because the phrases sound nice together. You have to say things that are true in some way around a particular theme that you are qualified to speak about. Not to say you can't make up radical characters that are nothing like you; but they need to be characters you can see and feel yourself in; they must be genuinely you as you write. Writing fiction isn't about telling how it was, it's about becoming your subjects and bleeding their blood onto the keyboard.
That's the discipline of the writer. That's what defines you as a writer, if you are one - that you think about being genuine, and make a conscious effort to literally be your characters if you're writing fiction, so that you are always writing what you know. And you need to keep seeking out more to know... so that you have the license to keep writing new things. That is what makes being a writer so fun! The curious mindset and life of exploring that goes with it. Definitely not the carpal tunnel.
After tonight I'll have just 9 more entries to write. I feel like I have a million topics I still want to putter around on. How did the time go so quickly?
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that for every blog entry I've posted, I've written two. Some days more. Sometimes it's hard to commit to one topic. Others I pick a topic that's so big it could go on forever, and I have to shut it down and switch back to something simple, like bananas... or socks. If I'm writing about socks, you can be sure that's just a front for something much longer and deeper that I couldn't put a bow on before bedtime.
There are a few things I want to say about what it's been like to have written a blog every single day for a year. First and foremost, the discipline of doing anything for a year, whether you want to or not, without a break, has taught me how (mechanically) to cast off fear. Just do whatever you're anxious about over and over again. Eventually, you'll forget why you were afraid, and you'll just start showing up for business, ready to play. You can't work on your skills until that fear is pushed to the side.
Next, I've had a bit of a coming of age with this blog, creatively. I've finally stopped making shit up and trying to sound important when I write. Finally, finally, finally I'm writing what I know! Every arts professor I've ever had has tried to drum this message into me. I didn't listen because I felt I didn't know anything. If I wrote what I knew it would have been a page with the sentence, "I have nothing to say," over and over on it. Quite literally.
So, instead of writing what I knew, I wrote what I thought sounded deep and literary. I made sure the words were beautifully organized, as a foil for the hollowness inside. In the studio arts, I focused on the quality of the components, their originality, the lines... I picked a meaningful theme with known emotions I could attach to. Not my emotions! Just some obvious universal emotions.
In writing I've always picked topics I found interesting but had no experience with. Protagonists dying of cancer, one with dissociative personality disorder, the woman painted in Degas' "Woman with Chrysanthemums," a few TV pilots with nobody remotely like me in the ensemble.
In the studio arts, I didn't just create around themes I didn't understand, I liked to employ shock value. For my sculpture class, I welded like a mad woman, poured aluminum, and hung mobiles from campus trees. It was fun. As my final project I picked a theme I thought I could project myself into - a woman's conflict between working and staying home to care for her children. I appropriated objects. There was a full size oven that I'd found at a junk yard and filled (literally filled) with cookies. On the range (which was lit) there was a seamstress' bust with a headless plastic baby stuck on top. Horrifying! I got an A+. Honestly, I should have gotten an F. What was I talking about? This was not my dilemma yet... It's still not my dilemma, even. That wasn't a topic for me to have tackled at 21.
My superficiality came to a head in college in my photography class. I finally had a professor who really called me out in an arresting way. I was a fine photographer by then; I'd started in high school, in the dark room, the whole thing. I was paid to do portraits. I shot a few Bat Mitzvahs. So, by college, I had to really deliver on content. For my final project senior year, like with sculpture, I was into being shocking. I created a series I called "Back Alley Abortion." Get ready. This is bad! I bought dead fish from the grocery store, butchered them with scalpels, lay the bloody mess on the white snow in the parking lot behind my apartment building, with a brick wall in the background, and then photographed the whole thing in black and white. It was so beautiful to look at! Haunting. The composition was perfect! I did my presentation Cooper Union style, with everyone in the class there for the critique; and I got reamed. What the fuck was I talking about! The teacher seemed very mad... Why hadn't I picked a subject I knew anything about? I remember how scared the other kids in my class looked for me when I was receiving my critique. They knew I was good. Was the teacher being unfair?
The teacher wasn't being unfair. She was expecting more of me. She wanted me to use my voice. I could be artful and clever, even shocking. But all my stories were flat because ultimately, I STILL HAD NOTHING TO SAY. Or, I thought, what I really had to say would be completely uninteresting to other people.
In writing for a year now about uninteresting things like running, and about what's happened to me because of running, I've finally tapped into what it means to write what you know. It surprises me daily that I haven't created imaginary characters to bulk up my story, or done anything to enhance the reader's experience, and I'm still writing. This exercise has been all about being genuine, and practicing sharing that in words.
There is a great responsibility in offering up wordsmithery for public viewing. You can't just say shit because the phrases sound nice together. You have to say things that are true in some way around a particular theme that you are qualified to speak about. Not to say you can't make up radical characters that are nothing like you; but they need to be characters you can see and feel yourself in; they must be genuinely you as you write. Writing fiction isn't about telling how it was, it's about becoming your subjects and bleeding their blood onto the keyboard.
That's the discipline of the writer. That's what defines you as a writer, if you are one - that you think about being genuine, and make a conscious effort to literally be your characters if you're writing fiction, so that you are always writing what you know. And you need to keep seeking out more to know... so that you have the license to keep writing new things. That is what makes being a writer so fun! The curious mindset and life of exploring that goes with it. Definitely not the carpal tunnel.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
11: Last Minute Advice
Everybody has a ton of last minute advice for me. A blind man told me to run on the lower level of the Verrazano. He said the sound of the feet overhead would be something I'd never forget. Tonight I heard, whatever you do, do not run on the lower level of the Verrazano because everyone on the upper level whips it out and pees over the edge, and the people on the lower level get bombed with urine.
I just heard a story about a guy who got pushed, not even a mile into the race, and fell and knocked all his teeth out on the metal bridge floor. The moral of the story was, from this person's perspective, "You're a New Yorker. Push ahead of people. Don't let them push you." OK... I can't quite imagine myself pushing another runner out of the way! Not my style!
Today I heard about how I should starve myself, "Don't eat ANYTHING the week before the marathon. Like, a cracker is fine." This is up until a few days before the race. This person said every pound is 5 minutes faster. Dropping 10 lbs is recommended. Oh boy... I've heard this before and had a fantasy that I'd be wafer thin by the time the marathon happened but that hasn't happened. Could I really drop 5 lbs before next Wednesday? Maybe... I'm going to try!
I've had a few hydration lectures. And in fact, though it's all still 11 days away, I've been over-hydrating already, drinking Gatorade when I wake up, water all day long. I'm told the week before the marathon I should heavy-up and drink until I feel like I'm going to explode. Water and Gatorade. Coconut water. Excel something or other, a brand I don't know... I can't keep up!
And then there's the doozie that's really got me stumped. A 6-time marathoner told me tonight that I should plan to take about 10 Tylenol or Advil during the race. I thought this person was kidding! 10? Everything I've read says to abstain from any pain killers for 24 hours before the race, and 6 hours after, to protect your liver and kidneys. But this guy was insistent. 10. Take 2 an hour before you run, and then keep popping them. They prevent inflammation (and pain, of course) and this helps you run faster, better, longer. He said your body's burning everything up so fast while you run that there aren't any negative effects. Hmm...
I guess like with everything, you want take people's advice with a grain of (Hymalayan) salt. New information can be alluring, though. Is this the tidbit I need to make my run the best it can be? Is this what I've been missing all along, what would push me over the edge and make me faster? I suppose I will keep growing and learning right to the very moment the gun goes off... and even on race day. Hopefully, whatever I learn on Nov 7, 2010, I can put to good use as I train for marathon 2011.
I just heard a story about a guy who got pushed, not even a mile into the race, and fell and knocked all his teeth out on the metal bridge floor. The moral of the story was, from this person's perspective, "You're a New Yorker. Push ahead of people. Don't let them push you." OK... I can't quite imagine myself pushing another runner out of the way! Not my style!
Today I heard about how I should starve myself, "Don't eat ANYTHING the week before the marathon. Like, a cracker is fine." This is up until a few days before the race. This person said every pound is 5 minutes faster. Dropping 10 lbs is recommended. Oh boy... I've heard this before and had a fantasy that I'd be wafer thin by the time the marathon happened but that hasn't happened. Could I really drop 5 lbs before next Wednesday? Maybe... I'm going to try!
I've had a few hydration lectures. And in fact, though it's all still 11 days away, I've been over-hydrating already, drinking Gatorade when I wake up, water all day long. I'm told the week before the marathon I should heavy-up and drink until I feel like I'm going to explode. Water and Gatorade. Coconut water. Excel something or other, a brand I don't know... I can't keep up!
And then there's the doozie that's really got me stumped. A 6-time marathoner told me tonight that I should plan to take about 10 Tylenol or Advil during the race. I thought this person was kidding! 10? Everything I've read says to abstain from any pain killers for 24 hours before the race, and 6 hours after, to protect your liver and kidneys. But this guy was insistent. 10. Take 2 an hour before you run, and then keep popping them. They prevent inflammation (and pain, of course) and this helps you run faster, better, longer. He said your body's burning everything up so fast while you run that there aren't any negative effects. Hmm...
I guess like with everything, you want take people's advice with a grain of (Hymalayan) salt. New information can be alluring, though. Is this the tidbit I need to make my run the best it can be? Is this what I've been missing all along, what would push me over the edge and make me faster? I suppose I will keep growing and learning right to the very moment the gun goes off... and even on race day. Hopefully, whatever I learn on Nov 7, 2010, I can put to good use as I train for marathon 2011.
Monday, October 25, 2010
12: Running With The Green Wave
Less than two weeks to go... My mind's starting to go between "numb" and "overdrive." I'm telling myself it's just 7 miserable hours. I can try my best for 7 hours. Women are in labor for much longer than that, cracking open, and they survive.
Big milestone today. I got my "wave" which determines where you go to start the race. I'm in the Green Wave. And I start at 10:40AM. That doesn't mean I actually start at 10:40. It means they intend for my group to start at 10:40, which means I could start any time after that - 10:40 is the last wave. This makes it hard to tell people when I'll be where along the route. I will have to try to map out a plan though.
This is my fantasy of how it's going to go. I would like to work on this and revise it a little before Nov 7th, though, because it's pretty scary:
Miles 1-2: running a little too fast, excited, no need to walk
Mile 3: empowered, no stopping, feeling strong, wishing the sun weren't so strong
Miles 4-8: running with a one minute walk break between every mile, ugh feeling a little bit spent, foot hurting
Miles 9-12: steady, in a groove, not so bad... endorphins are good, I can't feel my foot, this is the zone! yes!
Miles 13-16: hard... how the fuck am I going to finish this!? starting to see people... wanting to look good on 1st Ave...
Miles 17-21: oh holy hell i can't do this I'm walking half the time and all these people are looking at me, drinking, stopping to pee, stretching, considering stopping, the crowds going home, the street a dirty mess with cups and gels and trash, i am going to come in last, omg I can't believe some people are still standing here waiting for me - meanwhile 50% of the runners are home already in their ice baths and I'm the slow schmuck who didn't train enough, or just "can't" and... wait a minute! remember: this is a privilege! 5.2 more to go...
Miles 22-26.2: someone else in my body dragging my bloody stumps downtown and around the bend to the finish, so hard my brain can't compute, thoughts become deluded, i am flying on a magic carpet, there isn't anyone behind me, I am actually the last person to finish the marathon this year only I'm so late they have shut down the finish line and my race doesn't even count.
I've got to work on this because if I've learned one thing in my life it is, be careful what you envision because it always - and I mean ALWAYS - comes true.
Big milestone today. I got my "wave" which determines where you go to start the race. I'm in the Green Wave. And I start at 10:40AM. That doesn't mean I actually start at 10:40. It means they intend for my group to start at 10:40, which means I could start any time after that - 10:40 is the last wave. This makes it hard to tell people when I'll be where along the route. I will have to try to map out a plan though.
This is my fantasy of how it's going to go. I would like to work on this and revise it a little before Nov 7th, though, because it's pretty scary:
Miles 1-2: running a little too fast, excited, no need to walk
Mile 3: empowered, no stopping, feeling strong, wishing the sun weren't so strong
Miles 4-8: running with a one minute walk break between every mile, ugh feeling a little bit spent, foot hurting
Miles 9-12: steady, in a groove, not so bad... endorphins are good, I can't feel my foot, this is the zone! yes!
Miles 13-16: hard... how the fuck am I going to finish this!? starting to see people... wanting to look good on 1st Ave...
Miles 17-21: oh holy hell i can't do this I'm walking half the time and all these people are looking at me, drinking, stopping to pee, stretching, considering stopping, the crowds going home, the street a dirty mess with cups and gels and trash, i am going to come in last, omg I can't believe some people are still standing here waiting for me - meanwhile 50% of the runners are home already in their ice baths and I'm the slow schmuck who didn't train enough, or just "can't" and... wait a minute! remember: this is a privilege! 5.2 more to go...
Miles 22-26.2: someone else in my body dragging my bloody stumps downtown and around the bend to the finish, so hard my brain can't compute, thoughts become deluded, i am flying on a magic carpet, there isn't anyone behind me, I am actually the last person to finish the marathon this year only I'm so late they have shut down the finish line and my race doesn't even count.
I've got to work on this because if I've learned one thing in my life it is, be careful what you envision because it always - and I mean ALWAYS - comes true.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
13: Gonna Have a Pep Rally!
I need a pep rally right about now! So I've organized one with three others who are also running the marathon. We don't just share that in common - we're all also supporting the same charity, Blue Card.
Please come out and let me know you think I can do it!!! Offer a word of support, enjoy amazing drink specials ($3 bottled beer, $5 martinis), see old friends, meet new friends, get inspired to start being active yourself, maybe win some cashola through a 50/50 raffle... It's going to be a blast! Pass this invite on, too. More the merrier!
If you want to see me along the running route at the marathon itself, I'll have maps at the pep rally with meeting points and approximate times when and where I think you'll be able to catch me.
I am running to raise money for an amazing cause so I'll ask you to consider making a $10-20 donation at the door (unless you've already supported me online - just let me know at the door). Here is a link to my donation page:
http://www.crowdrise.com/michellesandersforbluecard/fundraiser/HatesToRun
My charity, Blue Card, is a very interesting one you may not have heard about before. It gives material support to impoverished survivors of the Holocaust - many of whom live in our country and are without family or other resources. Can you imagine surviving a concentration camp as a child, but now having to choose between medication and food in your old age?
If you make a donation to the Blue Card, your money won't be spent on petri dishes and direct mailings, it will go directly to survivors, giving them immediate solutions to problems most of us are privileged not to experience. You can read about Blue Card in this NYT article that ran in last week's Sports section: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/sports/22marathon.html?_r=4&ref=sports
I also have a special program going for kids 12 and under who want to come out and support me at the race itself! It's my "5 for $5" offer! All your child has to do is give me a high-5 along the way while I'm running and I'll donate $5 to the Blue Card in his or her name. (Don't worry, I'll make it easy! Just tell me where to look for you guys!)
So, where's the party? Address above, but here's a link if you like pictures and details. http://crotonnyc.com/
I'll be at The Croton Reservoir Tavern (aka Croton Tavern, Croton Reservoir, The Brick Lounge) starting at 5PM and there will be Happy Hour specials running until 9PM, so come on down! If you're a runner, or don't want to drink, there will be a bounty of bananas and delicious non-alcoholic drink options for you (and for me!).
Croton Tavern is conveniently located in Midtown near all mass transit, just blocks from Port Authority, Grand Central, Penn Station, Times Square and Bryant Park. Take the shuttle bus from the Javits Center to Times Square if you are going to the Marathon Expo first.
I hope to see you on Thursday, November 4th!
Please come out and let me know you think I can do it!!! Offer a word of support, enjoy amazing drink specials ($3 bottled beer, $5 martinis), see old friends, meet new friends, get inspired to start being active yourself, maybe win some cashola through a 50/50 raffle... It's going to be a blast! Pass this invite on, too. More the merrier!
If you want to see me along the running route at the marathon itself, I'll have maps at the pep rally with meeting points and approximate times when and where I think you'll be able to catch me.
I am running to raise money for an amazing cause so I'll ask you to consider making a $10-20 donation at the door (unless you've already supported me online - just let me know at the door). Here is a link to my donation page:
http://www.crowdrise.com/michellesandersforbluecard/fundraiser/HatesToRun
My charity, Blue Card, is a very interesting one you may not have heard about before. It gives material support to impoverished survivors of the Holocaust - many of whom live in our country and are without family or other resources. Can you imagine surviving a concentration camp as a child, but now having to choose between medication and food in your old age?
If you make a donation to the Blue Card, your money won't be spent on petri dishes and direct mailings, it will go directly to survivors, giving them immediate solutions to problems most of us are privileged not to experience. You can read about Blue Card in this NYT article that ran in last week's Sports section: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/sports/22marathon.html?_r=4&ref=sports
I also have a special program going for kids 12 and under who want to come out and support me at the race itself! It's my "5 for $5" offer! All your child has to do is give me a high-5 along the way while I'm running and I'll donate $5 to the Blue Card in his or her name. (Don't worry, I'll make it easy! Just tell me where to look for you guys!)
So, where's the party? Address above, but here's a link if you like pictures and details. http://crotonnyc.com/
I'll be at The Croton Reservoir Tavern (aka Croton Tavern, Croton Reservoir, The Brick Lounge) starting at 5PM and there will be Happy Hour specials running until 9PM, so come on down! If you're a runner, or don't want to drink, there will be a bounty of bananas and delicious non-alcoholic drink options for you (and for me!).
Croton Tavern is conveniently located in Midtown near all mass transit, just blocks from Port Authority, Grand Central, Penn Station, Times Square and Bryant Park. Take the shuttle bus from the Javits Center to Times Square if you are going to the Marathon Expo first.
I hope to see you on Thursday, November 4th!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)