Congratulations Kate!!!!

I wanted to give a big shout out to my sister Kate for completing her first ever half-marathon yesterday morning! She ran the New York City half-marathon in 1:55:04. A great time for a first effort!

My DH and I were up and out the door at 6:30 AM to meet my parents, my sister's bf and friend at 7:00 AM at 57th and 7th. We decided to walk up to the park so that we could see her at the 1.5 mile marker and then walk back down to 57th and 7th to see her at the 7.5 mile marker. I have to say that watching all the runners made me miss racing. I'm still recovering from my stress fracture and slowly but surely building my mileage - I can't wait to get back out there at 100%.

Kate's friend Jackie had made all these great posters for us to hold up while we were cheering for her. While waiting to see her at the 1.5 mile marker I saw a Boston Medical Center (BMC) marathoner from our 2007 team! I was so excited to see someone who had been part of our marathon team - my whole family started screaming like crazy. And since he was in front of my sister we saw him in all 3 places we went to cheer (mile 1.5, mile 7.5 and mile 13). He must have been so confused as to why these random 6 people were screaming so loudly for him!

We saw my sister at mile 1.5 and she looked good as she began her journey. We stayed there for awhile and cheered on all the runners and then moved to our 2nd cheering spot at mile 7.5. We got to see a lot of the elite runners, which was awesome. My DH and I cheered real loudly for a runner wearing a Boston Red Sox hat and he was pretty excited to see us. The two cops in front of us however were not to pleased and jokingly told us to pipe down or they'd have to take us in:) We spotted my sister as she was coming into the water station right before where we were and started screaming like crazy for her - she came over and slapped us all five she looked awesome - like she was feeling good and having a great time.

Our brother and his girlfriend were waiting for her as she ran through Times Square - imagine running through a closed down time square - so cool! I'm definitely going to have to do this race.

Then we hopped the subway to the finish and got to see her finish strong. I love road races, watching all these people out there for different reasons, accomplishing goals and dreams, it's just so great! It was 9AM and we had already had so much excitement for the day - meanwhile most of NYC wasn't even awake yet!

As we were walking to the subway to head back home we passed this film shoot (whether it was for a movie, commercial, etc I'm not sure) but as we're walking around the cameras we look across the street and there is a naked woman standing next to a cab among people dressed in business attire - that's what they were shooting. It was truly one of those only in NYC moments!