happy friday on a wednesday+ an A train poem

4 day weekends are boss. The weather has turned to crap, and is supposed to remain crap (rainy) for the duration. I’m not worried though. Some of our good friends will be spending the holiday with us, and I’m sure that there will be plenty of good times had. I’m also excited about my good friend Michael Corleone who will be returning from Italy after several years on the lam. Wait, that is a different Michael C.. My friend Micheal C., who is coming home from Italy to visit, didn’t shoot anyone. I’m hoping to be able to kick it with him for a minute or two over the weekend, as well.

Since it is sort of a Friday, I’m going to serve up this A train poem. I thought it was cheesily appropriate for this week since it has a bit of a gratitude theme.

The rain magnifies everything on the A train. The humidity on the platform, once bearable, reaches levels normally reserved for swamps and saunas. That subtle stench of urine/body-odor/halitosis becomes much less subtle. On rainy days, nose-deaf strap hangers are counted as fortunate. When it rains, the slight annoyance felt toward the person who keeps bumping your leg on the A train, becomes tangible as their wet umbrella soaks your slacks and drips onto your brogues. On the A train when it’s raining, that feeling of relief to finally be headed home goes beyond relief, and breaches the threshold of gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

[photo: Rush hour on the West Side Highway from the Vesey St. foot bridge]

short week

It is always nice to have a Friday on Thursday. This evening we are jumping a flight for Charlotte, to attend a wedding. It should be a pretty nice time. In addition to being excited about the actual wedding and ancillary events, it is going to be really cool to catch up with so many friends that we haven’t see for several years. I’m taking my small computer with me, and hoping to be able to drop in a couple of posts along the way. Have a great weekend!

[the photo has absolutely nothing to do with this post]

NY Marathon 2011

Oh man, I love this race. There has been so much going on in my personal life lately that I never really had a chance to get excited about the race this year. In fact, I even considered sitting it out, especially after the crazy weather the previous weekend. Thanks to some good friends’ motivational pep talks, I showed up yesterday morning with my running sneaks on. I’m so glad that I did.

I rode down to the SI ferry with my same friends that I ran Chicago with. There was some drama with the car service. But that was really the only setback of the morning. By the time we arrived in Staten Island and boarded the buses for Verazzano Bridge, the sun was already coming over the horizon, and I could tell the weather was going to be phenomenal.

My friend Becca agreed to run with me. Which was very gracious of her, considering that She tends to totally crush the NY Marathon. She PR-ed in it a few years ago with a faster time than I have had at any marathon, which is super impressive for such a difficult course. Anyway, it was so great to have her there, to chat with her in the staging area, because it gets so boring waiting and waiting for gun time.

It is always so exciting when you finally get up onto the bridge and can see the start line. Bloomberg gives his little good luck speech, and the cannon goes off. There is suddenly a sea of bouncing heads that begins pouring onto the bridge toward Brooklyn. It is the most amazing sight, ever. On my way across the Verazzano, there was a Coast Guard Black Hawk on my left side, along with a TV news helicopter. On my right hand side was an NYPD helicopter. They would fly right up next to the bridge. Coast Guard was waving through the open side door. I waved back, of course. Hehe.

Becca and I kept a nice comfortable pace just under 8 minute miles through all of Brooklyn and Queens. We even tackled the Queensboro Bridge with a pretty good pace (mostly thanks to Becca). Once we made it into Manhattan and started to charge up 1st Avenue, I began to struggle. Thankfully, Becca was really good about not letting me slow down much (even though I really wanted to). By mile 17, I was really wishing that I had brought some energy gels with me. Thankfully at mile 18 they were handing them out. But, by the 20k mark, I was really losing steam and thankfully Becca didn’t let me slow her down anymore. I watch her fade into the crowd of runners in front of me. Around mile 20 the energy gel started to kick in, and I was feeling a little bit spry again.

As I was coming off of the bridge into the Bronx, without warning, my left hamstring cramped up really hard. Like, so hard, I was worried that my race might be over. I hobbled over to the sidewalk (without tripping anyone, thk gdnss), and stretched it out for a few minutes. It ended up costing me. That mile was a 12 minute mile, hahaha. From then on, I knew that I wasn’t going to get any sort of amazing time, so I just settled in at a 10 minute mile and enjoyed the home stretch. It was almost existential. I stopped looking at the pace clocks, and my watch, and just enjoyed the crowd. I crossed the finish line at the same time as Jack Waitz, husband of the late Grete Waitz.

Thank you so much to everyone who provided encouragement to me about this race. Also thanks to everyone who tracked me, and came out to cheer.  It was pretty awesome. Can’t wait to do it again next year. Here is a link to my Garmin stats.

happy friday!

I’ll start with the bad news. I have no A-train poem to share today. I have been relatively uncreative (not that the previous poems were anything major), for the past little while. But I do feel like I’m somewhat getting my mojo back. Which brings us to the good news. Above is a nice little shot of ?uestlove, who was DJing at the party I attended last night.

For the weekend? Wellah, I plan on attending a Halloween party on Saturday night. Then running a race Sunday morning. Not sure how all of that will work out. But I’m being hopeful. Speaking of running, there are only nine short days left until the NY Marathon. I’m trying not to sweat it. I’m going to be forced to run a few times between now and then, because I just bought some new sneaks and I need to break them in before the race (or else suffer massive blisters). I retired the sneaks that I used in Chicago, by leaving them in the trash can of the hotel room. Hahaha.

Which brings me to my next topic: weather. It is supposed to snow this weekend. Not cool. I’m not a good cold weather runner. In fact, I’m not a cold weather runner at all. I stay inside and get fat during the cold weather. Fingers crossed for 50+ degree weather on November 6th. Have a great weekend!

Happy Friday!

I have been insanely busy the last few days. Which is cool. But I have not spent much time at a desk, which means I have done much photo editing or writing. I know that everyone has been very disappointed about this, hehe. Not to worry, I will have plenty of time on my hands this weekend to run through all of the stuff that I have shot this weeks, as well as recap some decent fun.

As promised a few weeks ago, I have been checking to see when the GQ article “The man who sailed his house” appeared online. When the November issue came in the mail yesterday, I figured that all of the October stuff was probably now online. I was right. Here is a link to one of my favorite magazine articles that I have read in years.

Have a great weekend!

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weekly running evaluation– week 16

Training has been going not so great. I did a single 10 mile jaunt last weekend, then an 18 miler today. The 18 miler was actually an NYRR sponsored event called “marathon tune-up.” Since I am still getting over a cold, I took it pretty easy. Ideally, I would have liked to have gone race pace today, but I’ll save it for Grete’s half marathon next weekend. Here are some stats from the run today:

Distance: 18.0 Miles, 29.0 Kilometers
Date/Time: September 25, 2011, 7:00 AM
Location: Central Park, NYC

Total Finishers: Men – 2009 Women – 1819 Total – 3828

Last Name First Name Sex/
Age
Bib Team City State Country Overall
Place
Gender
Place
Age
Place
Net
Time
Pace/
Mile
Breinholt Jacob M34 176 NYRC NEW YORK NY USA 350 313 65 2:24:41 08:03

Since I’m now officially tapering (unofficially, I have been for like 2 weeks already, hehehe), I’m going to keep the mileage relatively low this week, and try to do better than a 1:30 on Saturday. Fingers crossed, I’ll bee feeling 100% and get a huge confidence boost from it, going into the Chicago Marathon, the following weekend.

The photo at the top is from last week. Thanks, Brightroom.

10 Years Later

We capped off our Sunday night in Brooklyn gazing across the water at the memorial light show. There were some low clouds, but it was still a pretty spectacular sight. We love our city.

Quik pro, day 1

I almost didn’t even go out to the comp today, since it was so overcast when I finished my run in the morning. The sun came out soon afterwards, and I got an email from one of my photog friends who said that the conditions were ok. By the time that I arrived in LB, the weather was great, but it was almost high tide, and the waves were kind of crap. I hung out in the press pavilion the whole time and almost didn’t bother getting the camera out. But then I decided that I should probably get a couple of atmosphere shots, at least.

I’m headed out there early tomorrow, hopefully the conditions will be a bit better, since low tide is at like 8 AM or something. I have had worse Labor Day weekends. At least I was able to work on my tan a little bit. Part of me secretly wishes that I could just skip out on fashion week altogether and just shoot surfing all week.

Hawk Vert Jam

Well… this is kind of awkward. I was supposed to be spending the weekend in Southern California. But, as they often do these days, my plans changed at the last minute. Friday was the official kickoff of New York City’s first ever major surf competition. Since Quiksilver is sponsoring it, Tony Hawk put on a vert demo as the inaugural event. The ramp was set up at the end of Pier 59 on the Hudson (14th St.). It was pretty amazing to be able to shoot these guys skating. Like every other kid who grew up skating in the 80’s I was always a massive fan of Tony Hawk. One of the other old school guys at the demo was Kevin Staab. His pro model was the first “real” skateboard that I ever bought. Anyway, that top image of Tony is one of my fav’s of the day. Here are a few more.

Sandro Diaz–

Elliot Sloan–

Sandro Diaz going huge with FDNY watching from the river–

Here is the sequence of Tony’s front side mellon  from the top of the post–

Sunday and Monday, I’m hoping to be shooting surfing at Longbeach. Have a great weekend.

Hello weekend

[photo: subway workers spreading the love during rush hour– getting everyone high on paint fumes]

Well, tomorrow is the last day of Summer Streets for 2011. We haven’t been able to participate yet this summer. So, I’m thinking that I better get on it, this weekend. I have a 10 mile run scheduled for tomorrow, then a 20 miles for Sunday. So my idea is to switch them, and do the 20 miles tomorrow down a car-less Park Ave and back (as long as it doesn’t rain).

Besides the planned runs, I think that I’m going to try to just pack is some mellow family time. Especially since the next several weeks/weekends are going to be bananas. We are in DC next weekend, then Palm Springs the following. When we return, it will already be fashion week. Deep breath.

Have a great weekend!