memorial day weekend and my first nyc race

This summer is going to be a busy one for Jason so we decided to take advantage of the three day weekend and treat ourselves to a little fun in Florida. Last year we went to Miami but this year we just wanted to relax on the beach without fighting the crowds. We heard Fort Lauderdale was a little quieter than Miami so we decided to give it a try.
We had such a nice time; we literally laid on the beach all day and ate seafood for dinner and nothing else. We found some great seafood places along the intercoastal waterway and it was so nice to sit out by the water while watching the yachts float by, secretly wishing we were on one.


Our hotel was only five months old with condo style rooms so it was fun to stay in a new place and pretend, for a couple of days, that it was our apartment, instead of the 500 sq ft. studio we are currently living in. One afternoon, right after we got back from the beach, they had a little tropical rainstorm so we decided to sit out on our balcony and listen to the calming rain. I've always loved summer rainstorms, it's still warm outside and the rain always seems so relaxing, unfortunately these types of rainstorms never occur in New York. In New York it just pours and you get soaked while sloshing through all the garbage on the streets, you never get that clean rain smell in the city. But I guess this is just one of the few faults of living in this practically perfect city.
Before our weekend began I was able to run in my first NYC race and LOVED it! KPMG is a sponsor of the AHA Downtown 5K run so I was able to invite some of my runner friends to join me for the race. I was a little nervous going into it, I have never ran in a large race and I didn't quite know what to expect with 12,000 other people running through the streets of New York. Luckily, my wonderful friends are frequent runners and knew exactly what to do.
It poured all day on the night of the race so I was a little worried that we were going to have a bad experience but it cleared up just as we were about to begin. It was so fun to run along Wall Street and around Battery Park while the crowds cheered us on, and having thousands of other runners around me made the race go by a lot faster. We ended on the World Financial Center esplanade where we were able to watch the sunset on the Hudson River. I had so much fun running with my little group of friends and hope that we can run in many more together.

After the race with all our bags of goodies