5 for Friday

Thanks so much for all of your support as I try to make my way back to running. I really appreciate all of your thoughts, suggestions and kind words. The support from this community is probably the best part about blogging.

1. First and foremost, Sunday is Mother's Day. Unfortunately I won't be helping my Mom celebrate, but I will be thinking about her all day (like every other day). My Mom is an incredibly amazing woman and I am so blessed to be her daughter. She is always at the ready to help. I have no doubt, that if I asked her to, she would travel the nearly 700 miles to be by my side and help me in a moments notice. She's such a strong and courageous woman and I can only hope she realizes how much I look up to her and appreciate her.

2. On May 20th, leave your car at home and skip the subway for National Bike to Work Day! Biking (or walking) is a healthy, green, and relaxing way to get to work. Check out the link to find events happening in your area, or to organize one. Transportation Alternatives in NYC is giving out free iced coffee and cliff bars at locations around the city. Let's just hope it's also a sunny day! If you don't live in the US, click HERE to find out when National Bike to Work Day (or week) is in your country.

3. Did you watch The Next Great American Restaurant on NBC? Woody and I did. While we liked a few of the concepts, we were really pulling for Jamawn and his healthy soul food concept. Partly because it sounded good and partly because he's from Detroit (and we like supporting Detroiters). We were thrilled on Sunday when he won the reality show contest; restaurants in New York, LA and Minneapolis. Right away we knew we had to go check it out since it's at South Street Seaport which is only a few blocks away from our apartment!

The restaurant is hard to find if you're not looking for it. It's not right in the middle of the Seaport, but kind of around the corner. 

Woody had the baby-back ribs with collard greens, wild rice salad and whole wheat roll

I chose the herb baked chicken, sweet potato salad, black-eyed pea salad and chose the cornbread waffle (which I gave to Woody)

It was all delicious, but Woody said he'll go for the chicken next time. It's nice to have another healthy restaurant in FiDi. I just hope it's open on the weekend!!

4. I don't usually like sharing what I got for my Birthday with others, I think it's a little self-centered, but this is cool. Woody has been keeping one of my gifts a secret but he had to spill the beans last night. He had blocked out Tuesday evening on my calendar and only told me that we had to leave work at 5pm to be somewhere by 6pm. Then yesterday after work he told me that he has to go out of town for work next Tuesday and he had to try and reschedule. In the meantime, he told me what it was just in case he couldn't switch it and I could invite a friend. He enrolled us in a knife skills class at Brooklyn Kitchen!! I'm very excited for this! I know he gets annoyed by how I use the knifes when cutting veggies, so it's kind of for him, but I think it'll be fun and after a couple hours I hope to be a pro with a knife!

5. Have you read the May issue of Runner's World? There's an article about form that I read on the bus to work yesterday and found really interesting. Specifically this quote: "Ours is one of the only sports where the technical aspect has been the skeleton in the closet," stated by physical therapist Phil Wharton. It's such a true statement. We get out there and run. We focus more on what jacket we're wearing, what kind of fuel we're taking with us, what kind of run we're doing, but we it's only recently that people have been talking about how they actually run. How our feet hit the ground, and how our arms swing. I had only been running a couple years when a few of my co-workers and I started running after work together in Central Park one night a week. I hadn't read the proper way to run, I just did what felt comfortable till then. But I will always remember my friend C, who ran cross country in high school, tell me as we were going up Cat Hill one night to shorten my stride and pump my arms harder when going up the hill to help push me up. He's also the one who kept me in check so my arms didn't cross my body in the slightest. I think those nights were the first times I thought about form. I'm still learning and think about my posture as I run, but it's so odd that running is one of the very few sports that you can do without thinking about how your body is moving as you do it.

• What's one of your favorite memories with your mom?
• Have/do you ever bike to work?
• What's your opinion of a soul food restaurant without fried chicken?
• What are you most skilled at in the kitchen?
• Do you pay attention to your form when you run?

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Yesterday's workout -

Rest day: On Wednesday, just after writing my last post, I found out I'm not yet ready to run. I had to catch a bus (or wait for 10 minutes in the rain) and I felt it the rest of the day. My leg hadn't hurt in the slightest bit for more than a week and then by not-quite-running about 20 feet. Bam.

Today's workout -

One more rest day. I'm not going to let my recovery get off track!