This shiny little guy, in many ways, represents the start of my running life in NYC.
Before, I get to the NYC Half...The Queens Half in the same year (2006) was probably the start of it all. I had been in NYC for less than a year and I had been running casually in Jersey City during the time I had lived there. My amazing friend Tessa knew I was a runner and that I had done a couple marathons, so she asked me if I would help her train and then run the Queens Half Marathon with her. In about six weeks, she had quit smoking, trained, and knocked out the Queens Half in under 2 hours. If they had given out medals for this race, this story would have received its own entry.
I think she help spark my motivation to move from jogger to runner. I registered for the inaugural NYC Half without knowing a single other person that was doing it. I'd never registered or run a race without doing it with a friend or friends. I think I ran about a 1:45 and thought it was blazing fast. Over the next 4+ years, I ran almost everywhere imaginable in Manhattan (and covered significant parts of other boroughs), but the one thing I'll always remember from the NYC Half is the amazing feeling of running through a closed-off Times Square.
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