Runners have taken to the streets and to the internet to show their support for everyone affected by the Boston Marathon bombings.
So I wanted to share two ways to run for Boston that I’ll be taking part in—one live event in New York City and one virtual event that anyone, anywhere can join. Both runs will benefit The One Fund Boston, a coalition of corporations and individuals that aims to help the families most affected by the attack.
It was an amazing day of running in New York City at the 2013 NYC Half on Sunday, March 17. Kenyans Wilson Kipsang and Caroline Rotich ran away with the men’s and women’s titles as 15,000 runners took a 13.1 mile journey through the heart of the city from Central Park, through Times Square and along the Hudson River to the spectacular Wall Street finish near the historic South Street Seaport.
Join me and Olympians Carrie Tollefson and Todd Williams “On The Run” at the NYC Half as we recap the men’s and women’s professional races, catch up with some of the charity runners we profiled earlier in the week and capture the spirit of the day. Read the rest of this entry →
Dathan Ritzenhein and Meb Keflezighi at the 2009 London Marathon (Photo: Julian Mason via Creative Commons License)
New York Road Runners announced yesterday the American field of runners for the NYC Half on Sunday, March 17. Leading the team are Olympic long-distance runners Meb Keflezighi, Abdi Abdirahman, and Dathan Ritzenhein in the men’s race. They’ll join American record holder and Olympian Bernard Lagat, who NYRR previously announced would be making his half-marathon debut at the NYC Half. Read the rest of this entry →
In just a few days, I’ll be staring at the starting line of the Walt Disney World Marathon on January 13, 2013. It will be my sixth marathon and the first I’m not running for a personal best. This one is just for fun, and I don’t care how long it takes me. I’m going to wear a costume, take pictures with Disney characters and enjoy a course that runs through four theme parks, a race track and a baseball diamond.
To honor the occasion, I thought I’d take a look back at my second marathon, which was the exact opposite. At the 2008 ING New York City Marathon, I set out to shatter my one and only marathon time—clocked on the same course just a year before—by an hour.
This race report was first published on TheSportsBank.net in November 2008, but I thought I’d finally put it up here at RunKarlaRun.com too. After all, it was my first true marathon PR.
I also happen to be in an ’80s cover band called The Fades. This month marks the 5th anniversary of our first show. We’re all—save one—marathoners. In fact, I’m the slowest of the bunch. This post was inspired by them. Rock on, Fades!
Marathon Redux, ’80s Music Edition
I did it. I ran the ING New York City Marathon. Again. And by ran, I mean ran. The whole blessed thing. Who knew all it would take was zealous devotion to a few ‘80s songs? Read the rest of this entry →
Are you looking for a 10K in New York City this weekend? Flying Kites is hosting the first annual Dash for Dreams, a 10K run/walk through Central Park on Saturday, December 1 at 9 a.m.
Flying Kites in an international charity that runs a home and leadership academy for orphaned children in the Aberdares Mountains of Kinangop, Kenya. According to Unicef, there were 2.6 million orphans in Kenya as of 2011, representing over 6 percent of the country’s entire population. The Dash for Dreams 10K will raise money for Flying Kites’ scholarship program and allow them to take in more children.
The race begins on the 72nd St. Terrace Drive and runs one counter-clockwise loop around Central Park finishing back on Terrace Drive. Packet pick-up begins at 7:30 a.m. on race morning. Flying Kites will also be accepting non-perishable food and clothing donations for Hurricane Sandy relief at packet pick-up.
Registration is $40, and goes up to $50 on Friday. Register at Active.com.
In just four days, I’ll be staring at the starting line of the Philadelphia Marathon on November 18, 2012. It will be my fifth marathon in five years.
To honor the occasion, I thought I’d take a look back at my very first marathon and first stab at a race recap of the 2007 ING New York City Marathon. I finished the race in 5:54. I aim to finish Philly in 4:15. I’ve come a long way in the last five years. Little did I know how right I was when I proclaimed, “I think I may have a new addiction.”
This race report was first published on TheSportsBank.net in November 2007, but I thought I’d finally put it up here at RunKarlaRun.com too. After all, it’s the marathon that started it all. You can read about what brought me to tackle my first marathon in Because You Only Get One First Marathon.
Don’t Stop Believing
First published November 2007
My first marathon: 26.2 miles, 5 boroughs, 5 bridges, 39,000 runners, and more than 2 million spectators on the mean streets of New York.
My first-timer’s tiara. (Photo: Christy Hourihan)
I did it. I ran the 2007 ING New York City Marathon. And I did it in a tiara. It was the brainchild of two friends who jokingly—I thought—floated the idea past me and then provided the crown. How could I not wear it? Seriously, my roommate bought it off of a drag queen in Manhattan’s East Village. Come Sunday morning, after six months of training and anticipation, there was only one thing to do: put the tiara on my head, shoes on my feet and run like I’ve never run before. Read the rest of this entry →
One Team Hope For The Warriors runner finishes her marathon.
Scroll down for a slideshow of the unofficial marathon in Central Park.
Some called it the unofficial New York City marathon, some called it the Run Anyway marathon. But no matter what they called it, thousands of runners spontaneously took to Central Park on what would have been Marathon Sunday, November 4 in New York City.
In the wake of the canceled 2012 ING New York City Marathon, many runners tried to make the best of a terrible situation. In addition to running, thousands of marathoners volunteered on Saturday and Sunday in some of the city’s hardest hit areas. An estimated 1,300 alone went to Staten Island on Sunday to drop supplies and help residents clean up. Others helped out in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, the Rockaways in Queens, Newark in New Jersey and parks all over the city.
Thousands of other runners took to Central Park, dropping donations for hurricane relief near the “official” finish line and running a flash mob of sorts. It was like a scene out of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.” The Whos of Whoville didn’t need the trappings of Christmas. It seems, neither do marathoners. Read the rest of this entry →
The NYC Half took runners on a tour of Manhattan from Central Park through Times Square. (Photo: NYRR)
The 2012 NYC Half Marathon on Sunday, March 18 featured a new course and the largest field in the race’s history with 15,336 finishers. I was among them, trying to accomplish a personal feat: tackle two half-marathons in three weeks and three half-marathons in three months without getting injured.
To accomplish this task, I turned to a new gadget to help me train: the new MOTOACTV GPS and MP3 all in one. I served as a MOTOACTV NYC Half Marathon Ambassador, training and running the race with the device.
The Course
The NYC Half Marathon gave runners a challenging, but scenic tour of Manhattan. Even as a New Yorker who knows the course well, I thoroughly enjoyed running from Central Park through Times Square and down to the historic South Street Seaport.
The first six miles comprised one full loop of Central Park with its grueling rolling hills. Runners exited the park just after the 10K mark, racing down Seventh Avenue through the heart of Times Square before turning right onto 42nd Street for the next two miles. Miles 8 through 12 carried runners along the West Side Highway into New York’s Chelsea, West Village and Tribeca neighborhoods before rounding the southern tip of Manhattan into the Seaport for the finish. Read the rest of this entry →
Running two half-marathons in three weeks must be carefully planned to avoid injury. (Photo: Karla Bruning)
Back in November, I set out on a crazy quest to run at least a mile every day from Thanksgiving to New Year’s with the Runner’s World Holiday Running Streak. Come Jan. 1, I’d accumulated 100 miles in 40 days and had a solid training base.
So I decided to merge the end of the streak with the beginning of half-marathon training. I earmarked Disney’s Tinker Bell Half Marathon on Jan. 29 as a training run for a personal record attempt at Disney’s Princess Half Marathon on Feb. 26. Somehow, everything went according to plan. I crossed the finish line at the Princess Half two minutes faster than my previous PR.
Now I’m looking to capitalize on all that training and fitness by squeezing out one more race—the NYC Half on March 18. New York Road Runners and Motorola invited me to be a MOTOACTV NYC Half Marathon Ambassador for the race and give the new MOTOACTV device a test run.
But with just three weeks between Disney’s Princess Half and the NYC Half, I knew I’d be treading the thin line between capitalizing on training and courting injury. How can a runner prepare to tackle two half-marathons in three weeks? Read the rest of this entry →
MOTOACTV by Motorola is a GPS watch and MP3 player all in one. (Photo: MOTOACTV)
On March 18, I’ll be running the NYC Half, a 13.1-mile tour of Manhattan from Central Park through Times Square that finishes at South Street Seaport. Not only am I running the race, but I am also one of four MOTOACTV NYC Half Marathon Ambassadors.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be training with MOTOACTV, the official entertainment partner of the NYC Half, a race organized by New York Road Runners. MOTOACTV is a new dual GPS fitness tracker and MP3 player all-in-one made by Motorola. I’ll be giving the device some test runs and running the race with it.
MOTOACTV, provided to me by Motorola, is the first GPS device I’ve ever owned. I’ve been a GPS holdout for a few years for three main reasons. Read the rest of this entry →
The author and her soon-to-be-fiance after the Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon. He proposed just a few moments later.
I met this guy. After chatting a while, he mentioned that he was registered to run the ING New York City Marathon. He’d never run a marathon before. Heck, he’d never been on a single run, he said. He belonged to an Ultimate Disc league, a sport that requires a lot of running. But he was no runner. His sister had talked him into it, he said. The race was nine months away and he had no idea how to train for it.
As luck would have it, I was a runner. I ran the New York City Marathon just three months before, and was registered to run it again as well. So I offered to show him the ropes of marathon training, and take him on his very first run.
It was an unseasonably warm February day. We headed out to Central Park, where we’d met for a casual walk just a week before. We ran up to Belvedere Castle overlooking Turtle Pond and the Great Lawn, then jogged through the Ramble and back to the southern entrance to the park. He’d never visited those parts of Central Park before, he said. Stick with me, I said. As a runner, you see a lot of things you don’t notice otherwise.
Well, he stuck with me. Four years later, that guy is my fiancé, and running has played a large part in our courtship. Read the rest of this entry →
Karla runs Central Park on New Year’s Day. Photo by Anne Hospod.
40 days, 40 runs, 100 miles. Snow, slush, sub-freezing temps. Treadmills, trails, roads, sidewalks. I’ve run them all as part of the Runner’s World Holiday Running Streak.
On Thanksgiving, I set out to run at least a mile a day every single day through New Year’s Day. It wasn’t always easy; squeezing in even a mile on some days was surprisingly difficult. But somehow I stuck with it, and I’m happy to throw my arms up in victory and say: I did it! I finished my last day in style: 7.75 miles in New York City’s resplendent Central Park.
At the start, I told Runner’s World’s “Training Daily” blog my reasons for attempting the streak: “My winter training is usually erratic, unfocused, and lackluster. And that’s putting it nicely. For once, I’d love to start spring training with a healthy base. I also like to eat—a lot. But when I run better, I eat better. So here’s hoping the streak will help keep my holiday sweet tooth in check.” Read the rest of this entry →
Runners in Brooklyn's Prospoect Park. Photo by Karla Bruning.
Brooklyn is toeing the line. The inaugural Brooklyn Marathon kicks off on Sunday, Nov. 20 at 8 a.m. in Prospect Park. In the tradition of New York City marathons, this one has humble roots. The race is capped at 350 runners and the course is contained entirely in Prospect Park, the crown jewel of the borough’s park system. But founder Steve Lastoe hopes it’s just the beginning for this fledgling race.
“I want a race that’s organically part of Brooklyn,” Lastoe said on The New York Running Show, a podcast where I’m, at times, a panelist. “I want this race to be loved by Brooklyn.”
New York City could certainly use another marathon. The ING New York City marathon, the largest in the world, had more than 148,000 applicants for its 45,000 spots in the 2011 race. The demand amongst runners is plentiful, but the supply isn’t. Read the rest of this entry →
The ING New York City Marathon on Sunday, Nov. 6 gave us two truly exciting races in both the men’s and women’s competitions. Three runners shattered—and I mean shattered—the course record in the men’s competition. And one runner gave a guts-on-the-floor performance that likely cost her the race in the women’s competition. Scroll down for athlete interviews, stats and more as I was ringside in the Timex Media Center at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Columbus Circle, giving a behind the scenes play-by-play of what it’s like in the press room as a New York Road Runners Social Media Reporter. Here’s how it went:
2011 ING New York City Marathon Live Blog
8:30 am: Good morning! I’m here in the Timex Media Center at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. We are one minute away from the wheelchair start of the 2011 ING New York City Marathon! Read the rest of this entry →
Hannah England and Sally Kipyego finish third and second after a photo finish
Simpson's Victory Lap
Simpson Dressed in Star and Stripes
Here come the pro men
The Lead Pack
Lagat kicks, chasing down Laalou and Torrence
David Torrence Finishes Third
Amine Laalou Finishes Second
Bernard Lagat Wins
Lagat's Victory Lap
Call Me Kip, Lagat's Nickname
The Fifth Ave Mile Finish
Photos by Phil Hospod
Olympians, World Champions and thousands of regular runners alike barreled down New York City’s Fifth Avenue in the Fifth Avenue Mile on Saturday, Sept. 24. The professional field this year was a doozy, with eight Olympians and four 2011 World Championship medalists among them. But what is it about running a mile that keeps runners, including professionals like Bernard Lagat, so entranced? Read the rest of this entry →
I’m not the fastest runner and I’m not the slowest, but I am a running nerd. A journalist by trade, I love to research, read, learn and cogitate. So stick with me. Like all good nerds, I’ll do the homework and share it. But the running is up to you!
Runners have taken to the streets and to the internet to show their support for everyone affected by the Boston Marathon bombings.
