What to do next

Now that New York has come and gone, it’s time to figure out what to do next.  New York was one of the “Big Five” that every marathoner should do at least once in there lifetime:

1. New York City Marathon
2. Chicago Marathon
3. Marine Corps Marathon (in Washington DC)
4. Los Angeles Marathon
5. Boston Marathon

Chicago, Marine Corps, and LA are all signup-and-run marathons, meaning that there’s no criteria to get into the marathon.  New York is a lottery-based entry, where roughly 60,000 people apply and only 30,000 get invited.  Boston is a qualifying event, meaning that marathoners need to run under a qualifying time to be invited to run the marathon.  For my age group, I’ll have to run a 3hour15minute race. 

Right now, there’s NO WAY that I’d be able to qualify for Boston.  Well, at least not yet.  My marathon Personal Record is no where near that time.

I love running, but I tend to “enjoy the sites” more during the marathon.  I’m what’s called a “strong-and-steady” runner, meaning that I take longer than usual, but keep a steady pace throughout the race.  It’s a good way of saying that Boston will take longer than usual for me to qualify. 

Last year, I made a 5-year commitment to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2008 and run the fabled marathon in 2009.  Why 5 years?  Well, just like my running, I’ll be taking the conservative route to getting there.  This gives me a long term goal to shoot for.

Along the way, I’ll be doing one of the “Big 5″ once a year with Boston being the final year in 2009.

Next year will most likely be Chicago; however, if I get picked to do NYC again, I’ll do that one again.  It’s THAT much of a good race.

The New York City Marathon experience

I didn’t know what to expect going to NYC for my marathon. Honestly, I didn’t. I’ve been waiting for over 2 years to be in this race and decided, injury or not, that I was going to go. I ended up having to walk for a good 7 hours before I crossed the finish line.

For a big city marathon, I totally recommend doing it. The crowds were really supportive even for us people who walked the race. The race starts at Staten Island, goes through Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronyx, and ends up at the Tavern at the Green in Central Park. Essentially, I had a 26.2 mile walking tour of New York City. I know that if I would have ran it as I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the scenery as much. I plan on signing up for it again next year.

iFill

I read about this on iLounge last night and it’s pretty cool. It records streaming radio stations and tags the corresponding songs with their titles, artists, etc. I configured it last night, hooked my iPod up, and went to sleep. I woke up this morning with a playlist containing with 159 FREE songs, all labeled by song/artist. You can then deleted the songs as needed and record a whole new set. It doesn’t record them in format that is recognized in iTunes, so they are stored as files in the hard drive. Hence, the amount of songs that you get depends on how much space you allocate on your iPod. It definitely beats going to the music store to sample music. It’s $20 software, but it’s a great investment:

 

iFill

Video iPod…. not bad!

I was one of the lucky people who managed to get a black 30gb Video iPod and I have to admit, I love it. I’ve been on the fence about getting one for a long time, but after seeing what the new iPods are capable of doing, I had to get one.

For anyone who already owns an iPod and wants to upgrade to the 5G Video iPod, I would say to wait until the 6th generation comes out, whenever that may be. The video is very slick but only lasts 2-3 hours. Think of this 5G iPod as a music player first and a video player second.

For anyone who was on the fence about getting one, all I have to say is this:

GET ONE. Get one NOW.

The audio is incredible, the interface is slick, and the look is stylish. It’s pocketable and the battery life is damn good If you let it run via playlist, it can give you around 14 hours of battery life. No joke.

I seriously can go on-and-on, but I’ll be blogging must-need accessories later on and some cool slick software that I tried.