Continuing with Part Two of our New York City Trip Recap…check out Part One here.

After a busy Thursday, we took our time getting out of the hotel on Friday morning. Since we didn’t have plans until Part Two of the HP play, we decided to mainly be tourists in NYC.

We started out by heading down to One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) and the 9/11 Museum area. Last time we were in NYC, they were in the process of building both. It was cool to be able to finally see them in person.

But wow, it was crazy crowded down there. The lines to go up to the top of the tower and the 9/11 Museum were insane. We decided to just walk around and take pictures instead.

Once we finished walking around the Freedom Tower area, we grabbed a quick lunch and made our way over to Battery Park. It was a beautiful walk along the Hudson River. We got to see New Jersey and the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

After a while, we decided to hop back on the subway and make our way up to the Rockefeller Center/Central Park area. We spent some time just walking around and in and out of stores around Rockefeller Center before stopping off at Magnolia Bakery for some baked goods. The line was out the door!

We walked up to Central Park, but not before stopping by The Plaza so Rachel could get a picture. (As a little girl she loved the Eloise books, who lived in The Plaza.)

Even though it was definitely a little on the chillier side, we found a nice sunny spot in Central Park and stopped to rest/hang for a bit.

After spending several hours around this area, we began the journey back down to our hotel to get ready for the show. We were probably 20-25 blocks away, but we decided to walk and just enjoy the sights/stores/sounds.

We stopped in St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a few minutes. It was breathtaking!

We even stopped in the Disney Store in Times Square. It was awesome! Easily the biggest Disney Store I’ve ever been in.

Once we got back over to the hotel, we rested up for a bit before heading back out for dinner and Part Two of HP!

We had found a cool dinner spot the night before that was kind of like a food court of sorts. We both ended up getting tacos, which were awesome!

After dinner, I was super excited to get to the second part of the HP play. Part one was just so amazing…I knew part two would be equally as great!

And friends, it absolutely was! I can’t get over how amazing this play was. The acting, sets, music, and overall magic were second to none. I am soooooo glad we decided to see it on Broadway and with the original principal cast from London. It was an experience neither one of us will ever forget.

We even got a few pictures of the actors as they were coming outside after the show. There were quite a few people waiting on them, but I was able to sneak a few pictures from over the top. (It’s nice to be tall!)

As we did the night before, once we finished at the HP show, we walked over to Times Square for a few minutes. And, of course, it was crazy crowded. But we were able to grab a few more photos before calling it a night.

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Rachel and I spent last weekend in New York City. We had a great time hitting up the shows, sights and stores. Let’s start from the beginning…

On Thursday morning, we flew out of Atlanta and landed in NYC a little before noon. After grabbing a cab into the city, we checked in to our hotel and made our way out for lunch and some sightseeing. We had to be at Part One of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by 7:30, so we knew we had most of the afternoon to explore.

After grabbing some lunch, we jumped on the subway down to SoHo for some shopping. We ended up hitting several cool stores, including the Jean Shop, which is where I previously bought my favorite pair of jeans in the world! I picked up a new pair and Rachel even got a pair for herself!

We spent a few hours walking around some different stores before making our way back to the hotel. We decided to walk back as it was roughly a 30-45 minute walk, but we figured we could stop along the way for pictures and sights.

Once we got back to the hotel, we cleaned up and rested for a little bit before making our way to dinner and the play. Rachel found a great restaurant that ended up being quite good! After dinner, we walked over to the Lyric Theatre for the HP play.

Now friends, I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. Rachel definitely loves it, too, but I think she sometimes appeases my love for this amazing universe. I knew when they released the HP play in London a few years ago that I had to see this on Broadway when it inevitability came to New York. I was thrilled when they announced it was coming to Broadway, and even more excited when I learned 7 of the principle London cast members were coming as well. 

So once we got to the theater, I was crazy excited! Even just the outside of the theater was amazing! After grabbing several pictures, we made our way inside.

Everything about the inside was awesome and themed around the play. We hit up the merchandise booths, where we picked up several souvenirs. We then made our way into the theater and found our seats.

Without giving too much away, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part One was absolutely breathtaking. I absolutely loved it. From the cast and scenery to the overall story and stage effects, it was amazing! When part one ended, I knew part two was going to be just as good. I couldn’t wait for Friday night!

I want to be a part of it….

Tomorrow (Thursday), Rachel and I will be heading up to New York City for the weekend. We scored tickets to the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Broadway show and we are super excited! The show is a two-part play that will take place on Thursday and Friday evenings.

Besides going to the show, we will have a few days to walk around one of our favorite cities. We even got tickets to a Yankees baseball game on Saturday afternoon. It’s been over 7 years since we’ve been to “The Big Apple,” so we are excited for sure!

One of my goals for the month of April is to take some time each week and reconnect with old friends I haven’t seen/reached out to in a while. I mentioned how easy it is to get comfortable with the circle of people around you, but I wanted to make sure I stay connected with those friends who mean just as much to me.

So on Tuesday, I ended up spending almost an hour on the phone catching up with one of my college buddies and groomsmen, Andy Cartee. Andy is one of those friends that even though we don’t talk as much as we use to, as soon as we catch up it’s like no time has passed. Those friends/people in your life are few and far between.

I’m so very grateful for Andy. In fact, when my mom passed away 5 years ago, he was one of the first people I called. We probably hadn’t talked in 6 months, but he was immediately one of the people I knew I wanted to call.

Friends/people like Andy don’t come around very often. It’s why he will always be one of my best friends. Talking to Andy on Tuesday continued to confirm this for me. I’m so grateful for people like that in my life. And I’m so glad I reached out to him. It reminded me that I need to be better about staying in touch with those people who will be lifelong friends. 

In fact, I saw this with Rachel this past Sunday. We celebrated her parents’ birthdays (they share the same birthday!) and several family friends came over to their house. One of Rachel’s oldest friends, Kaylan, was there with her family. I’m pretty sure Rachel and Kaylan haven’t seen each other in over a year. I watched the two of them catch up and it made my heart happy. I know how much Kaylan means to Rachel. I believe Kaylan will be one of those lifelong friends for my wife. 

Rachel takes over the blog today for the second half of the Knoxville Half Marathon. Check out part one here! 

After exploring Knoxville on Saturday, we got plenty of sleep in preparation for a 7:30 race start the next morning. Luckily, our hotel was a five-minute walk to the starting line, so we didn’t have to push ourselves to leave early. It was also fortunate that the nearby Knoxville Convention Center was open for runners, so we didn’t have to wait in the cold.

Having been born in Knoxville (I only lived there for about five months before we moved to Georgia), I was excited to see parts of the city I hadn’t seen before. When we visited the city growing up it was almost exclusively for football games, and we mostly stuck to the University of Tennessee campus, so I wasn’t familiar with the rest of the city.

The race started near the downtown area in the shadow of the Sunsphere (or there would’ve been a shadow if it had been sunny…). We meandered through the campus a bit, before running along the Tennessee River. As Allen commented, there wasn’t much crowd support during this part of the race, but that was coming!

We then ran on Kingston Pike, which is the like the Peachtree (pick your street name) of Knoxville. It also felt like church row – there were tons along this part of the route. We then turned into the Sequoyah Hills neighborhood, where we were for the next several miles.

Not only was there more crowd support in this part of the course, but there were more hills than I’ve ever encountered during a race. (As you’ll see, the theme of this race is Hills.) It was actually very distracting to have some crowds, signs, costumes, and beautiful homes along this part of the course, so it wasn’t quite as painful as it could’ve been.

One of the unique things about this particular race is that there were musical acts around each mile marker during the race. I wasn’t particularly impressed with these interludes, but I could see its merits. (I also don’t love country music, so that could be a contributing factor.) My advice to future musical acts is to play either crowd pleasers or more upbeat songs – runners appreciate some motivation!

After we left Sequoyah Hills (see? Hills again), we actually ran through a wooded area, which was nice but not especially exciting. As it had rained the night before, it was also quite wet and muddy (and hilly, let us not forget). I think I would’ve preferred running in a more exciting area, but props to them for mixing it up.

At one point, after we left the more secluded path, we passed the hospital where I was born – and where my dad was born 71 years ago! Obviously we had to document this part of the race, since I hadn’t been there in almost 33 years.

Toward the end of the race, we made it back onto campus, and it was fun to see some of the areas I remembered visiting as a kid. Let me tell you, these students must get a workout every time they go to class! (Hills, y’all.) Actually, at one point we reached a hill that I finally had to walk – I was exhausted from running up all of the hills to that point.

Finally, we turned a corner and saw Neyland Stadium – the finish line was on the 50-yard line. As soon as we ran into the chute, we saw Smokey – and I had to get a photo, of course. It was fun to run through a stadium where I had spent a lot of Saturdays throughout my childhood.

All in all, even though the hills were brutal, the race was fun! I was happy to spend some time in my birthplace – and this was a good way to see much of it.

I hope Allen and I can visit again sometime soon, whether we’re going to a football game or not. There’s so much more to the city than I realized, and I’m very proud to say I was born there.

A couple of weekends ago, Rachel and I headed up to Knoxville, Tennessee to run the Covenant Health Knoxville Half Marathon. This race was exciting for 2 different reasons…

1. Knoxville is Rachel’s birth place and she is a huge Tennessee Football fan. Plus, this race ends on the 50 yard line in Neyland Stadium!
2. One of my running goals is to run a half or full marathon in every state, and this race checked off the state of Tennessee.

We headed out on Saturday morning from Atlanta. Knoxville is only a little over 3 hours away, so we decided to only stay one night up there. Once we got into Knoxville (a little after lunchtime), we checked in to our hotel and made our way over to the race expo. We ended up getting a hotel literally less than 5 minutes from the expo and starting line. This turned out to be a great decision!

The expo was fairly small, but actually had a pretty decent amount of booths to check out. Once we grabbed our race numbers and shirts, we made our way around the expo and actually picked up a few additional things. Sometimes expo can be hit or miss, but I thought this was one of the more successful ones for us.

After the expo, we headed over to the Sunsphere, which looks like a giant microphone. The Sunsphere is one of the only things left from the 1982 World’s Fair, which was hosted in Knoxville. We took the elevator to the top and got a cool 360° view of the area around us. It was really cool!

After the Sunsphere, we dropped our stuff in our hotel room and headed back out to explore more of the downtown Knoxville area. We walked over to Market Square, which has quite a few stores and restaurants. One of the nice things about the day is we were expecting quite a bit of rain, but the weather held off (for the most part). We were able to shop/sightsee for several hours. And although it was a little colder than we would have liked, it could have been much worse.

After a few hours, we found an awesome pizza place – The Tomato Head – and grabbed an early dinner before heading back towards the hotel. Since the NCAA Basketball Tourney was still going on, we decided to call it an early evening and rest up in the hotel room. Fortunately, we didn’t have a brutally early morning, as the race had a 7:30 am start time and we were only a 5 minute walk from the starting line. After a few more hours, we headed on to bed. It was time to rest up for the Knoxville Half Marathon!

Stayed tuned for part two of the Knoxville Half Marathon Recap with Rachel taking over the reigns!

 

Happy April everyone! As you may remember from my last blog post April Goals…one of my goals for April is to blog at least 2-3 times a week. Welcome to my first post of this week/month!

So…I wanted to start the month off with catching everyone up on what’s been going on in my running world in 2018.

• 100+ Monthly Running Miles  One of my typical running goals for each month is to hit around 100 miles for the month. Some months I get above 100 and some months I hit just below that number. So far I’m 2 for 3 in regards to hitting above 100 miles. (In fairness, February does only have 28 days…) As of this morning, I’m at 295 miles for 2018.
• 2018 Races After a busy race schedule in 2017, I intentionally decided to make 2018 a little lighter on the races. Of course…I started off this year by completing my second Dopey Challenge (48.6 miles over 4 days) at Walt Disney World, which doesn’t necessarily seem like a lighter schedule. But, after Dopey, I didn’t run another race until 2 weekends ago in Knoxville, Tennessee for the Knoxville Half Marathon. (Recap of the race weekend coming soon!) I still have several races lined up for 2018, but, at the moment, I don’t have another race scheduled until the July 4th Peachtree Road Race. I’m enjoying having a lighter race schedule and I know our bank account appreciates it, too!
• Increased Speed/Pace Over the past 6 months or so, I’ve seen my overall pace increase to levels I haven’t seen in quite a few years. Running injury free (especially in the knees) helps this tremendously…which leads to the next thing…
• Running Injuries Unfortunately…and this is the part of running that can be super frustrating…knee issues have plagued me for the past 3 years. And 2018 is no exception. In the last week (really since the Knoxville Half Marathon), my left knee has begun to bother me quite a bit. My overall pace and distance has dropped the last 3 runs. And I fear I may need to take some take off to allow the knees to rest and heal. This (as my wife will tell you) is not something I’m good at. And honestly one of my April goals was to hit 100 miles again for the month…and that seems more and more unlikely. Fortunately, I don’t have any races scheduled over the next few months, so I do have time to allow my knee to fully recover.

All in all, my 2018 running journey has seen its share of ups and downs. But I’m grateful to be able to get out there and get in the miles. Looking forward to getting healthy and finishing the rest of the year strong!