Monday Mantra

The FITNESS Mind, Body & Spirit 4 Miler

On Saturday, I was supposed to run the FITNESS Mind, Body & Spirit 4 miler in Central Park. Instead, I played it smart and sat this one out. Friends urged me to at least run/walk it, just to get back in the game, but I knew better. Even walking 4 miles of the Central Park hills wouldn't be a good idea with my hamstring still acting up and pushing on my sciatic nerve for an added dose of pain. I considered just sleeping in but when I found out that quite a few lovely ladies I knew where running it, I considered showing up to cheer. Then Rebecca tweeted to let me know she's be running this race to complete that morning's 20 mile training run and I thought "how can I not show up?". If I were running 20 miles, I'd definitely appreciate someone cheering me on at the end.  Definitely a no brainer. So I showed up to cheer on my friends and it was awesome. Sure, the walk to the park was a bit difficult and I might have gotten teary eyed. But I decided to consider it emotional practice for the marathon and told myself: "suck it up Erica; this is no longer your race so enjoy spectating and support your friends." Yes, I often speak to myself. And yes, I speak to myself out loud. I'm okay with being weird; there are a lot of worse things to be. But I digress...

So I showed up at the 4 mile race to cheer on my peeps and it was a glorious morning. High 50's/low 60's with a clear blue sky and happy energy in the air. I took a quick walk along the starting corals where I spotted Ashley and Rebecca , said a quick hello and good luck, and then headed to a spot just above 72nd street on the east side to cheer. Just as I was getting ready to cheer, Neal, who had just raced and PR'd (go Neal!) walked by and decided to join me. We cheered on the east side for a bit, and then headed to the west side to watch as the runners made their way to the finish line. Everyone looked fierce and I remember thinking to myself, this is what beauty looks like. The women looked strong and were working hard. It made me proud to call myself and runner and excited to heal and get back out there.

This weekend, I hope to run my first race since July. But don't worry, I'm still playing it smart and safe. I'll be running, not racing, the Continental 5th Avenue 1 Miler and I'm just hoping to finish with a smile on my face. Stay tuned for that recap...

Until then, I leave you with some crazy good pictures of these women kicking ass followed by a slideshow of all 300+ I took at the race. Enjoy!

Monday Mantra

Images

In case you haven't noticed, I stopped participating in the 365 project a while ago. I love photography but carrying around my camera all the time was getting heavy and I was overwhelmed by so many other projects on my plate. But I still take photographs from time to time and still love to share them. So here are a few I've taken in recent weeks. Enjoy!

Anderson Cooper looking dreamy reporting from downtown after (not such a) Hurricane Irene

Sunset over the water on my way home after hiking all day. Peaceful.

New York Fashion Week. Bloggers?

Union Square Greenmarket. These peaches were DIVINE.

Rugby on Randall's Island. These girls were fierce. Lesson of the day: never f*ck with a rugby player!

Man playing with giant purple balloons in Washington Square Park fountain. Enough said.

View of 9-11 Memorial at Ground Zero from G's apartment

Monday Mantra

Things That Make Me Go :)

As if the fact that it's Friday isn't reason enough to be happy, I'm feeling like there's so many going things going on right now. Perfect reason for another "Things That Make Me Go :) " post! Here goes...

1. Happiness. Enough said.

2. I meant to post this a while back but life got in the way. I don't live in San Francisco & I'm not looking for a roommate. But if I did and I was, this guy would totally be my top choice. This Craigslist add had me cracking up for hours (click on link). Warning, the guy drops the f-bomb like his life depends on it.

3. Slow Roasted Tomatoes. OMG. If you've never slow roasted tomatoes in your home before, please go out & buy tomatoes, garlic and olive oil right this minute and then do it. Your nose will thank me, I promise. I had a nice container of grape tomatoes, threw them on a tin foil lined baking sheet, tossed with some unpeeled garlic cloves and a bit of olive oil and roasted them at 300 F for 3 hours. Holy amazeballs. I kid you not. It was difficult not to eat them right them on the spot but I managed to save a few for a yummy egg, broccoli, toasted corn & roasted tomato scramble. Life can't help but feel incredible when with food like this!

4. The facebook I <3 to Run page. If you love to run, are on facebook and haven't checked out this page, you should. It's great. Full of awesome pictures, quotes and inspiration. This is probably one of my favorite posts ever. 

5. Sweat. And I have the shirt to prove it! I bought this beyond awesome tech tee to support Ali's Run for the Rabbit, raising $ for The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. Please excuse the unattractive look on my face but turns out it's not that easy to take a decent pic of yourself in the mirror and to prove my point, I had to pick the picture with the best sweat marks. You understand, right? Anyway, you should totally get your own by clicking here.

6. Progress. I'm FINALLY working on my first Erica Sara Designs newsletter and I couldn't be more excited. I'm hoping to send one out each month, maybe more, but probably not much more unless there's something uber important to say. Because who wants to be bombarded with emails, right? In any case, I'm excited about it. Have you signed up to receive it?

 I'm sure there's plenty more for which to be grateful but it's a beautiful day in NYC and I'm dying to head to the farmer's market for some juicy heirloom tomatoes. Which probably means some sort of post about that next week. Excited? I thought so.

Until then, have a fantastic weekend everyone!!!

All In A Day's Work

Recently, I've received lots of questions regarding my jewelry. Who designs it? Who makes it? Where is it made? By hand??? And my responses are: Me, me, my studio, yes! So I thought it might be nice to give you a little glimpse into what it actually takes to make a piece of jewelry. Since I was working on a stack of hammered rings the other day, I took the opportunity to photograph the process for you. I did my best to capture each step while using one hand to make the jewelry and the other to photograph. Please forgive me for leaving out some steps. It's a bit dangerous to sand silver with only one hand... safety first!

So this is what I look like while creating a piece. Hair is tied back tightly so that it can't catch on fire or get caught in any machinery. Safety goggles so that nothing can fly in my eyes and so I don't burn my eyebrows or eyelashes off. Tight fitting clothing so again, nothing catches on fire or gets caught. See? Isn't jewelry making glamorous?!? ;)

And now for the process:

1. Saw the sterling silver or gold filled wire to the appropriate length depending on ring size ordered. Since I'll hammer the ring later, and hammering will stretch it out, I always saw the wire a few millimeters short
2. Crap! I mixed up 2 & 3... ok, refer to picture 3. I file the ends of the wire so that they are flat and can be matched together to form a solid seam. 
3. And now refer to picture 2... I bend the wires into a circle or oval to match the seams. Since I will be shaping the ring later, the shape doesn't have to be perfect yet
4. I cover the ring in an extremely poisonous chemical (yay for me) that will protect it from the fire when I heat it up to seal the seam and to make more pliable
5. Using a metal pick, I place a piece of silver solder on the seam. This will be melted and will fill the seam to seal it.
6. The solder piece is on the seam
7. Directing heat on the solder to melt into the seam
8. The solder is melted and the ring is formed
9. After the ring cools a bit, I place in cold water to cool further so I don't burn my hands handling
10. Place the ring in a pot of more toxic chemicals, this time acid, to clean it. Then sand down the seam to make it uniform with the rest of the ring (step not shown)
11. Time to heat the rings again so I can shape and hammer them. Metals become more pliable when heated and harden when worked. Depending on the type of ring I'm making, I may heat, work, heat, work, heat, work over and over until I get the shape or look for which I'm aiming. Each time I do this, I will protect, heat, place in water and then acid all over again. It can be quite a process!
12. Heating the rings so I can shape
13. Using a rubber mallet to shape & size the ring
14. Using a ball end metal hammer to hammer the ring
15. Once I am happy with the sizing and design, they look something like this
16. Then I place them in a tumbler with a bit of powdered ivory soap to clean and harden them. Since the rings are thin, I want to harden as much as possible so that they don't bend out of shape
17. In the tumbler

And the finished product! 

Facing the Facts

It's time to face the facts. I'm injured and my body needs time to heal. I made the decision this weekend: I will not be running the New York City Marathon this year.

The decision was both easy and incredibly difficult to make. Easy in that there really doesn't seem to be much of a choice. I'm hurting and can barely run more than 3 miles. How on earth can I expect to run 26.2 in 2 months? But difficult in that it hurt. It hurt a lot. In fact, I can't remember the last time I felt as much emotional pain as I did this past Saturday evening when I realized that there would be no marathon this year. And not just any marathon but NYCM.

Now please don't take that the wrong way. I don't mean "any marathon" other than NYCM isn't just as impressive or important to those running it. But NYCM has been my DREAM for years, it's been my ultimate goal. It's one of the reasons I began running on a regular basis, why I began training for half marathons and then marathons, to prove I was strong enough to do it. When I moved back to NY after college more than 10 years ago, I looked forward to this race every year. To me, it's the best day of the year in NYC. The energy is incredible, the runners strong and inspiring, just an overall palpable intense feeling. And now I have to wait another year to run it.

So here's what's going on with my injury. Last week was an awesome one. It began with a great physical therapy appointment in which we discovered that my right leg was slightly longer than my left, pushing my right hip higher than my left. Could this be the reason my hip has been killing me? We added a lift to my left shoe, I hopped on the treadmill and I ran pain free. I walked around the office, again, pain free. I was ecstatic. Torn and now swollen hamstring injury aside, could this be the solution to some of my pain? I left the office excited to test out our theory and excited for the week. It was the last official week of summer and I spent it living it up, heading to Long Island with my best friend, spent a day at a beautiful beach on Fire Island and hiked with great friends. 

lunch by the pool, reading on the beach

Hiking!

Hiking? With my injury? Well yes. I figured if I put a heel lift in my left hiking boot all would be ok. So I spent Friday hiking 3 miles in four hours, up steep rocks a great deal of the way. And my hamstring and hip felt pretty good the entire way. In fact, I didn't have any hammie pain at all. When I got home Friday night I was excited! If I felt that great after hiking all day, running should be a breeze, right?

I waited until Saturday dusk, my favorite time of day, to run. I envisioned a beautiful 4 or 5 miles along the water, watching the sun begin to set, feeling the fresh breathe through my lungs as I effortlessly glided along NYC's west side. And that was the case for the first 10 minutes... and then the pain began. My hamstring, my hip, everything just started killing. I told myself to test it out a bit further, and the pain went away for a short while. But it came back with a vengeance and by 3.4 miles I had to stop with tears pouring down my face. I was sobbing. Maybe because of the pain or maybe because I felt like I failed. I think a little bit of both. I sat on the rocks by the water, let myself cry really hard, and then picked myself up and slowly walked home. And then I cried some more, drew a mineral salt bath, and called G for some emotional support.

I sat in my bathtub for a really long time and thought about how I felt, trying to put everything into perspective. Here's what I came up with, with a little help from a friend:

• I'm ridiculously lucky to have my overall health despite this injury. How many people are physically able to hike for four hours? I love hiking. I'm grateful I can do that.
• I'm really sad I won't be running the marathon this year but I have so many friends running it and I get to cheer them on. There may be some hard moments but there's no way in hell I'm going to let my situation overshadow my excitement for them. I will be at mile 24 just like the last few years and I will scream my ass off, awesome sign in hand. I will celebrate them & their achievements and November 6th will be about them, and not about me.
• I'm alive. I'm not sick. I'm not dying. I know too many young people, including several my age, who have passed away in the last few years. I get to live and swim and hang out with my friends, listen to music, spend time with the people I love. I am alive and healthy.
• I have an incredible support system. Wonderful friends, a supportive family and a pretty special and important person in my life. I'm really lucky. And when I need them, they are there for me to lean on.
• I will run again. If I hadn't hiked and then run, if I had just run, then maybe Saturday's run would've been ok. But eventually, during a 10 miler or maybe a 20, this would've happened. Although according to my physical therapist, it might've happened worse- I could've snapped my hamstring and then where would I be? And if that had happened mid-marathon, how would I feel? Instead it happened now, and I can be smart and take care of it. And I will run again.

So that's the plan now. I'm taking it easy and not running NYCM this year. I will spend the next few weeks healing, swimming, working out on the elliptical and getting strong. And then I will spend the year getting even stronger and building a strong enough base to kick major ass during next year's training and race. I will run New York City in 2012, I have no doubt about that!

Monday Mantra