Good morning blog land! I'm in New York getting ready for day one of my conference. I'm so excited to be here and I'm having a blast already.

My coworker and I got in to town bright and early yesterday morning for some meetings in the city.

I'll be counting hoofing it all around town with my five million pound laptop bag as my cross training for the day. Seriously, I got quite the workout.

After my meetings though I was happy to collapse into my fabulous hotel bed. Seriously, hotels rock, especially the one I'm staying in for this conference. Soooooo comfy. And the shower...it's huge. And has a rockin' shower head. Ok...and that's about enough gushing about the hotel room.

After recharging my batteries with some Shark Week, I headed out to meet some of the NYC bloggers and Caitlin from Healthy TIpping Point. She was in town for her interview with the Today Show, promoting Operation Beautiful, and we all decided to get together for a quick bite to eat in the city.


I was so nervous because I didn't "know" a single person there.

But in the end it was a blast.

Everyone was so friendly. We chatted, we ate, we took pictures.

(Thanks to Caitlin for the picture)

Today's conference is all about business best practices with social media, case studies and finding out what works to reach an audience. Pretty much it's my perfect conference.

And for now I'm off to meet some fantastic ladies (and gents) and learn all about my field.

Happy Thursday!

I mentioned yesterday that July was a perfect month of training. I hit every single run and I didn't have to adjust my schedule once.

I'm not going to be so lucky with August.

I should still be able to hit all my targeted runs, but August will be the month of the training plan shuffle.

I'm heading up to NYC tomorrow for the BlogHer conference, a giant conference all about blogging. Work's sending me so I can learn lots of new things to bring back and help improve our organization's blog. I'm really, really looking forward to the conference and all the things I'm going to learn and all the people I'm going to meet.

But, it's definitely making me get creative with my training plan.

To adjust, I shuffled my mid-week runs to the beginning of this week to make sure I got them finished while I was still home. Lucky for me it happens to be a cutback week and I'm only schedule to run twice during the week with an extra day of cross training.

What I'm really worried about is this week's long run. It's my first run in double digits this training cycle and I'm nervous about doing it in a new place on an unfamiliar route. I'll be in NYC until Sunday, so it's got to happen there.

My plan to ensure the run happens:

1. I've mapped a course on Mapmyrun. It's a simple out and back on a gorgeous running path in the city that's heavily used, so I feel like I'd be safe there. It's not in Central Park. I watch too much Law and Order for that.

2. I've checked and double checked to make sure I have all my running things packed: Garmin, Gu, water bottle, sneakers, iPod, socks, shorts, sports bra, etc.

3. I'll have Garmie so if I get lost, I can use the navigation function to get back to my hotel. But it's an out and back, all I need to do is turn around. I won't get lost.

4. If I wake up and get out the door by 6 a.m., I'll have time to finish the run and shower and not miss a minute of the conference. And that's with buffer time in case I go really, really slowly.

I've done just about everything I can to prepare myself for this run, and I'm not sure why I'm so freaked out. I blame it on the double digits. If this was just a routine seven miler, I'd probably be much less concerned.

I've been working on pumping myself up for this one all week. I feel confident that I'll get it done, but I'm a little bit nervous that at the last minute I'll punk out!

Sometimes we just have those wonderful runs that remind us why we drag ourselves out of bed insanely early on the weekends.

Saturday was that kind of run for me. My nine miles couldn't have really gone better for a mid-summer run.

Splits:
1: 9:53
2: 9:24
3: 9:12
4: 10:24
5: 9:41
6: 9:19
7: 10:18
8: 9:42
9: 9:45

I had a few slower splits on some of the hills, but otherwise I was fairly consistent.

The temperatures were decent, my route had tons of shade and while there were definitely hills, I conquered them.

It was my first run in the BF's new neighborhood, and it many ways, it reminded me of running at home in PA. The run was through a lot of neighborhoods, there weren't many traffic lights I had to stop at, and the roads all felt safe.

There were also tons and tons of other runners outside. As I was running past a park, I passed a huge group of people in Team in Training shirts. I would imagine they're starting their preparations for the Baltimore Marathon in October.

The run was great, and it also capped off a perfect July for me. I didn't miss a single training run the entire month, which is awesome. I definitely feel like I'm running the best I've run in a long time.

July Totals:
Number of runs: 18
Total miles: 73.29
Total time running: 11:45:50
Average speed: 6.2 mph