Super Athletes and Cherry Blossoms

We had a great weekend over these beautiful last days of April. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, a true treasure of Brooklyn, lies just a short walk from our home. The BBG (as those in the know call it - and you know who you are) hosts an annual Cherry Blossom festival when the approximately 200 gorgeous cherry trees on their grand cherry esplanade are in peak bloom. Saturday morning Jon and Doris called to invite us to the Gardens, and I quickly jumped on the cherry blossom bandwagon.

The Sakura Matsuri, aka Cherry Blossom Festival, was in full swing with traditional Japanese music and food, tea ceremonies, and oh! thousands of people enjoying the balmy sunny weather. I regret I didn't have enough time to take in the whole festival, especially the Kimono Fashion Show, which I only just realized was on the schedule by examining the BBG website. Jon tantalizingly announced that he had a summer kimono he favors...next year I hope he joins the dozens of others (women, mostly) who donned their beautiful kimonos to stroll around the BBG. Here's a cute picture of Jon and Doris, enjoying the boughs of the trees. Thanks for the invitation, guys! I loved it, even though I couldn't spend much time there because I had to hurry home to make my way to the Jersey Shore....

....because back in November, Lisa decided she wanted to run a half-marathon, and she challenged Andres to join her. These two super athletes have together been training hard for 4 months, and yesterday they ran in the Long Branch Half-Marathon in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Lisa's fabulous fiance Jason rented a zip car on Saturday afternoon, and we zoomed off to the other side of the Hudson. We stayed in a B&B in Sandy Hook, and were delighted to find ourselves transported to a sleepy little beach community, dotted with restaurants charmingly named Off The Hook and The Lusty Lobster. Gotta love it. After a delicious early dinner at the Windansea, Jason and I took our super athletes back to the B&B so they could get enough rest before the big race, which started at 7:15 Sunday morning. Up at the crack of dawn (literally,) we drove them down to the starting point, dropped them off, and immediately did a U-Turn and went to Dunkin Doughnuts to load up on caffeine and post-run doughnuts for our runners. Then Jason and I wandered around in a foggy daze, despite the bright sun shining down over the beach at 7:30 a.m.


Much as our super athletes were new to the half-marathon, we too were new: spectators. Little did we know we were supposed to bring homemade signs, we should have studied the race route in advance so we could select an advantageous cheering point (or points) during the race, and a myriad of other missed customs particular to the sub-culture that is the Half-Marathon. We busied ourselves watching the Marathoners queue up (we loved Larry the Lighthouse, lining up last, in - yes - a tall cardboard lighthouse costume,) comparing notes about our bad backs, and fending off curious caffeine hounds who wanted to know where we got our Dunkin Doughnuts coffee. We knew our super athletes were striving to finish at the 2 hour mark...but only when the race was about an hour in did it occur to us to go cheer them on at the 6 mile mark. Needless to say, by the time we figured out where to position ourselves, we had missed them. But we did see and cheer on a very elderly runner who was wearing a t-shirt that read "Older, Wiser and Sexier." Take that, you youngsters!

So we went back over to the finish line, where an hour later we triumphantly captured both Andres (clocking in at 1:53) and Lisa (1:57) in their final few steps to glory! Here they are together at the end, just finished their 13 mile run and having lived to tell the tale! We are SO proud of you both. We are also in awe. Jason and I could never run that far, that fast, and not beg for mercy. Well, I know I couldn't. I can't wait until y'all run your next race. Because next time I will have the spectator role down pat.