I know it has been a while since I posted anything new here. I guess I took a month off from the blog just like running. I wanted to give my IT band plenty of time to recover, and to be quite honest I wasn’t entirely sure that I would want to start again. I month to the day from when I ran the Mini I went back out again. I would like to try another half marathon this year to see if I can break the two-hour mark. This time I will try to ramp up the mileage slowly. So far I feel pretty good.

As I am sure you know by now, I‘ve been testing in a Pro Mod car, and just ran my first race in Englishtown, N.J. Every race car has its own personality and these are no different. The guys on the team still joke about me calling them angry little race cars. We qualified 10th in Englishtown, but lost in the first round. It wasn’t a bad weekend; we just need a little more time to sort out this car. The crew chief for all three R2B2 cars, Al Billes, sure has a handle on the car driven by Raymond Commisso. Raymond was the No. 1 qualifier, won the race, and set a new record for the class by running 5.85 in the final. Tommy and I really enjoyed being there for Raymond’s first NHRA win and celebrating with the team. Here is Raymond behind the counter making pizzas at the place where we went to celebrate.

We took the opportunity to play tourist with Tommy’s parents; Tommy Sr. and Sarah, and my mom, Barb, in the week leading up to the Englishtown race. We rode the train in from New Jersey and spent a couple of hours on Wednesday riding the double-decker buses around to get a quick view of everything. We went to the top of 30 Rockefeller Center and finished off the night by seeing the musical 9 to 5. We got home pretty late, and didn’t get going quite as early as we would have hoped on Thursday.

By the time we got back out to New York the first order of business was lunch. We ate at Rosa Mexicana, a restaurant that came highly recommended by some of our friends. Of course my favorite part was the margaritas and guacamole. I could have had just that and been completely happy. After three margaritas apiece and two big orders of guac, quite honestly I don’t really remember the food. It’s a good thing we covered some ground after lunch to work some of that off. We also rode the subway to catch the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. We even met some race fans on Liberty Island. On our way back to catch the train we went by Ground Zero and walked all the way back up to Time Square. With all that walking it was easy to justify the Gelato we had on the way. By Thursday night I think everyone was worn out but I’m sure that we all had a good time.

I already know what I want to write about next time, two of my favorite things in the world, dogs and food. Check back in for my mom’s new dog Dakota, and my guacamole recipe.