I had so much fun in the past seven days, so I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to?
Friday Oct 30th
After a morning swimwear shoot and a couple of castings, I met up with an ESPN crew in Soho. The channel approached me to shoot a documentary about me running the New York City Marathon. I met with the producers and filmmakers, Ben and Alvaro, and I realized I’d committed to quite a lot in just a few days. They also told me they wanted to shoot at my house, so I rushed home and got cleaning!! A rock’n’roll Friday night!
Saturday Oct 31st
I didn’t get much sleep the night before the marathon, I was both anxious and excited in equal measure. I met up with the ESPN crew at the Health Expo in the Javits Center early that morning, where I collected my running bib and the guys interviewed both myself and some other runners about the course. Then it was off to my apartment in Williamsburg.
I prepared a meal for the cameras; my own invention- “Strawberry Goodness”. I’ll share the recipe once the documentary airs. I’ve never cooked on camera before, obviously, it was actually quite tricky. All the utensils have to face the camera, so you need to remember where all the buttons are from memory. Well, I managed, but had to make a lot of fun of myself, it’s just going to be a little messy. We called it “Adela’s Cooking Show”, so original!
Sunday Nov 1st
The big day! The one I’d been preparing for, for a such looong time. Months of training and commitment were about to pay off, hopefully!
I got up at 4:30am to head for the Staten Island Ferry and then a bus to take me to the start line. I got maybe 4 or 5 hours of sleep, which is my pre-marathon record, so I was in high spirits. It seems nuts, but not many runners actually sleep the night before a marathon, everyone is so nervous, so much adrenalin rushing through your body. I finally got to the start line 3 hours later, and then there was a lot of waiting around. I took my own pack of oatmeal and was really glad that I had. We were ushered to our corral quite early and I threw my fleece jacket and gloves in the charity bins provided (love this idea). Two deafening canons and then Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” provided a magical start to the run. (Read more about it here.)
Well…I did it and it felt awesome, so painful, but so incredibly rewarding, when I crossed the finish line I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry even more when I realized I had to walk another 30 blocks to meet my friends and family! I eventually reached them wearing my huuuge blue poncho, they struggled to pick me out from the ’Smurf march’ but it was wonderful to see them. Finally home, I had a quick shower and headed out to celebrate with some pizza and red wine at my local Italian favorite, Acqua Santa.
Monday Nov 2nd
I thought I’d sleep so well Sunday night, but I was so full of adrenalin that I woke at 5am. I still felt amazing, I had so much energy I was bouncing off the walls! The ESPN crew returned to my house that morning to do more interviews and to film my boxing class with Ken Atkins, an incredible personal trainer. It was so hard to throw serious kicks and punches a few hours after my marathon and Kenny didn’t let me off easily, but that’s actually what I like about him the most, he’s tough. After this we headed to Central Park to shoot running footage, YUK! I survived on a single banana the whole day, which wasn’t clever and at around 5pm I was ready to kill someone. The day ended with another celebratory dinner at Café Mogador in Williamsburg, our favorite. It’s so healthy, so lovely and I got a free cocktail as I was wearing my Marathon medal! Woohoo!
Tuesday Nov 3rd
This was a very exciting day. It was the first time I was to fly a plane with passengers, my now familiar ESPN crew, (I was starting to feel like a Kardashian), were going to get an arial tour of Long Island. The weather conditions were perfect, and if I may say so myself, I did some pretty damn good landings. What a fun expedition! Thank you Heritage Flight Academy for being so cooperative and making my plane look so clean and pretty. We got back to Manhattan late, but still managed to film some more running footage, as there’s never enough running in life, right?
Wednesday Nov 4th
I was up at 4:30am so we could get some footage of me running at sunrise on the East Side, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background, and what a sunrise it was, beautiful! After this, we headed to the studio of the world famous , Antoine Verglas, one of the greatest photographers out there.
We shot fitness images for a magazine called GoSEE, with my ESPN family documenting it all. Thanks so much to Ana Sicat for my wonderful hair and make-up and to Antoine and his whole team for making us feel so welcome, I can’t wait to see the images! After that, time to BLOODY run again! This time on the West Side Highway running path for some sunset footage. Sunrise to Sunset, this was a long day!
Thursday Nov 5th
I said a sad goodbye to the ESPN crew in the morning and went back to my regular schedule. Lots of castings that morning and I felt a little sad and lonely now that nobody was following me around anymore! My day ended with a short surgery to have a couple of moles removed. I’ve been postponing this forever, as I won’t be allowed to exercise a little while, something that simply hasn’t been an option for a long time! It was only a local anesthetic, but I was so tired that I fell fast asleep right there on the operating table.
I can’t say this enough, what a week! Thanks so much to everyone who was a part of it. I loved every bit of it!
ESPN Run & ESPN Woman documentaries coming soon. Stay tuned!
