Running, Sports

Race #52 – The Color Run Night 5K

2 Comments

I’ve said it before, I’m not much for “novelty races” — mud runs, cave crawls, and the like.  It’s not the I mind the events too much, but a lot of them are nationwide touring events with no medals.  However, there are a few things that’ll trip my trigger, and pique my interest.  One is NASCAR tracks.

When I found out that the Color Run Night was gonna be held on the track at Gateway Motor Speedway, I was in.  There was no medal, but it was on the track!  And then, I discovered that they also had another race from these folks in September, the Color Run Shine, that would have a medal.  Woot!  I signed up for both.

Unfortunately, I got an email a couple of days ago that the Shine race in September was gonna be cancelled.  No real explanation, just due to “circumstances beyond our control.”  There went my medal, but I still had the race on the track, so that was good.

I went out Saturday morning, and started gathering the things I’d need for the race — goggles (to protect my glasses and eyes), a couple of cowbells, and lots of glo-sticks.  I wanted to be dressed right for this event!

Drag Strip
Drag Strip

I got to the track a couple of hours ahead of the race start, as suggested, and wandered around the facility.  This track is both an oval, as well as drag strip.  When I was a kid, I liked drag racing, and it was extremely cool to stand at the start line, and look down the track.

As it was really hot — about 90° — I figured I needed hydration and a little food.  The concessionaires were dealing, so I scarfed a big ol’ soft pretzel and a bottle of water.

And knowing there was no medal, I went to the “company store” and picked up a keychain.  I figured I could get some ribbon, and make a medal out of that little plastic do-dad.

The stage group were whipping the growing crowd into a frenzy, with music, swag flung into the crowd, and group Zumba.  It was looking to be a good-sized and energetic group as the sun set, and we got closer to the start time.

Start Line
Start Line

We started to corral near the start line, and it was evident that this was gonna be fun.  Folks had their lights, glo-sticks and glow-in-the-dark stuff revved up, and little by little, we were released in waves onto the course.

Shortly after my wave took off, we turned, and found ourselves on the drag strip.  Although it was dark, you could still see the dark rubber from all the burnouts.  Walking on that, however, was anything but fast.  The rubber laid down by all those tires was tacky, and it felt like you were walking on fly paper.  Probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever walked on!

One after another, the throng I was with crossed into color zones where we were doused in colored powder.  There was also a zone with bubble machines, and another with black-light messages on the pavement.  From the flats of the straightaways to the banks of the turns, the course was great, and loads of fun.

One thing I’ll mention is that the course was short of 5K — my Garmin measured about 4.3km, but with the walk from the parking to the course, and back, I’m counting it as a 5K!

Crossing the finish line, I was handed a bag, filled with the same colored powder that was covering everyone.  This was for the after-party.  And then, someone put a medal in my hand.

Now, the medal was a “Shine” medal, not a “Night” medal, but that was fine with me.  My guess is that the medals for the Shine event on September 19th were already in town, so they were just used for this event.  Works for me!

The after-party was a blast.  People were everywhere, all covered in every color of the rainbow, and all having a great time.  Every ten minutes or so, the announcer would countdown to another “color blast”, which is when those bags of color would be launched among the crowd.  It’d look like a massive fog falling from the sky when folks would fling their colored powder in the air.  It was really cool, and gave a great medium for the lasers from the stage to shine through.

And finally, they had a fireworks show.  And not just bottle rockets — real good fireworks that went on and on.

Post-Race
Post-Race

When I got home, I got a good look at my clothes, and man was I a mess!  I had color-covered arms.  I had a color-covered belly — I have no idea how that happened!  My shoes were orange.  I was a mess.

After I got in the house, and figured out how to keep from tracking color all over the place, I hopped in the shower, and began to try to scrub off all the color from me.  Frankly, I was surprisingly successful, although there’s still a little color on me.  During the shower, though, it looked like someone was wringing out a Smurf — so much dirty blue-ish colored water!!

Yeah, I don’t usually do this kind of race, but I believe this may be a return event for me.  It was that fun!

EDIT:  Here’s the video from the race.  Warning… it’s kinda long!

This race benefitted the American Red Cross of Eastern Missouri.

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #51 – Quest for the Golden Pearl 5K

5 Comments

With exceptionally cool morning weather this week, I resolved last night to get up early today, and run.  It didn’t hurt that the Perseid meteor shower was also coming up on its peak (which is tonight).  So,  at 4:30am, I drug my tired self out of bed, threw on my running gear, and walked out on the deck, both to confirm the temperature was as predicted, as well as to see if there were any streakers in the sky.  The temp was great, but I saw nothing of the Perseids.  🙁

I scarfed a little breakfast (water and an English muffin with peanut butter and some wonderful honey from the pantry — this stuff was kinda green colored, and crazy sweet!), and trucked out to the site of my last awful run… the Wildwood Greenway.

This time, Mr. Sun wasn’t gonna harsh my buzz.

Last night, I set up my Garmin a little differently, albeit still for intervals.  In the ill-fated run on Monday, I set up intervals in the Training set of menus.  This was the way I was accustomed to doing intervals with my old Garmin, so I thought that was right.  When doing it like that, however, you can only specify a specific number of cycles of running and walking, and in the online app, splits are shown as a function of those cycles, rather than kilometers or miles.  Not great, but the price of entry.

Playing around with the menus, I saw that I could set up an alert for my running/walking intervals, and after a little testing from the couch last night, I knew I’d found the right settings — prompting for run-to-walk transitions (and vice-versa!), as well as preserving my kilometer splits.  Perfect!  With my intervals set to 30secs of running and 90secs of walking, I was ready.

So this morning at the Greenway, I exited the Jeep, stretched, and hit the magic button on the Garmin to start timing whatever was to come.  I knew that I’d use the first three cycles (six minutes) to warm up and wake up.  Those passed quickly, and I made a commitment…

I was gonna let my Garmin have its way with me, and make me its whiny bitch.  When it said “run”, I’d run.  When it said “walk”, I’d think about it.  🙂

And that’s what I did.  I powered up some hills that usually cause me big grief.  I ran down the backside of some hills, extending my running cycle into my walking cycle because it felt good.  In fact, I ran up some of the hills faster than I ran down them.

It didn’t hurt that the temperature was twenty-five degrees cooler than Monday night, or that I only had the sun on me during the second half of the course.  It also didn’t hurt that I found a commitment this morning that’s been lacking lately.  Yes, I’ve been finishing my races, but on the terms my weak gray matter has been dictating, not at the level of capability I know I have.  This morning, I gave up control of that to a little plastic widget on my wrist, and it forced me to run more consistently than I have in a long time.  In fact, today was sub-50min moving time (those stupid traffic signals pushed me to 50min overall), and that was tremendous, especially after Monday’s debacle.

I’ve never tried running before my workday began, but this just might be a good thing for me!  Now, to go off and reward myself with coffee and Cap’n Crunch…

This race benefitted Water.org, which pioneers innovative, sustainable solutions to the global water crisis, giving women hope, children health and communities a future.

Race Course

Apple Existence, Cycling, Geek-Speak, Running, Sports

Say Hello to My Little Friend

iPod Shuffle (4th Gen)
iPod Shuffle (4th Gen)

I’ve had a love affair with music since I was a kid.  I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t a huge piece of my life.  And because of that, I love running with music.

A long time ago, I picked up a tiny little iPod, the iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) to carry music with me when I went cycling or traveling.  I loved that little thing, and it still works very, very well to this day.

However, as I’ve started to do more running, I’ve discovered that you cannot control that model of Shuffle with the on-cable controls — no volume adjustments, next/previous track, etc.  When I’m running, I’ll find that a particular track at a particular time doesn’t hit me quite right, and I wanna skip it.  Sometimes, I’ll find a track that was so good with my pace that I wanna repeat it.  While you can do that from the front of the Shuffle, you sorta have to fiddle with it on your waistband or pocket, and that’s a little distracting to me.

4th and 2nd Generation iPod Shuffles
4th and 2nd Generation iPod Shuffles

As I started to research, I got tangled up between the newer iPod Nano (I have an older one of those too!) and the newer Shuffle.  The new Shuffle pays attention to those on-cable controls and is really teeny, but the new Nano had Bluetooth for headphones.  I even bought some new Bluetooth running headphones to see if I could get them to fit my earholes and get used to them.  No deal.  You see, I love my Bose sport earbuds, despite being cabled.  They fit my ears like they were custom made for them, and ultimately, that’s what made my decision easy.  Shuffleland, here I came.

A few things of note.  First off, the price now is about half what I paid for my first Shuffle.  They both only sport 2GB of storage, but with an option in iTunes, you can “down convert” files to 128kb/s, putting more music in the small space.  Even at 128kb/s, the audio quality is fine for my old ears when I’m out running or riding, and 2GB has always given me plenty of variety when I’m out putting trails behind me.

I’ve had this little thing for a couple of weeks now, and I really love it.  It’s teency, even smaller than the previously diminutive Shuffle.  This time, I even got it engraved at the factory. The only complaint I have about the engraving is that it is really, really small, and is more like a printed message, making it very hard to see.  Still, I know it’s there, and that’s a good thing.  🙂

Packaging
Packaging

I was struck with the reduction in the size of the packaging.  In the photo, you can see the difference in size between the little plastic coffins these two devices were shipped in.  Apple’s gone to some lengths to minimize the amount of packaging in many of their products, and it really shows with the tiny little box for the new one.  One casualty of that move — you only get one Apple sticker, instead of two.

Charging
Charging

The charging system has also gotten smaller.  With the second generation device, there was a long cable and a little dock.  The new Shuffle has a little pigtail cable that plugs directly into the headphone plug.  I kinda like that, especially given that I’ll be traveling with this one to races around the country.  In fairness, it is a little awkward to plug into the back of a Mac or iMac, but works great with my MacBook or a USB hub.

So, after a couple of weeks of putting it through its paces, I think I’ve decided this new little piece of gear is a keeper.  Hopefully, it’ll last as long as my first Shuffle!

Running, Sports

Race #50 – Phone Home 5K

After my success on Saturday morning, I got cocky, and returned to the Greenway yesterday afternoon.  I thought I’d have a great time of it, zipping through 5km, and maybe even adding a few more miles.  And even more optimistically, I set my Garmin to work through  some interval work to see if I could get my times down.

Mr. Sun, however, had an entirely different plan.

I got out to the Greenway just after work, and noticed it was hotter than I expected.  Earlier in the day, we’d had a small storm come through that scrubbed out the atmosphere, and made things really nice.  Apparently, nature abhors a vacuum, and where the humidity had poured down as rain, it was replaced with vicious crazy nasty humidity with big, nasty pointy teeth.  So, not just hotter, but more humid.  Hooray.

Jumping on the trail, I started moving my feet.  I knew I’d take five minutes or so of walking to warm up, and shortly after that, I started to work my intervals.  By the end of the third interval, I knew I was not landing in a happy place, and quickly, my times fell off, and I was looking at conditions and a pace more like the ugly race in Washington almost a month ago.  This too, had turned in a death march across the desert of pavement.

I slogged on, and on, and on, wondering if this distance would ever be complete.  It felt like some kind of sick Groundhog Day, with the pavement beneath my feet never seeming to end.  I finally got to my three-quarters complete point, and knew I was gonna make it through.  Frankly, there’s really no option but to finish — there’s no way to get back to the parking lot, shy of some kind soul stopping on the side of the road to rescue you and ferry you along.

So, I finished — yay! — but I was toast afterward.  Note to self… heat and humidity DO NOT MIX!!!

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #49 – Sage Rat River Run 5K

Somewhere along the way, I’d heard of the virtual races at Virtual Run World, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t watching them for  races.  Their medals were kinda large and gaudy, and didn’t trip my trigger.  However, I learned recently that they sponsor a “real world” race, and that they were selling off excess medals from those race series.

That race is the Sage Rat River Run, which is run at a variety of distances, and one of those is 5K — right in my wheelhouse.  The other thing that was enticing about this was the rat on the medal.  Darla’s been chasing rats in tubes as part of barn hunt, and doggone-it, I wanted to have my own rat reward!  🙂

I decided to return to the Wildwood Greenway, and run on it for the first time in a couple of years.  This is a great paved trail, with paths on both the north and south sides of Highway 100 (Manchester Road), and is the site of my PR at 5K back in 2012.  Of course, on a nice day, it’s pretty crowded with walkers, runners and cyclists.  Yesterday was no exception.

I’d intended to just go 5K, but kinda got in a groove, and started exploring the trail, getting into some of the nooks and crannies I’ve never explored.  Before I knew it, I was over five miles for the second weekend in a row.  And once again, I found that I had a nice rhythm going (albeit not the fastest in the world!), which is giving me some real confidence about the upcoming half-marathon in Tulsa come November.  I get it that five miles is significantly less distance than 13.2 miles, but the early returns are looking promising!

So, with this weird course yesterday morning, I have no good way of extracting splits for either 5K or 5mi.  C’est la vie.  Sometimes, it’s about the journey, rather than the metrics!

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #48 – Road Shark Five Mile Run

Given that we all survived another Sharknado, I just had to run this virtual race!

I wanted to challenge myself, and do something a little longer than the 5K races I’ve been doing lately.  Five miles is about 8km, and is a small stepping stone to the half-marathon distance (a little over 21km) that I’ll be doing in November.

Frankly, I’d been dreading this run for a few days.  It’s summer.  This was the longest distance I’d done in almost three months.  And lastly, I was doing it on my own — no race support, other runners, etc.  All that weighed heavy on me as I thought through my route planning for this morning.

I landed on a good, extensible course, which was the path up Clayton Road.  That’s been my favorite 5K route, despite the recent runs on the Wren Trail course.  I’ve favored Wren lately because of traffic.  I love having music in my ears when I’m on course, and Clayton Road just has too much traffic on it to do that, unless you get out early in the morning.

I ate my regular raceday breakfast — toasted english muffin, with peanut butter and honey, paired with a tall glass of water —  stretched and headed out around 6am, just after sunrise.  And right from the start, this run felt different.

The weather was amazing, especially given the heat we’ve had over the last couple of weeks.  I think that was really fortunate for me, as I’ve proven many times this summer that I don’t do well in the heat.

I marched down Clayton, and things were coming easy.  Way easy.  I got to my turnaround point for a 5K, and did a little bit of a gut-check.  Did I have it in me to go beyond this point, and complete these five miles?  I felt good, so I plowed on.

When I planned my route a few days ago, I was surprised to see how far up the road my turnaround point was gonna be.  Somehow, my brain had that location figured to be a whole lot farther away from the house than I’d just seen on the map.  I just knew that couldn’t be right, and I knew I’d be watching my Garmin to make sure I knew my “real” turnaround.

I got closer to my planned turnaround point, and began to climb the last hill on the eastbound side of my route, and I was struck by just how far I’d come… both in my personal journey, as well as this run.  I would never have believed I could’ve travelled on foot so far.

I turned around — and my race planning was correct! — climbed that hill again (from the other side), and got into a great groove going down the long grade as I continued westward.  In what seemed like no time, I passed my 5K turnaround point, knowing I had just over 2km to go.  And right about then, I got a gift.

A business was watering their lawn.

I didn’t dance in the sprinklers, but I did take it in, and let it rain down on me.  Even though it wasn’t especially hot this morning, that unexpected shower felt wonderful, and was the best part of the route this morning.  I was energized by this, and continued to work toward the ranch.

It seemed like I blinked, and was home.  It seemed like the whole course went by so fast, especially the last 2km.  If I had to guess, I was enjoying the benefits of that “runner’s high” that I keep hearing about, but has never quite found me.  This wasn’t the longest run for me — that was the Hospital Hill 10K in early June — but it was by far the best run I’ve had since I began this journey three years ago, taking advantage of my second chance after cancer.

So, how’d this match up against my 10K times two months ago?  Well, it’s pretty amazing.  In June, the race was just over six miles, and I covered it at a pace of 17:54min/mi.  This morning, I did just over five files, and covered it at 16:35min/mi.  I shaved 1:20min/mi off my time in June!  And frankly, this morning, I really believe I could’ve done 10km easily.  Things were going just that well.

After a couple of weeks of pretty challenging running, it was awesome to have a really, really good run!

Race Course
Running, Sports

Race #47 – Guts to Glory 5K

Yet another virtual race… shocker, eh?  🙂

(And yeah, the header image isn’t from this race, but it’s the only image I could think of that had a “gut” in it!)

Yesterday was hot.  There’s no other way to describe it.  Ninety degrees in the shade, and there wasn’t a lot of shade.  However, Da Lou had a “cold” front come through overnight, so the humidity was much less, which  was nice.

I was surprised at the number of folks out on the trail.  I guess the brutal heat of the last week had kept the casual runners and walkers (like me!) indoors.  With the ten degree drop in temperatures since Wednesday and much lower humidity, folks just had to break out, I suppose.  Kinda like cabin fever, but in the summertime.

For me, the heat was exhausting, but it always is.  Despite being a native Floridian, I’m just not a hot-weather kid.  I found myself drinking more water on the course — which is the right answer! — and was pretty dang spent by the time I got home.  There’s a good reason so many races are started in the morning, especially this time of year!

This race benefitted the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.

Race Course
Running, Sports

Race #46 – Remember the Fallen 5K

Anyone who’s read my ramblings about running knows that I love to be out in the rain.

I’d missed this virtual race around Memorial Day when it first came around.  The Virtual Strides folks brought it back recently, with another production run of medals.  After the events back home in Chattanooga, I knew I had to sign up, running this race for the city that helped shape me into the person I am today.

I’d targeted doing this race Saturday morning, but struggled getting myself together to do it, so I deferred to yesterday morning — one of the nice things about a virtual race.  I awoke around 5am to storms, so I didn’t exactly get an early start.  However, I did get started, and that’s a good thing!

Once again, I ran my neighborhood “three lap” course down Wren Trail.  It was raining when I started, which was nice.  And as I ran, I reflected on the last week plus in Chattanooga.  My home town has been bruised by the awful, awful tragedy perpetrated upon our military on their own soil.  My heart’s just so heavy over this.

And that’s why I ran this race… to remember the fallen in my home town.  #NoogaStrong, indeed.

This race benefitted the Special Operations Warrior Fund.

Race Course

Running, Sports

Race #45 – Hollywood Dash Mile

Normally, I don’t jump into short races like this one.  After all, I’m trying to build up my miles toward a 15K and half marathon later this year.  However, I couldn’t resist a short little race on a hot summer night.

This was this group’s first racing event, and frankly, it went off pretty well.  They looped inside the St. Charles Community College campus, which made traffic control and the course pretty easy.  I will say that the heat was miserable, but that’s not the fault of the event folks!

There were two waves of races — one non-competitive and another for competitive runners.  The non-competitive was fun to watch starting, with loads of kids and families taking off at “kid speed”.  Thirty minutes later, the competitive wave began, and I took off.

They had tons of volunteers along the way, and a course well-marked in quarter miles.  The race came and went quickly, and despite some slight hills, was very manageable.  Once again, I proved that I don’t do well in the heat, and did just as much fast walking as I did running.

This is the first “short race” I’ve done in well over a year, and frankly, I enjoyed it.  I’m definitely no sprinter, but I did collect a PR for me for both the mile and kilometer, which was pretty exciting.

The only hitch seemed to be with the finisher medallions advertised on the website for the race.  Apparently, there were only age group medals.  The event organizers have indicate on Facebook that they’re working on how to resolve this, especially since there were so many kids running the races.  Probably more on this another time!

Short race — short race report!

This race benefitted Recreation Council of Greater St. Lois, St. Louis Life, Treehouse of Greater St. Louis, Willows Way, Pathways to Independence, Family Advocacy and Community Training, Community Living, Caring Solutions, The Center for Autism Education and ShowMe Aquatics and Fitness.

Race Course

Running, Sports

Home Is Where the Hardware Is

As many of you have noticed (or tolerated!), I’ve been doing a lot of races lately.  Really.  A lot.  Many.

And because of my current need to have a carrot at the end of a rope when I run, I’ve brought home a lot of hardware from my efforts.  (I’ll leave my discussion about finisher medals with a previous blog post.)  Earlier this year, I grabbed a medal tree to display my medals, but my pace of races has picked up so much, that tree quickly became full o’ stuff, and was pretty unwieldy to deal with.

I’d seen some terrific medal displays from Lifespeed Sports last year at the Hospital Hill race in Kansas City.  I really liked ’em, but at the time, I couldn’t conceive of a time when I would need so much display space.  Funny what a year does to those kind of assumptions…

I saw Wayne and Cindy from Lifespeed again at Hospital Hill this year, and talked with them about creating a massive piece of shelvery to house my growing collection of race medals.  Becky and I talked with them for quite a while, and described what I was looking for.  Wayne was able to translate my sketchy description to his product, and we landed on a six foot long medal shelf with three tiers of hangers for my medals, stained ebony to complement the walls of my office.

Packed to Travel!
Packed to Travel!

A month later, the finished shelf was on the way, and on Tuesday, it landed on my porch.  I started unpacking it at lunch, and discovered it was packed by experts.  The box weighed almost seventy pounds, and was secured inside a custom built wooden cocoon.  Needless to say, it arrived very safely!

And frankly, it was pretty dang easy to put on the wall, using a sturdy piece of lumber atop which to mount it.  It took longer to unpack than it did to hang, and once hung, it was solid on the wall.  I quickly hung about fifty medals from it, placed a few things on the shelf, and made it a foundational part of the “love me wall” in my office.

My Precious!
My Precious!

I’m thrilled with the build quality, and think this will last me quite a while.  When I asked Wayne at HH how many medals he thought that would hold, he thought about 200-250.  I’m not sure it’ll house that many (although Becky has some ideas that may help it store that number), but I get a funny feeling I’m gonna find out really soon!  🙂

can·a·peel (noun) ˈkan-ə-pēl – A meal with a lot of variety, where each participant finds and cooks their own food.