Race Report: WFYRC Beach Series- Race 4 (Clearwater Beach, Florida)

This past Friday was the final race in the summer beach race series I did. This one was very different from the other two races in the series that I did, thanks to a late June tropical storm that resulted in record levels of beach erosion that really resculpted the look of Clearwater Beach. This time, the race was a bit of an obstacle course- there were easily a half dozen times where the runners had to cross up to ankle deep trenches of water where the surf had encroached on the beach for many, many more feet than it used to. My shoes and socks were soaked by the time I finished! There was also a huge amount of seaweed carpeting the beach, it made for a wet, slippery, uneven running surface. I wore my new "Sweat Pink" tank, check out the link to the right of this blog entry for more information about the Sweat Pink movement to get women active. My son fixed my headphones so they stayed in place this time, but my Nike+ GPS program didn't work at all so the headphones didn't really serve their purpose for this race. I'm afraid my iPhone is almost ready to give up the ghost, lots of things are getting wonky on it. I finished in 36:50, which is a few seconds faster than my time in race #1- but that didn't involve all the water obstacles, so I'm calling this one an even better time. :) My next race is my first official 10K, the Morton Plant Hospital Prostate Cancer Awareness 5K and 10K race. That race is special to me because it was my very first race, two years ago (with a 5K time of 49 minutes, which I've now dropped down to 33 to 35 minutes for road races) and my Dad is a prostate cancer survivor of over 10 years so I enjoy doing a run that supports that cause. The race is just over a month away, I'm excited to conquer a new distance!

Vacation is over and race report: Race for Grace 5K

While I was on vacation I got the chance to do a 5K outside of my home state for the first time, doing the Race for Grace 5K in Logansport, Indiana. I like the picture above because it actually shows me RUNNING with relatively fit people at the finish line, lol. I'm on the far right in the teal "Fight Like a Girl" shirt. The race was to raise funds for a 72 hour prayer and discipleship event that the church where the 5K was held does every year. This was also the first time I've done a 5K with a family member other than my husband. This time, my nephew (who is on the cross country team at his school and finished 6 minutes ahead of me), my sister in law and her father all did the 5K. Before it started, we were warned about "Holy Hill", a very steep hill with several churches on it that starts and ends the race. However, we were reminded that one the way back, once you get over Holy Hill, "the promised land" (the finish line) is just feet away. The coolest part of this 5K was the view from the top of that hill on the way out- from there, I could look down and see the hundreds of people ahead of me in the valley created by the hill, it was really a pretty sight. The two hills really did about do me in, with all of my races being in flat Florida I'm not used to those! I ended up coming in 147th place (almost exactly in the middle of the pack) with a time of 35:48 according to my chip. I somehow paused my Nike+GPS at around 2 1/2 miles, so the time on that was way off. The very best part of the race was the AWESOME post race snacks- grapes, apples, oranges and hundreds of amazing homemade cookies. I tracked every bit of it on WW, but I surely did enjoy using up 1/4 of my points for the day on those wonderful peanut butter/chocolate/oatmeal cookies. Way to go, church ladies! I was very careful on my eating while on vacation (I actually lost 2 pounds over the 3 weeks), but since I hadn't weighed in at WW since the beginning of June I showed a gain of 6 pounds and had a lapse in my lifetime member status. I had to pay for a week of WW and I'll continue to have to pay until I lose another 4 pounds to get to the high end of my goal range. Hopefully that will only take a few weeks, it's very disheartening to have to pay after striving for so many weeks to earn that "free" status. :)