Adams Heart Run

Saturday was the annual Adam's Heart Run held at Oak Mountain State Park right outside Birmingham, Alabama.  There was a choice of distances - 5k, 10k, or 10 miles.  The last time I did this race was probably around 9 years ago and I chose the 5k distance back then.   This time I thought the 10k choice would be better since I haven't run any 10k races in years.  The Vulcan run 2003 was probably the last time I ran the 10k distance.  All my races lately have been either 5k, half marathon or marathon distances.

I mentioned it to L, aka the running nazi, and she was all in.  She even suggested we might want to do the 10 miler.  I thought about it for about half a second and then convinced her that the 10k option would be better since

 1.  it's a very hilly course
 2. we just finished running 13.1 miles at Mercedes half marathon less than a week before.
 3.  My calves still aren't totally healed.
 4.  Mentally, I just didn't like the idea of "racing" 10 miles.  6.2 miles seemed more manageable to me.

L finally agreed.  The 10k distance was it.

On race morning we decided to meet at the park around 8am for the 9am start.  I was running about 10 minutes late so when I got to the park I tried to call her.  My cell phone wouldn't call out without the area code added so I tried to memorize her number as I dialed it with the area code.  No answer so I left a message not realizing I had dialed the number wrong.  Opps!  Sorry, whoever I called.

Disregard message!

I went to register and didn't see L anywhere so I walked back to my car and decided to try to call again.  This time the speed dial worked, but L's husband answered her cell phone because she had forgotten and left it at home.  I realized I had just woken him up.  Opps again!   He told me she should already be at the park so I went back toward registration looking for her.

This time I found her.  She had been looking for me too.  It was a fun race, the ground was a little wet but the rain had cleared up from the night before.  I wanted to do around 50 minutes, preferably under 50 but missed it by a little over a minute.  My total time was 51 minutes and some odd seconds.  I placed third in my age group only 20 seconds slower than the 2nd place finisher!

L did good too and now she's suddenly super motivated and said we should do a race EVERY weekend so we can get faster AND get up a 5am on Tuesdays to run with the "hill" running group.

Hills!

5am!

What have I done??

While the weekend races would be fun, I think I'm going to have to pass on the 5am Tuesday morning "hill" run.


All Images from Birmingham Track Club

Fashion Friday - Coral!

Dress - Bebe color block dress calypso coral;  Shoes - Steven by Steve Madden;  Similar here Pink pearl necklace;  bracelet from Cache (old)

It seems like I've gone from nearly no coral items in my wardrobe, to several different dresses in just a couple of months.  Both of these dresses were Christmas and Valentine presents from the Murph.  I've had the Steve Madden shoes for a couple of years with nothing to wear with them because they seemed to clash with my pinks and silver.  Now it seems I have plenty to wear with them and I'll take advantage of that this spring and summer.

Dress - Victoria's Secret crossover bra top dress;  Mac Lipstick - Impassioned;  Similar here John Hardy bracelet; silver cuff bracelet - old;  Shoes - Colin Stuart (old)

Trying to get Cadence out of the "photo shoots" is next to impossible.  He's incredibly clingy and demanding.  Maybe he was trying to remind me that he's sort of coral too, but sort of not.

He's kind of orange, not coral.  No pink, unless you count the ears.  Sorry Cadence!

Now I need to find an OPI shade of coral for my nails.  The OPI South Beach collection has a couple of options.  I'm open to suggestions.

Image from Jasminebeautysupply.com

Coral is one of those colors that I'm not really sure about.  Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't.  It is a pink orange color and I LOVE pink, but orange, not so much.  As long as the coral is more pink than orange, I like it.  Both of the dresses above pass the test.

The Murph did good!

Wanted: Faster Running Shoes To Make My Legs Go Faster

I've been looking for a light weight racing shoe for running marathons and half marathons to replace the Zoot triathlon racing shoe that I sometimes wear. I love the Zoot tri shoes, but I want to save them for when I do triathlons and get light weight racing shoes just for runs.

During the Mercedes Half marathon I wore my regular training shoe, the Brooks Glycerin 10.  It's a great shoe for me to train in,  but it's a little heavy for racing.  I wore the Zoot Tri shoe in Mobile for the half and the Brooks Glycerin Sunday and could tell the difference in weight.  I thought that by wearing the more cushioning Brooks shoe that the bottoms of my feet wouldn't feel so beat up after the race as they did in Mobile, but there wasn't much difference than when I wore the Zoot tri shoe.

The choices I am considering for a light weight running shoe are the Newton Women's shoe which is only a little lighter than my Glycerin 10.  I love the color!

Image from Newtonrunning.com

Newton Women's Distance U

I also found out there is a new pink performance running shoe coming out this Spring by Karhu.  The Karhu reps were at the Mercedes marathon expo and had pictures of it.  It is very cute and pink and worth checking out before I purchase anything.  And did I mention it's PINK!

I love the Brooks Glycerin 10, but as I said before it is pretty heavy for racing at about 9.6 oz.  I really want something under 8 oz for a racing shoe.  I wore the Glycerin 10 in the Chickamauga marathon and the Mercedes Half marathon.

Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon

Brook Glycerin 10

For most of my races the past couple of years, I have worn these Zoot triathlon shoes.  The difference between these and regular light weight running shoes is that these have built in lace locks that makes it easier to pull on in the transition area after taking off your biking shoes.  All you have to do is pull them on, give the laces a quick yank and go.  No time wasted trying to tie them.

Similar one here - Zoot Tri Shoe

Before I got these to do triathlons in, I had to put lace locks on my regular running shoes.  They weren't as easy to deal with as already having them built in the shoe itself.  The Zoot tri shoe itself is designed to tug on quickly and easily.

Image from Profile-design.com

I've worn these Zoot tri shoes at Rock And Roll New Orleans Marathon,

Heading to the Port a let where all well hydrated runners hang out pre-race

At the Buster Britton Triathlon,

Buster Britton Triathlon

Mobile Half marathon, and many other races throughout the past few years.

I have two other pairs of Zoot Triathlon shoes that I don't wear as much.  One pair is turquoise and the other is white and pink and very similar to the ones above except the laces are white instead of black and they are a little stiffer than the ones above so not as comfortable.  When I went to Hawaii two years ago to do the half ironman triathlon in Kona, I absent mindedly packed up one of each.  The right Zoot shoe with the black laces and the left Zoot shoe with the white laces.  What's worse is they made it all the way into my transition bag like that.  I didn't realize I had two different shoes until I was in the transition area ready to put them on race day.

Imagine my surprise after swimming 1.2 miles, biking 56 miles and then reaching in my transition bag and discovering what a stupid mistake I had made.  I said a short prayer right there in the middle of transition for God to PLEASE make one of them a lefty and one of them a righty or I was going to have to

1.   Put two right shoes on and run "awkwardly" for 13.1 miles hoping nobody would notice

2.  Run barefoot for 13.1 miles and hope there was skin on the soles of my feet at the end of the run

or

3.  Abandon the entire race right then and there and that would have been a toughy because I'm not a quitter and I had just flown thousands of miles all the way to Hawaii just to do this race!

Lucky for me I had a lefty and a righty so the entire run part of the race became a science experiment to find out which Zoot tri shoe felt the best and most comfy to me during a race.  It made the run go by just a little bit faster since I was going over in my head which foot was crampy, which one felt all cushiony like it was in a glove, etc.

Guess it's easy to see which pair won!  Unfortunately, they are getting a little worn out.

Mercedes Marathon Madams

As always the night before a race, I didn't sleep very well.  Nerves about the race and fear that my alarm clock wouldn't go off are the two main reasons.  A third reason is all the G2 I'd been guzzling down all day and night had me up at least twice.  I like to make sure I'm fully hydrated before a race and I probably overdo it just a little sometimes.

As it turned out, I didn't need the alarm clock to wake me up any way.  I was up before it went off.  Since the Murph wasn't going to be up at 5am and he's the one who usually makes the coffee in the morning, he got the coffee maker all ready so all I had to do was push the "on" button so I would have my caffeine race morning.  He was concerned that I wouldn't know where the "on" button was so he put a sticky note on the coffee maker pointing to it.  He was so sweet to idiot proof everything for me.   I think he was more concerned about what kind of damage this wrecking ball could do to the coffee maker.

It was going to be 29F at the start and sunny so I knew I wouldn't be cold after I got started running.  I actually wore too much.  I could have worn capri pants or even shorts instead of the long pants because I had on knee high compression socks that covered most of my leg.  I didn't need the arm warmers I had on under my long sleeve shirt either.  I was glad I had them on after the run though.  That's when I got cold!

I wanted to cross the finish line faster than I did at Mobile Half in January which was 1:56:49 something ( I don't remember the exact seconds, but it was right under 1:57 min).  I started off a little slower than I did in Mobile, but picked it up the last 5 miles thanks to a quick stop at the port a let.  My legs felt much better the last few miles than they did in Mobile.  I finished in 1:56:11 which was only seconds faster, but I'll take it.  Next year I'm going to train harder to go faster and maybe start doing speed work again and running more days than I do now.  I keep up with my training on my daily mile app that's to the left on my blog.  I don't have to look back through the weeks to know I don't run enough miles during the week.

Mel, the gal in the top picture wearing the tutu with the red sunglasses and head thingy, was the only one of us that did the full marathon and she did great!  She placed fourth in her age group.  Ken, aka Morgan Freeman, did the full as well, but you can only see his glove up there in that picture.  We took a picture of our group a couple of weeks ago when we did a trial run of the course and Ken, L and I were all leaning in so we would all be in the picture and realized afterwards that we didn't have to lean in and we looked pretty goofy.

This time Ken should have leaned in!

Here's the matching tech shirt, baseball cap and bling for the half marathoners.  I almost missed getting the cap at the finish line.  The shirt was in the race packet at the expo.  They also gave out gloves from The Trak Shak at the expo.

Photo from the Facebook page of Mercedes-Benz Marathon Weekend

I love the color of the shirt!  One of my favorite colors besides black, white or pink.

Overall it was a great race and a beautiful day!  And as usual, after the race there was Jim n Nick's barbecue sandwiches and plenty of beer.  I passed on the beer, but grabbed a barbecue to go so I could eat it later for lunch.  It smelled so good in the car that I ate it on the way home.  It became breakfast instead of lunch.  Delicious!

Mental note:  Next race don't hydrate quite so much before the race.

As Ready As I'm Going To Be For Mercedes Half Marathon!

Tomorrow is the Mercedes marathon here in Birmingham.  I 'm going to run the half marathon in the morning, not the full marathon.    My friend L and I went to the expo today to pick up our race numbers/chips and shopped a little bit.  I found some really great deals on half off running pants and a long sleeve running shirt.   I also bought another pair of compression socks, pink, of course, and a head band to match.  

I tried to explain to the Murph how much money I saved on everything, but I don't think he bought it.  I really did have a gift certificate to the The Trak Shak, a local running shop, that I needed to use.  That took even more than half off my purchases.   Win Win!!

A group of girl scouts were at the expo selling cookies so I bought some boxes just to support the girl scouts, you know.  I got a box of Thin Mints for the Murph, but he wasn't as thrilled about them as I thought he would be.  Apparently, he's eaten a ton of girl scouts cookies in his life when his daughter was in the Brownies and her mom was the Brownie leader.  He had boxes to last all year.  Oh well, they won't go to waste!

I looked at the weather for tomorrow and discovered that it isn't going to be as cold as I thought it was going to be.  Nope.  Instead of the 22F that was forecast earlier in the week, now it's saying that it's going to be a balmy 29F at the 7 a.m. start and sunny!  No snow, no rain, no windchill!  I'll take it!

• Tonight

  Feb 16

  Mainly clear and coldLo 26°

  more

• Sun

  Feb 17

  Cool with bright sunshine51°Lo 34°

• Mon

  Feb 18

  Partly sunny and pleasant61°Lo 45°

  more

• Tue

  Feb 19

  Rain possible in the morning58°Lo 33°

  more

• Wed

  Feb 20

  Partly sunny52°Lo 33°

  more

Thunderstorms Monday night

• Daily
• Hourly
• Morning
• Afternoon
• Evening
• Overnight

< Previous 8 hoursNext 8 hours >

	Sun 4am	5am	6am	7am	8am	9am	10am	11am
	4am	5am	6am	7am	8am	9am	10am	11am
Forecast	Mostly Clear	Mostly Clear	Mostly Clear	Sunny	Sunny	Sunny	Sunny	Sunny
Temp (°F)	27°	26°	27°	29°	32°	37°	41°	43°
RealFeel®	29°	28°	29°	30°	34°	42°	48°	50°
Humidity	64%	65%	63%	58%	49%	40%	35%	31%