Toughest 10K - Galveston edition

Since this was the 2nd race in the first-year "Bridge Series" I HAD to do it even though I was already signed up for the Houston Half the following day. The things I'll do for bling! (It's now started to become more about the challenge than the bling, but I'm not quite ready to admit that.)

I was dreading having to drive down to Galveston and do this race all alone. Would have loved to have someone just come along even if they didn't do the race. Luckily I was easily able to talk Tommy into doing it with me! Yay! Luv ya, man!

Price & swag:
The $40 price tag was $5 higher than the Kemah edition. There was a lot more cost involved in this race since it was run in Galveston (which is nortiously difficult to deal with) and on a federal Interstate. Not sure what all was involved int he latter, but I know TxDOT was involved.

The only swag was a gender-specific technical fabric shirt - no hat or medals. I received a nice (personal) e-mail from race director Robby Sabban explaining that this race was more expensive than the others and there was not the budge for medals. Most 10K don't give medals, so not something typically expected at races. This was after I had posted a request for a picture of the bling on their Facebook page.

Pre-race:
When we turned off the main street onto the street behind the Galveston Daily News, people were parking all over the side of the street and walking. I asked one person if the lots were full and she said that she had not driven all the way down. So I went down there & there was plenty of (free) parking and several volunteers directing us where to park. Very conveniently located across from pre/post race and the start line. I had to do race-day packet pick-up, which was quite time consuming at Kemah (one line to get bib #, another line to get bib & packet and a 3rd line for race chips). They had the bibs in the packets and in alphabetical order, so the pickup was very quick. You still had to go to another line to pick up the chip, but that moved quickly also.


RUN!
The 7am start time meant we started in the dark, but that's not too unusual for most races. We did a little section on the Galveston side of about 1/2 a mile before getting to the Causeway. There was one water stop on this section, as water stop (or any support) on the bridge.
There were impressive cones on this Interstate bridge (TxDOT requirement) that were taller and closer than any other I've seen in a race. Only one lane of traffic was blocked off. Along with the wide shoulder, this provided a comfortable course from the traffic on the causeway.
Although this pert-near 3 mile bridge is long, it was not a difficult climb. MUCH easier than Kemah!
Views were great going over to Tiki Island just as dawn was breaking. (Coming back was not as comfortable as the sun was in our eyes.)

We were just past the 2 mile marker when the race leader went past us headed back to finish. Runners were very good about all staying in the shoulder lane, leaving the other lane for returning runners.

There was a party feel on Tiki Island as we circled around. There were two water stops in this 2/10ths of a mile or so loop.

Back across we not only had the sun to deal with, but also the wind. I did take a short walk break of under 1 minute when cresting the Causeway.

Coming back, I saw the Finish line was not where the Start line was & worried "WTF?? -- Where's the finish??" Luckily, it wasn't far - we turned into the drive of the Galveston Daily News & it was right there, less than a tenth of a mile.

One minute under goal - WHOOPEE!


Post-race:
Although we did not get medals, the post-race food was better than Kemah (and better that many races - MUCH better than the half I did the following day). Mario's pizza had fresh cheese pizza (if you noted when they came out of the thermal carrier, it was even a bit warm. Although cold pizza is still great.) Toll House Cookies were there handing out freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Miller Lite or 64, Muscle Milk, some new fangled waters and sodas were also on hand. Oh yeah - we were all handed a cold bottle of water while in the finish chute as our timing chips were cut off. These little nicety are really appreciated!
Although the food was good at post-race, I did miss having a DJ. There was an announcer calling out finisher names, but not tunes at post-race. Koala was doing massages.
A nice post-race!
(I had 3 cookies, 2 slices of pizza, 1 beer and a muscle milk -- that pretty much cancels out the calories burned doing the race!)

One more race -- LaPorte half-marathon in December -- to complete the bridge series!!

Toughest 10K

HA! Well, so much for me keeping up blogging. But, I do plan to post race reports & here's one:

The Toughest 10K - Kemah edition.
(Which has always been the only addition, but race director extraordinaire Robby Sabban has now created a 10K over the Galveston Causeway which has been dubbed Toughest 10K - Galveston.)

Price & swag:
This 10K was a bargain at $35 and in Robby fashion would include a technical fabric shirt and hat! Plus, medals to all - yeah! (All about the bling!)

Previously in the year, I had mentioned to some friends that I'd like to run the Kemah bridge, but let's just save the entry fee, do it on our own & go eat at one of the restaurants with the savings. That was before I found out it's one of Robby's races. I didn't know anyone else doing it, so was glad I signed up for the race since I have wanted to run that bad boy. (Not necessarily 4 times.)

Pre-race:
Parking was free in the Kemah lots, which was a nice bonus. I started talking to the man parked next to me, Gerald. It was his first time running a road race in 20 years, so he was pretty nervous! I continued to see Gerald through the morning and also ran into Diane and Terry from Houston Fit. Aside from that, there were ~850 strangers.

RUN!
That was more runners than I expected, which made it nice for this race. We spread out across the streets of Kemah on our way over to the bridge and were never congested. And there were always lots of runners to look at both in front and behind.

I have never run that bridge before and found it quite intimidating. I had initally thought the 2 passes meant you go over the bridge and then back over, crossing twice. Oh no....silly Anna...that's only one pass. You do that loop twice, crossing the bridge FOUR times.

Pass #1
As I was going up the first time I thought DAAAAMMMMNNNN!!! It was one hella of incline! Made the Fred Hartman look easy and Mt TCJester seem like a speed bump. Was pretty windy too -- on the way down my right contact lens was moving around in my eye. As I was coming off the first pass, I saw Terry across the way starting his second. A minute or so later the leader, John Yoder, went blasting past. He finished in under 40 minutes.

Pass #2
Coming off the bridge, the course circles around underneath. It was nice to be flat, but DANG the fish smell was strong! Normally it wouldn't bother me so much. But normally I wouldn't be tackling my personal Everest...
I walked a lot of the second pass. And it was less of an incline coming this way.

Pass #3

Coming off the bridge, the course either goes back around a big parking lot and underneath the bridge to do the second loop or off to the right to circle through Kemah and back to the boardwalk to finish.

I was glad there were mostly people still running with just a few runners that completely lapped me.
Going back up that bridge again was TOUGH. TOUGH.

Pass #4

I was pleased to see that I wasn't at the end of the pack. But going back across this time I took an extra walk break that ended up being very extended. I should have been running. Finally I had a little internal conversation/yell match with myself and got back in the race. I probably lost 3-5 minutes. Running is so mental!

The end

I was quite annoyed to see we had to go to the right and through all of Kemah before going back to the boardwalk. Even thought this was just around a quarter of a mile, that's FAR at this point!

I did set a reasonable goal for myself & finished about 13 miutes under that goal. Yeah! Still not bragging-time, but I was good with it.
Although on the way home, I was thinking I still had a little energy left, so I could have hit it a little harder....

Post-race:

Peter, "The Other Brother" was the DJ, so music was good. There were the promised ice cream bars, fruit, cereal & honey milk. Koala was doing massages. A nice small post-race. No hot foods, but this was 'just' a 10K.

Well that's kind of a crappy race report. Hopefully I'll get back into blogging and the ones in the future will be better :)

Suprizing good 'freezer kill' lunch

In an effort to eat better & cheaper, I've been trying to limit my dining out to 3x per week. So with my Sunday breakfast run already taking up one spot, that only leaves 2. Meaning I should bring my lunch most of the week!

And I've used up my 3x, so I knew *should* bring my lunch today, but didn't have anything prepped. I do have a couple of emergency tv-dinners & planned to bring one of those. When I opened the freezer, I noticed a box of vegetables that have been there for a long time & the package of precooked beef strips I got at Sam't that are really good.

Tossed that in the lunch bag & hoped for the best.

It ended up being dang good!

I REALLY like this meat & will buy it again:

It's precooked, so just a minute in the microwave or a couple of minutes in a skillet after cooking some fresh vegetables & presto-- great meal!

Not sure how much I paid, but definitely worth the money! I had it in the fridge for a while before freezing it & it's still great.

Yummy, easy & healthy!

The vegetables were good too, but not sure how healthy they were.

Can't remember which one it was, but it was from the Healthy mix line at Green Giant. Possibly heart-healthy. Their website doesn't list the varieties. Odd.

It was a mix that contained black beans so combining it with the beef was a big dose of protein.

It had a sauce that was buttery, so maybe lots of hidden fat? But it's the HEALTHY line!

I got a fruit & vegetable share from Central City Co-Op yesterday, so hope to cook this evening after tempo run. Hope to we'll (meaning I) will see....

Facebook trumping blogger

I was a little late coming into the blogging realm back when it was popular a few years ago. And jumped right off when Facebook came about. Oh, how I love Facebook!

But the Facebook romance is getting a little boring now. I'm slowly starting to pull away. And would like to get back to blogging again.

The blog did mainly turn out to be about running. But most of my Facebook posts are about that too. I dislike that I can't easily go back and find posts on Facebook later. I enjoy going back and re-reading older posts on Blogger and espically my race reports.

Facebook is MUCH easier to post photos and I try to be good about adding informative captions that tell more about the race than just what's in the picture. But that's not the same as a written-out report.

Since I have LOTS of races on tap, figure I should dust off the old blog and get back to it now.

We'll see how good I do at it. (And 'we' really mean 'me' as I doubt many others will read this & that's fine.)

Little fun things....

Just downloaded the data on my Garmin from my speedwork & forgot what a thrill that is to do :-)

Looking at the little map & checking the stats. I hadn't done that in SO long.

Was pretty impressed that my speed bursts on the fartlek were in the 9-min range. Overall times was.....not impressive. But I am impressed with the 25 seconds x8 that were fast!

My running clothes are so ill-fitting! And tech fabric does not shrink as much as I want to think it has.... bleck.

Must stay focused & not get drawn up into little things....training for a marathon is also a marathon.
OMG - typing 'training for a marathon' just had me skip a breath..... I really am going to do this.....

Fingers crossed!

Back on the road...this time to 26.2 (*yikes!)

Oh my.

Both physically & (more importantly) mentally I haven't seen why people want to run 26.2 miles. Of course, the same could easliy be said for 13.1 or even 3.1, but 26.2 just seems CRAZY.

After completing more than a dozen half-marathons, the thrill wasn't there like it used to be...
Could I be ready to do a full?

Even training wasn't the same, was kinda been-there-run-that.
Could I be ready to do a full?

Looking at my medal rack full of all that dusty bling was beginning to lose meaning.
Could I be ready for a full?