Thursday, November 21, 2013

Color in Motion 5k Race Recap and Giveaway Winner!

My race day attire
Race Prep

Wow the week has just flown by! So last week Lisa and I started to get all of the last minute prep done for the 5k race on Saturday. So we finally picked out what we were both wearing on Friday night. I decided on wearing an older pair of cheap shorts and the race t-shirt. I also brought a bandanna and my sunglasses. I ended up not using the sunglasses because it was really foggy and overcast but I LOVED the bandanna. I pulled it up to protect my face throughout the race.

Cleaning Supplies
I also brought a lot of things to help clean up after the race that came in really helpful. I brought two towels, one to cover my car seats on the way back home and one to use to wipe off the color powder. I also brought wipes, you can use baby wipes, active wipes, or face wipes (what I used because I had them on hand). Other than that I also brought a clean change of clothes and a grocery bag to put my dirty clothes.  With all of this prepped it was easy to contain the color powder to a small area that was easy to clean up.


Race Day!
So race day rolled around and we left our side of town to drive an hour to where the race location was at 6 that morning. Yup you read that right we left at 6 for a race that started at 9. We REALLY didn't want to be late and I worry a lot. IT worked out well because we stopped off at a CVS once we were close so that we could get a disposable camera to take some race pictures with.

Here we are waiting for the race to start
Once we got to the race location we started getting ready and preparing to get to the starting line. Since we were there so early we actually got to talk to other runners there. There was a great variety of runners out: people like us who were running their first race, high school track runners, people who had run marathons, and many more.

So we started lining up at 8:45 or so. The race administrators had musics going and everyone was just dancing waiting for the race to start. We ended up starting closer to 9:30 as opposed to 9 but it wasn't a big deal. At the starting line the powder started coming out and everyone was pretty covered in colored cornstarch before the race even started.

Pre and Post race pictures of me
Once the race started we just started running. Now here is the ting that I haven't told you yet, the race was on a TRAIL! Nowhere was this mentioned in the information about the race, thus Lisa and I were just training on pavement. That was surprising to say the least. We took it in stride and just kept on going. It was really refreshing to be in the "wilderness" and the view was great.

There were color stations located at every kilometer where the volunteers had buckets, literally buckets of a colored powder to throw at the runners as they pass the area. The volunteers had so much energy and everyone was just laughing and running. As first races go it was pretty amazing.

Pre and Post race pictures of Lisa
At the end of the race there was a "color party" with music and lots of cornstarch powder. As soon as the finish line was in sight and we were approaching it, I of course with my luck ended up falling in a small ditch. Yea I know, I am really klutzy. It is kinda ironic that I made it through a course with hills, sand, small rocks, and uneven ground but I fall in a small ditch/divot in the ground in sight of the finish line.  Thankfully all that happened was a small scrapped knee.

The race was such an amazing experience and I cannot wait until the Hot Chocolate 5k in January!



Giveaway Winner!!
So this is the moment you have all been waiting for! The winner of the Far End Gear Brite Buds is . . . Maryalicia Verdecchia! Maryalicia can you send us an email with your information and we will send you your prize! Thank you everyone for participating in our first giveaway, and we look forward to having our next one soon.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

One Week Until Race Day!

There is officially one week exactly until our FIRST race! I can't believe that next weekend we will have finished our first 5k. So thought the week we will be doing all of out last minute prepping. So far we both have our clothes for the race picked out. Unfortunately we can't wear any of our nice workout gear like my compression socks or our nice activewear shorts or tops since it is a color run and we don't want to stain our nice gear.


Lisa and I haven't been working out together recently since our schedules haven't really synced up. Lisa has been walking on the treadmill and I was walking on our local trails. Due to my unfortunate spill off the ladder on Thursday I didn't workout on Thursday or Friday! It has been awful. I am hoping to take it easy and do some yoga tomorrow and get back to running on Monday though.

Other than our clothes, we will be getting all of our accessories together later this week (maybe a blog post to come about what we will bring!)


On the note of gear. Last week I won a pair of Far End Gear's Brite Buds Reflective earphones. Lisa and I both tried out the pair that I won and we LOVE them. With daylight savings time last weekend our workouts tend to happen after dark more and more. When running in the dark it is really important to have multiple points of reflective gear so that a person is more recognizable to drivers.I usually just run with a blinking LED attached to my shirt but now I have some earbuds to go with that. The ear phones have great quality sound to boot. To celebrate our first race we bought a pair to giveaway! This will be our first giveaway so we hope everyone enjoys it. We will pick a winner after our race on Saturday and post the winner on our blog next week.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Morning Workout or Evening Workout?


This is my first solo blog post! *gasp* Lisa has been busy  with school this week so I figured that I would post about what I have been up to all week.

With Day Light Savings Time this past weekend the days are getting dark earlier and earlier. Usually I workout in the evening with Lisa at a local paved trail, but the trail closes at dark every evening. So this brought up the question of when and where am I going to run! I do have access to a treadmill but I prefer to run outside. None the less after missing two workouts on Monday and Tuesday I decided that something had to change.

Now I am not a morning person . . . at all. However, I got my butt up this morning and went down to the basement and did a 45 min interval walk/run on the treadmill and did my usual strength training circuit (written below). I didn’t want to get up but after I was up and working out it felt good! It put me in a good mood and as was on my way out the door for work I FELL DOWN THE STAIRS!  I couldn’t believe it! As soon as I got a plan of action for catching up the rest of the week I twist my ankle. Well I guess I will be focusing more on strength training and take it easy on the running part of my usual workout.



So here is my usual strength work out. I know it’s probably not perfect but it will probably change as I continue to grow and change my fitness.

50 Crunches
10 Pushups
20 Squats
10 Dumbbell Curls, 3 reps
10 Shoulder Press, 3 reps
10 Tricep Kickbacks, 3 reps
10 Dumbbell Cross Jabs, 3 reps
10 Reverse Fly, 3 reps
20 Squats
10 Pushups
50 Crunches

So yea this is my ‘usual’ strength training circuit. When I feel that it workout is getting easy I tend to just add weight. I started out using 3 lb weights but now I am at 10 lb dumbbells. I am actually thinking about taking up one of the Train Dirty Fitness’s workouts Iron Bombshell! What do you think? I have heard really great things about this strength training programs. 

--Lindsay