Race Reports/Encouragement/Kudos - September 27 and 28

[Big Vic]

Saturday, September 27th

27 - Aurora317 (Meghan) Komen Race for the Cure 5K; Chicago, IL
27 - Big Vic (Vic) Twin Cities Relay For Life 5K, Valparaiso, FL
27 - cdn gal eeyore (Leana) Melissa's 10K Road Race; Banff, Canada
27 – escape (Susie) Big Dam Bridge Bike Ride - 50 miler, Little Rock, AR
27 – thndrmatt (Matt) Beach Blast II Triathlon, Mexico Beach, FL
27 – Villains Rock (Eva) – Road Runner ½ Marathon, Akron, OH

27 - :scared: Expedition Everest :scared:
acourtwdw2 (Amanda) & DSis acourtwdw (Annette), bgsnmky (), blizzard (Carol) and DH (John), bonzie1 (Georgie) and (DH), cobbler () and DH, Cruella de mom (Cecilia) and DH (Lawson), crzy4pooh (Lynnda) & DH wfloyd (Bill), CynthiaCindy (Cindy) and DH (Matt), DianeL and DFamily (DH, DM, DDad), getnthinr (Wendy), IheartDL (Leslie), jeanneg (jeanne) and DS (Adam), Jodi and DS, Maherae (Anne) and DH (Bob), MiniGirl (Eva) and DH, rKyDeX (Chester) and DD (Miranda), sk8ingmom () and DH, Starkiss (), Texa & DS, tigger2esq (Renee) TnTsParty (Tricia) and DH (Brian), twoWDWfools (Liz) and DH tiggerspal222 (Patrick)

Sunday, September 28th

28 - Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon; Canada
1/2: Amps (), bunnyfoo (Vicky), Hockeychic (Kim) and DS Kevin

28 – dsnyfan21 (Tracy) Sickle Cell Sprint 5K, Cooper City FL
28 – Honeibee (Judy) Bigelow Community Challenge 5K, Southport, CT
28 - ohMom (Mollie) State to State 1/2 Marathon; Oxford, OH


:jumping1: GO! WISH Team GO! :jumping1:

[hockeygirl]

Good Luck to everyone racing this weekend!!! Can't wait to read all the race reports!

[TnTsParty]

Good luck WISHer's - see some of you at the starting line!!

[Duanerice]

Hi All,
Looks like I am going to run the Naples 20K this Sunday. Didn't plan on it, but decided it would be a good test to see how far back I've come from surgery.

Good luck to everyone this weekend.
Duane

[jmasgat]

:cheer2: Good luck WISH'ers. We'll be cheering for you!:cheer2:

Maura

[WDWFAN9]

:woohoo: :woohoo: Go WISH TEAM Go:woohoo::woohoo:

[FatElvis]

Lots of races this weekend - awesome! GO WISHers! Run or walk like the wind!

[smileyk8]

Can't believe everest has come around so quickly! WISHers- hope you all have brilliant events, wherever you are

[Honeibee]

:scared: Oh no! I'm on that list again! :scared:

Good luck everyone! I'm going to do my best to make the WISH team proud, despite my lack of any real trainnig in the past month or so. :rolleyes1

Also, I will try not to be too lime green with envy for all of you doing Everest! :woohoo:


:woohoo: :banana: :yay: :cheer2: Go Team Go! :yay: :woohoo: :cheer2: :banana:

[Villains_Rock]

My first half marathon!!! :scared1:

I need major PD!!!

[Mooshu]

Good Luck, Have Fun and Be safe out there this weekend!!! :cheer2:

[bunnyfoo]

Good luck with your races everyone!

[mkymsehi]

Run like you stole something!

Have good runs/walks everybody.

:thumbsup2

[dsnyfan21]

Go WISHers GO!!!
WISHers Rock !!!

PD for the Half Marathon!!

Jeff: In my world I walk like I stole something but don't want to stand out, so I walk real fast.:cool1:

[Caseydilla]

Good luck this weekend to all the WISHers!

[dsnyfan21]

Out at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City, FL was the Sickle Cell Sprint 5K. Decided to do this race because I use this park for training and it is very near my house.
Nicely organized small local race. Good water stations and decent food afterwards.

I walked to the park as it wasn't that far away. I did a 1.69 mile walk to the park in the dark.
Started the 5K and was sweating and dripping before it even started!! Very hot and humid before the sun even came up!! UGh. I started a bit fast, I hate that because as a racewalker you find yourself in a "weird" area of a local race. They are mostly runners and then you have the run/walkers and then fitness walkers and the leasurely walkers. I fall between the run/walkers and the fitness walkers. As the race starts I like being around people so I tend to try and stay up with the slower runners. Then I realize I need to slow down some and settle into my own pace and race. I then start to do the leap frog thing and play "tag - your it!". My official finish time was 39min 29.2sec. Pace was 12:44. Out of 203 racers I placed 119th.
This was a PR for me in a 5K, even better than the judged racewalk I did in May!!!
I then walked home, 1.75miles.

I would recommend this race to anyone in the area.

Racey Tracy

[thndrmatt]

Having the advantage of racing on Sat instead of Sun, guess I'll be the first to post a report.

Another weekend, another tri!

This weekend was the Beach Blast II Olympic distance Triathlon (1500m/40k/10k) in Mexico Beach, FL. Just a little south of Panama City and Tyndall AFB, it ended up being a little over 2 hour drive from our house. We headed down on Fri night and stayed in the El Governor Motel, with a great room on the 4th floor overlooking the gulf. Basically every room in the place has a wide open balcony gulf view, very nice hotel. The racers also got a deal at $85 a night versus the normal $139 or something, and you could tell almost the whole place was filled with triathletes. DW decided to sleep in on this one, as she put in heavy hours of cheering last weekend and will be next weekend as well.

The race seemed a bit disorganized, as our 0700 start time ended up sliding right several minutes since 10 min prior to that one of the big buoys we had to swim around was still sitting on the beach. :confused3 The announcer was pretty annoying, and must have said "Swim to the RIGHT BUOY FIRST" like 238497 times during that 10 minutes. Olympic distance was two loops around the triangular course, with two buoys out at the far corners and one real close to the beach to swim around to start the second loop. There was a sprint distance tri going on at the same time starting 30 min later, so I was a bit worried I was going to get run over by them since I'd be starting my 2nd and they'd be flying through their first. As it turned out I had nothing to worry about since I came through the first loop at 13:00 when I was expecting 23:00 or so. Sadly this wasn't because I had improved, the course was just significantly shorter than advertised. This lead to a 20 minute faster than normal split time which isn't really useful to gauge anything.

Swim: 26:30 65/73 OA 5/5 AG

A long run across the gorgeous white sandy beach, up a carpeted bridge, across a major highway blocked by volunteer cops, uphill and upstairs across another bridge, past a parking lot and eventually into a baseball field was the run to transition. Managed to not forget anything this week and the only major mistake was being within 3 feet of a fireant hill, causing me to get bit about 10 times as I was packing up later. :sad2:

T1: 3:30

The bike course was just up the coastal highway less than a mile, then turned inland and followed that highway out to the turnaround at about 12.4. I only got passed by a couple speed demons doing the sprint, and one guy who changed positions with me about 20 times during the course of the leg. He was 43 and on an old road bike so that wasn't doing wonders for my motivation every time he came around me again. I initially thought the northbound leg away from the coast was upwind, but after turning around I didn't get much of a boost, so wind was probably not really a factor at all. Just the fact that the course was closer to the advertised length than last week led to me cutting about 30 seconds off my PR overall, but my avg was slower than last week since I travelled less distance.

Bike: 1:10:54 - 21.0mph avg - 26/73 OA 3/5 AG

Not a lot to say about the second transition, in/out and on with the run.

T2: 1:42

The run was pretty bizarre, it started by running about a half mile into a residential area where it appeared to just dead end in a cul de sac. I stopped intially and looked around for a trail or something and was basically just confused. Looking behind me runners were still coming so I wasn't really sure what to do. Finally I spotted on the ground a chalk dot and arrows that said "turn here." With no volunteers or cones or anything on that section of the course it seems some runners might have easily turned too early or too late. Shaking that off I kept zooming along, feeling pretty good through the first mile while trying to find a water station. "It's right up there" was common chatter from runners coming the other way when I posed the question. Turns out it was actually at mile 2, causing me to be late on my initial gel/hydration. More bizarre was my splits coming out of T2, as instead of my 9:30 avg from the week before I opened with 8:43 and followed with 9:04. I was a bit afraid of blowing up later, but I still felt strong and consistent so I just maintained pace. My HR was very steady right about where it should be for the whole first 4 miles. The course was essentially a real long out and back for the rest of it through residential areas, almost completely deserted. The smaller size of the race meant 1 runner about every 50 to 100 meters, so there wasn't a lot to do out there. At the 4 mile marker I still felt good so I decided to push it in from there and try to catch the guy wayyy in front of me. I caught up to him but his finishing kick was too much for me as I'd used it all up making the catch. Closed with a 8:32 mile, insane compared to last week. The course was about .14 short, so would have to add about a minute to get an accurate 10k time, still a drop from last week.

Run: 54:29 9:00pace - 44/73 OA 5/5 AG

So overall I'm again kind of half and half on this one. I feel the reason my bike and run splits lowered was probably because I only had to swim for 20 min shorter than normal. If you tack on those 20 to my overall time it still shows me beating by goal of sub 3, but the benefit of not being as tired as I should have been probably made the difference. I found myself looking forward to next week a bit even during this race since I'll be a trying a half ironman which will tie the longest I have ever gone. So this was a good training race of sorts anyway. Oh and the fire ant bites on my wrists are itching like @#*($&@#$ Ended up not quite getting into the top half overall and as usual got crushed by everyone in my age group in every event other than the bike.

Overall: 2:37:05 40/73 OA 5/5 AG

Ok now that my babbling is out of the way, who else has a race report?!? Cmon there are like 50 of you listed up there! :thumbsup2

[Duanerice]

Hi All,
My race wasn't nearly as exciting as the Everest or a Tri, but it was fun. Ran the Naples 20K this morning. I guess since it was raining right before the race that we were close to 100% humidity.

This was my longest run since I came back from surgery so I wanted to take it easy. Pretty much an out and back course so it was pretty boring. Although we did run by some very nice houses or hotels. They are so big it was hard to tell :) We were close to the Gulf but you could never really see it.

Started out fast, of course, settled down after the first mile but I couldn't take it easy. Had to leave the person I was running with and pick up the pace a bit. Didn't finish like I wanted but was satisfied for this time in my training.

Hope all had a good time today!

enjoy,
Duane

[Caseydilla]

Tracy - good job on your PR. What a wonderful feeling! How cool that it was close enough to walk to and from home.

Matt - sorry to hear about the not so good parts of your tri but congrats to you. How frustrating about the lack of organization. Sounds like they needed more help at that event. Hope your ant bites aren't too bad, not fun at all.

Duane - congrats on your run! That humidity must have been brutal!

My husband did the sprint distance Las Vegas Triathlon this morning. He did very well and did this event last year. It's down at Lake Mead in the Boulder City, NV area. We don't have his official finish time yet but he finished in just under 1:30 according to our times. He did his fastest run ever on the 5K portion. His Garmin showed he ran it in 23 minutes. The entire run is on dirt and isn't the easiest of courses but has nice scenery of the mountains and lake. The bike is also scenic but VERY hilly(I did a 10K recently on the same course as the bike.)

Here he is during the run in lucky # 777 - so very Vegas
http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v356/120/35/1328443383/n1328443383_91154_6873.jpg

And DH and I after he crossed the finish
http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v356/120/35/1328443383/n1328443383_91152_6259.jpg

[mkymsehi]

Tracy, Matt, Duane, & Todd (Casey's DH)

Great race results and reports! Way to represent TEAM WISH! :thumbsup2

[escape]

Casey - great pictures! Congrats to your DH. :cool1: By the way, my DH once won $777 on a slot machine. :teeth: Maybe 777 will be your DH's lucky number on the slots as well. :rolleyes1

Tracy - what can I say. I would have to run to keep up with you. Good going! :banana:

Matt - congrats on your tri. Yikes on the ants! No fun! :scared:

Duane - congrats on your first race after surgery. Yikes on the humidity. :scared: I can take some heat but the humidity is a killer.

I completed my first 50 miler on my new road bike at the Big Dam Bridge Bike Tour in Little Rock, AR. There were several routes for the bikers - 14, 32, 50, 75 and 100 miles. The farthest I've ever ridden is 36 miles and that was last year. The farthest this year was 32 prior to this 50 miler so I was glad I could do it.

The event started out with a Black Hawk helicopter circling over us. That was cool. Also, at the beginning of the ride, quite a few National Guardsmen lined the road to cheer us on. This gave me goose bumps and brought tears to my eyes. We should be cheering them on.

The route itself was a little hilly but nothing major. The major hills were present in the 75 and 100 mile routes. Also present in the 100 mile route were rough roads and sharp turns. From what I understand, the century ride was very challenging. Glad I didn't attempt it. :laughing: Maybe next year I'll try to do the 75-miler. We'll see. :upsidedow

The reststops were wonderful; the volunteers were exceptional. This was really a fun ride benefitting the Big Dam Bridge - one of the largest pedestrian bridges in the world. I highly recommend this event to everyone.

[Jen117]

Casey - That is so cool. It didn't even dawn on me that it was 777 in Las Vegas!!! WTG to him!!!

Matt - Congrats!!! But where are all those great pictures???? Are you still wearing the pink swim cap (wasn't that you????)

[thndrmatt]

How could I forget the pics!

No pink this time...

http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=33027&BIB=673&S=230&PWD=

[Honeibee]

Oh Matt! I love that last one! What a great smile! :goodvibes