Dec 7, 2013

Christmas Town Postponed == No Race for Me

Unfortunately, my race this weekend is not to be. I received an email from the race team today.

Runners,

Due to the inclement weather approaching the area and the priority of runner safety, Busch Gardens and Flat-Out Events officials have made the decision to postpone the race scheduled for Sunday December 8, until next Sunday, December 15. We have determined that with threat of frozen precipitation, the race course inside the park would not be safe. We will follow up with further information regarding next week’s schedule, but anticipate all times to be the same. Thank you for your understanding. Your safety is our first priority.

Thank you,
Race Team
Flat-Out Events

Seeing as I drove 3 hours to get here, and my sister even more, postponing a week just won't work. I'm really bummed out over it. I was looking forward to the race, the Christmas lights and my first medal. I guess maybe I'll get to run the race next year.

I'll still be hitting the gym in the morning to get a run it, but won't be the same.

Dec 6, 2013

Racing Back on Track

I can't believe I'll be running a half marathon in just 36 days! I'm so excited. Dopey Dave even has his bib number. I'm not so lucky, but can't wait to be getting those emails. My training hasn't been great (November was an almost wash, oops) but I'm still feeling good. I'm working my way back. I had a good 3.6 miles last weekend after having not at all in a while (and even in beat up sneakers, not my good Asics). I'm pledging now to get back to regular updates on here (as well as backfilling some posts).

Running, Santa style
I have been up to a couple things. I have my first race in a while this Sunday. I'll be running the Christmas Town Dash 8K at Busch Gardens, Williamsburg, VA. There's a couple fun points to this. First, it's through Busch Garden's Christmas Town, and I love Christmas, so I'm excited to see it. Second, I'm running it with my sister Stacey. We've been running to run a race together, but haven't been able to work it out yet. She's run a couple of 5Ks, so this will also be a personal long distance for her, which is cool. Lastly, but not leastly, my wife and daughter will also be running their first races together. They'll be running the Running of the Chick-fil-A Cows family fun run. They'll even get their own finisher medals for it. It should be a fun race day for everyone.

They next thing race related I've been up to is registering for the lottery for the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run this spring in DC. It's capped at 15,000 participants, so they do a lottery system to give a fair shot at running. They also do a "team" system allowing you to register a group together so you can have an "all in or noone in" so you don't have to worry about running alone if you want to run with someone. It doesn't increase your odds of getting in, but sounds like a nice system. They also do the registration in tiers. You can pay for the race fee, add the shirt, make it a tech shirt, add a medal, all a la carte, allowing you to keep the cost down if you want, or add it all in and still be comparable to other race fees for everything. So far, one of my coworkers has joined in for signing up for the race. If you're interested, let me know and I'll give you the team name. Or if you want to register yourself, just go to http://www.cherryblossom.org/ Just register before December 13th to be eligible. I think it'll be a good run to do. It's DC, so it'll be nice and flat and it'll be hard to beat the view of running through the cherry blossoms. I've gone into DC for them before and they are beautiful.


Image credits: christmastowndash.com, cherryblossom.org