Hot Chocolate 15K - Part II

I wanted to share the proofs from our race. I don't think we'll be buying any of these pictures:

Here are Cheryl's pictures:

And my pictures:

Hot Chocolate 15K

Cheryl and I spent the weekend in San Diego. On Saturday, we went to the Hot Chocolate 15K package pickup and then explored the Gas Lamp Quarter of downtown San Diego.



We stopped at Cafe Sevilla for sangria and tapas on their outside patio.



We were back in our room on the 15th floor of the Omni before dark. Our room overlooked the Gas Lamp Quarter and we watch the lights turn on and the traffic get worse and worse.

The following morning, it was just a short walk to the Hot Chocolate 15K starting line:



There we found our corral.



With a few other people.



The finisher's prize was full of Chocolate-y goodness!





Time to say good-bye to San Diego.



By mile 2, Cheryl said, "This run is horrible!"... by at the end of the race, she said "I didn't like that one very much"... on the way home, she said, "That was FUN! Let's do another destination run!" Gotta love her short term memory... she went from HORRIBLE to FUN in less than three hours, hahaha!

My results:
Time: 1:27:17, pace 9:21
Place 50-54: 29/197
Place women: 474/2575

Cheryl's results:
Time: 1:27:37, pace 9:23
Place 20-24: 48/167
Place women: 488/2575

It's a PR for both of us, since neither of us has ever run a 15K before.

Have a great weekend!

Spooktacular Half-Marathon

Today was the Spooktacular Half Marathon in San Dimas. We ran with a couple people from the lunch time running group: Eric and Paloma. This was the hilly-est half-marathon that I ever ran! It was a very tough run... street, concrete side walk, dirt, gravel and a muddy stream crossing. Cheryl and I ran in costume. I was a pirate and Cheryl was a mime.







Here is a picture that Eric took of me coming in to the finish line:




After the half-marathon, Cheryl and I added more miles to make the weekend total.... 18 MILES!

My time: 2:05. 2nd place in my age group. 43rd overall...
Cheryl's time: 2:08, 7th in her age group. 52nd overall...

It's Here! It's HERE!!!

Look what's here! The marathon book is finished and in our hands.



You've seen all the pages already, but you haven't seen the cover. Sorry the picture is so bad. There was lots of glare... it's so shiney :oD



Here's the back cover...



This is the documentation of my first and last marathon; and why I would not want to do this again. Cheryl suffers from short term memory loss and is singing a different tune now... as you can see on the last page of the book.



Hahaha! Oh boy! Marathon training starts again this weekend! LOL!

Project Life Marathon Training - The End... or is it?

Here is the last page of my Project Life Marathon Training album.



Cheryl has signed herself up for the California International Marathon in Sacramento, December 8, 2013!!!

Project Life Marathon Training - Cheryl's Race Page

... and finally... Cheryl's race page!!!

Project Life Marathon Training - My Race Page

Here's is my race page from the marathon... Sorry, I tend to get very wordy!

Project Life - Chris's Race

I started a page for everyone's race story in the order of finish. Which means... Chris first!



I'm so happy to have been able to capture his story. Sounds like this might be his one and only marathon ;oD

Project Life Marathon Training - Race Day

Here we are finally... It's RACE DAY!!!

Project Life Marathon Training - Week 15

40 miles this week! It's our longest week of the training plan; 20 miles during the week and 20 miles on Sunday. We ran the Cinco de Mayo half-marathon with my online friend, Mara, and added 7 more miles.



It's weird how the race site has our times wrong. They seem to be exactly 20 minutes off. Must be because we started with the 5K. Here are our actual results:

Chris: 1:57, 7/16 in his age group
Me: 2:01, 8/38 in my age group
Cheryl: 2:12, 18/43 in her age group

We are ramping down this week. It's all downhill from here to the marathon!

Project Life Marathon Training - Week 5

Is it week 5 already? It is!!! Our BIG event for this week is the Brea 8K.



Is it my imagination or do my photos keep getting worse and worse each week? lol! Those are the race photographers photos. I'm too cheap to buy the photos, so I just used the proofs.

Another week down! 13 weeks to GO!

Project Life - Disneyland 5K

I have jumped into the Project Life fad with both feet, but unlike most, I decided to go digital... Yep, Digital Project Life! My Project Life book is going to focus on our 2013 goal --- Our FIRST Marathon (and in my case, my only marathon).

I haven't designed our cover page yet, but I'm working on it. The first page of this book is going to be about the Disneyland Never Land 5K. It's sort of the kick-off for our 18-week marathon training.

Here's my first page:

Stay tuned! More to come...

Disneyland 5K

It's our first race of the year, and aur kick-off to our 18 week marathon training! That's right! The kids and I are running marathon (more on that later). Last year the Neverland 5K was at night and included tickets to Disneyland. We spent the day at the park, and then ran a 5K trhough Disneyland and California Adventure after the parks closed. It was a BLAST. This year however, they changed it up. The 5K race does not include park admission AND the race is in the morning.

We had to leave the house at 4:30am to get to the race on time. At least it wasn't as cold as it has been... it was a balm-y 47F, haha. We left Jim at the gate to Disneyland. We entered Disneyland to start the race... Jim entered California Adventure to meet us at the finish line.

Here we are waiting to start at the END of Group C... We must have a castle picture:

It was so crowded being at the end of the group, that we were walking almost all the way up to "It's a Small World." It was still all lit up for Christmas!

It was exciting to run through the new California Adventure area "Cars Land." They had it all set up like downtown Radiator Springs:

We finished the race near the ferris wheel just in time to see the sunrise over California Adventure:

I hope that everyone had a wonderful long weekend!
It's back to work and school for us tomorrow!

Electric Run - the run

I organized a Panasonic Team for the Electric Run 5K. It had been raining all day, but cleared up just in time for the race start. I didn't expect so many people!!! OVER 10,000 people at the run! It made it almost impossible to find friends, but we did find Jacoby and David. Jacoby and I ran the race in 23:32, the kiddos finished right behind us. That is WHAT?!!! A 7:35 pace?!!! That course must not have been a full 3.1 miles! We think the they must have changed the course because of the rain.

Here is us!!!

Here is us with our GLOW on!!!

They were trying to give out glow sticks at the starting line, but people were so lit up already; they were turning them down. There was a big party atmosphere at the starting line. We started in group 8. There was glow paraphernalia littered all over the course. I was afraid that I was going to trip or slip on something while running in the dark. Here is a short clip that Jim took of the start of the race:

It was a BIG party atmosphere!!! Too bad we were there to run not party ;o) Sultan & Ned Shepard were shooting a music video at the after run party. We headed home right after because Cheryl is studying for finals.

I hope you all had a good weekend! Monday comes too FAST!

Electric Run

Jena has her glow on!

Zombie Run!!!

A Zombie 5K? Who would do a Zombie 5K? My zombie obsessed daughter, Chris, and me! It's a mud run and there were two types of participants... zombies and humans.

We were registered as humans. We parked about a mile from the registration area, walked to registration in the rain, waited in the registration lines for almost an hour, and finally lined up in the "appetizer" corral for our start. There were also "main course" and "dessert" corrals. The corrals are in the black enclosed area behind us. Our corral was the first to start, when they opened our door we took off like rats into zombie infested lands.

Here is how the race works... the humans each have 3 flags on a velcro belt. The zombies try to steal the flags. If we make it to the end with any flags remaining, we are human. With no flags, we finish as zombies.

There are other obstacles along with the zombies... a 1 mile uphill climb...

On the course (so we don't have pictures) there were mud pits, mud hills, dead ends, and two zombie infested mazes. There was also a slide into a pool of mud. Can you see Cheryl at the top of this picture ready to slide down? If you look closely you can see me climbing up the scaffolding on the back.

There were walls to climb over...

... and other obstacles to crawl under...

Cheryl is the only one who finished alive. She had one flag left. Chris and I ended up zombies. I was so close! The finish line was right in front of me when a zombie ran up behind me and took my last flag.

Cheryl finished human in 43:46, 3/87 in age group, 26/456 overall.
I finished a zombie in 43:45, 2/32 in age group, 24/456 overall.
Chris was also a zombie in 46:38, 4/20 in age group, 49/456 overall.

Cheryl wants to run this again. I hope she can find a friend to run with because even though Chris and I had fun, we are DONE with zombies, hahaha!

Time to clean off! (And Chris really really needs it!)

I hope everyone had a good weekend!