Long Beach Half-Marathon

I'm running behind on posting pictures, so I'm in catch up mode! Look for a lot of photos posted in the next few days. We ran the Long Beach Half-Marathon on Oct. 7, I'm just getting around to posting photos now. We forgot to take the camera to the race, so I was waiting for race photos to get posted online; and I kind of just forgot about it...

Anyway, here are the photos!

The kiddos were not in race shape, so they ran together slowly. I took off and was on track for a new PR, but my legs started cramping at mile 9. I slowed way down, but had to walk starting mile 12 when the cramps seized up. The kiddos passed me about mile 12.5. After that I got to the point that I couldn't even stand. I was crouched at the side of the road waiting for the cramps to pass, and the paramedics came over.... it was all very embarrassing. Equally embarrassing was my finish time...

Here are our times... no PRs for anybody....

Cheryl
Overall: 3569 out of 11257
Women: 1405 out of 6583
F 20-24: 106 out of 415
Age/Grade: 49.29% Place: 3700
Finish: 2:13:34 Pace: 10:12

5 Km: 28:37 Pace: 9:13
10 Km: 58:32 Pace: 9:26
10 Mile: 1:38:55 Pace: 9:54

Chris
Overall: 3524 out of 11257
Men: 2143 out of 4674
M 15-19: 47 out of 94
Age/Grade: 45.49% Place: 5353
Finish: 2:13:14 Pace: 10:10

5 Km: 28:36 Pace: 9:13
10 Km: 58:30 Pace: 9:25

Me
Overall: 4471 out of 11257
Women: 1906 out of 6583
F 50-54: 119 out of 551
Age/Grade: 54.55% Place: 1897
Finish: 2:20:11 Pace: 10:42

5 Km: 27:36 Pace: 8:53
10 Km: 56:01 Pace: 9:01
10 Mile: 1:33:49 Pace: 9:23

Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure

As I was sitting at work on a slow afternoon, I saw an email promoting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and at the spur of the moment, I decided to put together a team. Team Panasonic grew to 15 team members and earned $1150 in donations toward breast cancer research.

We arrived in Newport Beach with a dozen "Panasonic-Blue" balloons. Some of our members took off in the 7:15am competitive run start. The rest of us started in the 7:30 walk/run. Jim walked his first 5K! It's a PR for Jim... just a little under an hour, lol! It was a GREAT day for a stroll through Newport Beach and for a GREAT cause!

Thank-you to all of those who supported our team!

5K Sunday!!!

I arranged a Virtual 5K with my friends at Scrappin' Mojo this weekend. Do you like the logo that Chris made for us?

We actually ran a real 5K race today, so I'm going to use those times for the virtual 5K.

Chris and I have done the OC Fair 5K for the last 3 years. Cheryl just took up running this year, and she's always wanted to run this race. It's through the fairgrounds during the fair, but before it opens to the public. It is fun and festive.

There were 4 detours through the fairgrounds. The kids had plans to slide down the giant slide. I was going to just run through, but when I saw the slide... I thought, "Why Not?" It turns out that the kids missed the slide, and I was the only one that went down. I don't regret it... it was FUN!

Chris started out really FAST. He blasted out of the starting area. He finished in 24:04 (13/36 in his age group, Pace: 7:45)

If you take out the time that it took to me at the giant slide, I finished around 25:10. With the slide I finished in 28:26 (10/95 in my age group, Pace: 9:09). Without the stop I would have won my age group (the winner finished in 25:30).

Cheryl got stuck in the starting funnel. She finished in 26:13 (4/83 in her age group, Pace: 8:27).

No PRs for anyone this weekend, but lots of FUN!

Let me leave you with a couple more puppy pictures...

Buddy says,"Cheryl play with me!"

And, Chris forgot to leave his door closed, hahaha!

Lake Forest Firecracker 5K

We started our 4th of July bright and early at the Lake Forest Firecracker 5K. Jena almost ran with us, until Cheryl reminded me how she has a tendency to stop and go to the bathroom right in the middle of the path. So, she had to hang out on the sidelines with Jim.

Cheryl had a AMAZING race! She is getting so FAST! Cheryl came in 2nd in her age group!

Cheryl's time: 24:37.0
age group: 2/33
women: 55/597
overall: 239/1141

Cheryl left me in the dust!

My time: 25:09.3
age group: 5/51
women: 69/597
overall: 268/1141

Chris had to stop during the race and use the port-o-potty...

Chris's time: 25:38.7
age group: 58/78
men: 213/544
overall: 294/1141

After that we went to my mom and dad's for a visit and early dinner... then on to the Galaxy game, where they lost with just seconds left to go. Well,at least the fireworks show was good!

Rock n' Roll Baby!

We are ran the San Diego Rock and Roll half-marathon today! The picture below is us at package pickup. What a zoo that was! There were 31,000 people registered for the marathon and half-marathon and most of them did package pickup between 12-5 yesterday! We did have fun at the Expo. It was great with LOTS of freebies :oD

Cheryl decided that we should run in costume. Chris vetoed the tutu, and I veto's the fishnet stockings (can you imagine the rash?), YIKES!

We decided to start slow on the costume thing... Michael's had t-shirts on sale for $3 each today and I had a 20% of coupon. We all picked a rock and roll band/personality, and made t-shirts. We used iron-on transfers. They were so easy and the results came out GREAT!

The shirts aren't done by a long shot... Next step, we will all take scissors to our shirts and personalize them for the run.

Here we are dark and early this morning!

You can't see Cheryl's shirt in the picture so I had her model it for me when we got home. Isn't that COOL?!!!

Anyway back to the race... We got up at 4am. Jim drove us to the drop off site at 5:05am to catch the bus to the starting line. I have never seen so many buses! There were buses as far as you can see!

Bye, Jim! See you in a couple hours!

We thought that we'd be waiting at the starting line for an hour! Well, not quite... the bus got stuck in traffic and dropped us off a LOOOONG way from the starting line. There were 40 corrals. We started in corral 9, so we had to walk past legions of port-o-potties, baggage drop off, and 31 corrals before reaching ours. We had only about 5 minutes to wait before the race started! Jim told me that it took them 1 hour and 15 minutes to get all the corrals started.

I'll post some more pictures of the race when I get them, but here are our results:

Chris : 1hr 57mins
Cheryl : 2hrs, 10mins - 2 minute port-o-pottie break = 2hrs 8min (a new PR)
Me : 2hrs, 8min - 5 minute port-o-pottie break (there was a line) = 2hrs 3min


That reminds me.. Check this out!

They were selling port-o-pottie Fast Passes! Yes, believe it or not... It's TRUE!!!

OC Half-Marathon

Today was our 5th race in our 12 races in 2012, AND it was Cheryl's very first half-marathon. We got up at 4:30am to get to the race for a 6:15am start. This is a point to point race... starting from Fashion Island and ending at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

We met up with my friend, Paloma, from work, which was a miracle considering there were 10,000 people running in this race. Look at that sea of people... and that sea of people need a whole fleet of port-o-potties, hahaha! Have you ever seen so many port-o-potties? (blog header)

Well, somthing went wrong with the web site... my stats and Cheryl's stats are missing. We ran together and finished in 2hrs 9 minutes. That's faster than my first half marathon! She ran the whole thing without stopping.

Here's Chris's stats:
Overall: 1353 out of 8708
Men: 930 out of 3472
M 16-19: 15 out of 42
Age/Grade: 53.01%
Place: 2528
Finish: 1:54:20
Pace: 8:44

I told Cheryl that her first half-marathon would be her hardest. She said that she hopes so, because that was really HARD!

Next race: Rock n' Roll San Diego Half-marathon!

Color Run

We thought we were going to have another 90F day, but it stayed cool and overcast... perfect for running!!! The Color Run is our 4th race in our 12 races in 2012 series. Here we are before the race, in the mandatory white T-shirt before the race starts:

There were over 12,000 people running this race! It was HUGE! We started in the 4th wave...

Here we GO! We quickly moved out front of the runners in our wave...

There were 4 color stations... yellow, green, blue, pink. Here's a view of the yellow station from afar:

Here is the pink station close up! LOL!

No, we weren't in that picture. Jim had a hard time picking us out of the 12,000 other people wearing white t-shirts, black shorts, sunglasses, and splattered with paint, lol! Oh wait! Here we are coming into the the finish line!

And here is us after the rainbow of finish line festivities.

Here are a couple of close ups of the new colorful US! Here's Chris. Doesn't he look like he had a GREAT time?

And here's Cheryl. She was so excited about this race that she had trouble sleeping last night! In this picture she thinks that she looks like the Luigi character from Nintendo...

And here we have Jim! He was careful NOT to wear a white shirt. He was so sweet to come out into the madness and take pictures. And for his trouble he now has pink boots.

Color was unavoidable! It was everywhere! From the tops of our heads...

All the way down to our toes...

And everywhere in between, and I mean EVERYWHERE! No place was safe from color!

You are probably wondering about clean-up. It wasn't bad at all... the green was the hardest color to get off. Cheryl had a little panic trying to remove her green mustache. BUT, not worry... Cheryl is now mustache free. This was such a FUN run. Lots of families were running/walking together. I'd recommend this race for a wild time. Here is the website so you can find a Color Run in your area: http://thecolorrun.com

Let me leave you with a 4 second video of the finish line... Yes, we are in there somewhere!

The Coaster Run 10K

This is our 3rd race in our "12 in 2012" challenge. The Coaster Run was sold out, and was even delayed a bit because participants got stuck in traffic getting into the parking lot. It was 52F at the start... the announcer guy was not a popular person when he announced the delay.

We started in the first corral, or as Cheryl says, "The first trough." We all did really well!!!

Cheryl finished 7th out of 44 in her age group.
Her time: 56:13, pace: 9:04

Chris finished 3rd out of 20 in his age group.
His time: 48:46, pace: 7:52

I finished 1st out of 31 in my age group.
My time: 52:09, pace: 8:25

So, if we had known, Chris and I would have gotten prizes at the awards ceremony. One of these times we'll have to stick around to see what we win!

Brea 8K

Here we are at our second race of 12 races in 2012. This is the Brea 8K. Why 8K? No one seems to know, but the good news is that we all PR'd! The Brea 8K has been run for 21 years and benefits the Brea School District. I got the lunch group from Panasonic involved in this one. We registered as Team Panasonic. Even the kids are part of the team. There were two others who were supposed to come... I'm sorry that they couldn't make it.

I even got everyone matching shirts. Okay no one wants to run in a polo shirt, but it makes for a good picture, lol!

Team Panasonic came in 14th out of 81 teams! Yahoo, go us! We would have posted even better, but for some reason they used the top 4 gun times instead of chip times to calculate the team score. We started at least a minute from the starting line.

Like I said... everyone PR'd. Here are the stats...

Chris did a really good job, especially since he hasn't been running. He was our first team scorer. By the time the rest of us got in, he'd already been around the FREE food court once and had a grocery bag full of free food and goodies.



I finished in the top 10% of my age group, that's pretty much where I always finish. 8K is an unusual distance. I didn't want to go out at a 5K pace and not be able to finish, so I went at a 10K pace, but had too much energy at the end. I was the 4th scorer for our team.



This was Cheryl's first BIG competitive race. She was actually in front of me at the 1 mile mark. I passed her at the water station around mile 2. Jim took this picture of Cheryl just before the finish line. Look at that smile! Do you think she was having a good time?




I think that a good time was had by ALL! The race was very competitive, yet no one was pushing or being mean... The Brea 8K might have to be our annual tradition!