Race #10 Overall

I’ll start by saying that my diet (a.k.a. slight change in lifestyle) seems to be working just about the way I was hoping it would.  I’m not one to go on hard diets and lose weight quickly as I just gain it right back anyway.  Likewise I’m not one to go sign up for a gym membership since I tend to hate hanging around with strangers worrying about how I look.  So for Lent this year, I decided to make small changes such as eating less fast foods (I still haven’t been to a Raising Cane’s (thank God)), not drinking soft drinks except for the rarest of occasions (I can still drink the total number of cokes I’ve had since February on one hand), and getting slightly more active such as signing up for an additional softball league, running a little more and keeping my name on the Bayou Corne response team which makes me spend work time outdoors in the heat instead of caged in an office… small subtle changes that were meant to drive me in a slightly different direction and to sort of ‘train’ me over time to stop bad habits.  And it seems to be working as the results are becoming slightly more evident although lately I feel like I’m reaching another plateau point.  Six months later, I’m twenty pounds lighter and still going.  My hope is to lose at least another ten to fifteen.  Then I’ll be back to where I was when I graduated college where I always had Tigerband to keep my weight in check.  I also hope to continue to increase my endurance and get it back up to levels I used to remember.  The thought of that has even made me consider the idea of getting myself ready to run the Louisiana Half Marathon here in January.  Then I sign myself up for a evening race in the middle of July which makes me rethink the whole idea.

Starting Line

The Gleaux Run (Formerly the Light Up the Night Cancer Run) has been around for a few years locally at least.  I’ve heard of it in previous years.  The race is a ‘nighttime’ run where runners are supposed to wear neon or have some sort of glowing lights on their person as a tribute to fight cancer.  I signed up for this race to cover the month of July in my 13 in 2013 Series.  There just aren’t many races down here in the middle of summer and the few there are I have to schedule around between all of my other work and nonwork activities.  But this race seemed perfect.  I like to run.  I like local.  I like glowy things.  Why not.

The race itself had about 250 participants.  There was chip timing which sort of surprised me, before and after the race.  Most people were decorated in some form or another, most simply were wearing glow necklaces.  But a few were wearing bright neon or body pant or had other glow items to show.  I wore two glow sticks around my neck and I decorated my shoe laces with neon bracelets.  I ended up matching quite well as every glow stick I picked out ended up being either blue or green and I ended up wearing a blue shirt as well.  By chance the night before for fun, I cracked on a purple and gold one, but without cracking them, it’s hard to tell what color they’re going to be so you just guess.

Glow Runners

Downtown happened to be very crowded this night.  Originally the race was scheduled for 7:30PM I believe and I think we waited until 7:45PM because a wedding at a church down the street was letting out right around then.  This was fine by me as ultimately, the race should have waiting until 8PM that way it was a little bit darker.    Also, there was some music festival going on down by the State Capitol complex so we had to detour around it.  There was also the Art Melt going on which brings out a lot of people dressed up and visiting the shops, bars and restaurants downtown.  It was pretty busy.

So the race starts, and I basically bring up the rear since I was too busy taking a few pics and wanted the pack to take off without me just because it feels easier that way (no bumping up against people at the starting line area).  In the second block, we passed by the church where the wedding had been and some people were still outside cheering us on.  Another block and I passed up a group of ladies dressed up in glow gear but it was still just daylight enough you couldn’t get the full effect of it.

Capitol

Now that I look back on it, I really did do a lot of passing in this race which made me feel good.  The course was a course that I had seen mapped before for some other races.  Down 4th, around Capital Park and the Battery, then up 3rd to River Road and back into downtown and 4th.  The detour around the music festival made no difference as we just made a block around them that met back up to where we were supposed to be anyway, so no difference in distance.  Also, where we turned around, everybody was turning around, except for one person who ran all the way to the cop cars at the end of 3rd Street which was only another 250 feet away or so, only about a tenth of a mile or so.

So making it back in for the finish, I pick up my pace again, and within sight of the finish clock I can see that I’m under 30 minutes.  That had me pretty excited.  They had gun time and we had chips, so I crossed at around 29:45 and the chip had me at 29:02.  I finished about 50th in the guys and 114th overall, which out of 250 is better than half, so I really did pass a lot of people (mainly in the first mile and a few more near the finish).  But honestly, the pace of under 10 minutes per mile had me wondering.  This race was kicking my butt.  I felt worse after this race.  I attributed that to running faster and running in July and not running a race since April because the Zombie Run really didn’t qualify as a real race, just an obstacle course.  We slowed up and even walked a lot during that one.  But regardless, I was somewhat skeptical but still excited.  New PR and everything.

Capitol 3rd St

Once I got home, I did two different mappings and got a similar distance, 2.8 miles.  AGAIN!  And this race was sanctioned unlike the Dieticians one in March.  So what’s up with 5K races being able to advertise 5K but only run 4.5K?  And I blame the group because like I said, the detour we made shaved off zero distance and the turnaround which was clearly unmarked, assuming if we went to the cop cars would have added another 0.1 mile, still under 5K.  Even the pace they quoted me wasn’t right.  They gave me a 9:22 min/mi pace for a 5K but it was only 4.5K, so my pace was really about 10:22 which felt more to my feeling of the race I had run.  Still a PR for sure, but I didn’t shatter it like I had originally thought.  It’s not a huge deal and I can work around it, but I do not like the false advertising or short cutting.  Not to mention the reason it made me mad at this race was because the whole organization of this race seemed to be seriously lacking.  No info on the website.  No course map until I picked up my packed an hour before.  (I could have known that it was less than 5K before.)  But I like I said, I’ve seen this route used for other local races in the past so I had no reason to doubt its accuracy until after this race.  The water was within the first mile but none afterwards to the finish.  And I never found the water at the finish, only pizza, which I really didn’t want and didn’t get.  Just overall unorganized.  Would I do it again, sure, especially knowing what I know now.  But I can understand how newbies might be confused with this race.  I certainly was.

So now we’re off into August where I have two races planned but only one really counts.  The 10K in Dallas will cross Texas off my list.  The Red Dress Run in NOLA is more or less a glorified pub crawl so not really anything special there.  I just get to dress up as a woman, run around the Quarter and drink beer during the hottest part of the day and listen to Cowboy Mouth afterwards.  Sounds worth it.   🙂  The 10K at this point could really kick my butt but I’ve already started a slightly more vigorous regiment to get myself just a little better acclimated to running longer so hopefully that helps although if I don’t see results in time for this next race in less than a month, I wouldn’t be surprised either.

Race: Gleaux Run (Light Up the Night)

Date: July 20, 2013, 7:45PM

Place: Downtown, Baton Rouge, LA

Time: 0:29:02

Charities: American Cancer Society