I took a little break from the blog while life things happened after the Marine Corps Marathon , but I'm still hitting the pavement. I ran a Turkey Trot 5k with my brother-in-law on Thanksgiving day, Our first race together! (And I have bed-head.) the Brandon Half Marathon two weeks ago, I cut that one a little too close! the Let It Snow 5k for Girls on the Run last weekend, I hijacked this pic of my friend Karen and her running buddy; I'm toward the back with mine. I finally replaced my overly worn shoes with the newest Brooks Ghost (7), At last, I get a wide shoe with good colors! I went back to my bootcamp class this past week after a seven-month hiatus (ouch), It's easy to smile when all the hard work's over! I made a bike change that I've been wanting to do for a while--I sold both my road bike and my cruiser and bought a hybrid (if you ever want to know where NOT to try to sell, ask me), I'm so excited to ride ag...

My friend Beth brought to my attention this Wall Street Journal article  about the decline of competitiveness in younger runners (20s and 30s) these days. In the article, titled "The Slowest Generation" (ouch), author Kevin Helliker touches on the popularity of races such as the Color Run , which embrace the ideologies of running for fun and running to finish, and which therefore do not even time their participants. I can think immediately of several runs that have followed in the footsteps of the Color Run--the Flavor Run , the Glow Run , the Color Vibe 5K , Color Me Rad , and the list goes on. I've never attended these "races," for a number of reasons: I don't like distractions during a race (such as color being thrown at me).  Races are a healthy environment in which to express competitiveness; in fact, that's what they're made for. I already feel a great sense of camaraderie when I run a timed race; while there is competition among runners, ...

Time has really gotten away from me, as I write this post more than a month after my last one. Fortunately little of note has occurred in the interim, but I have accomplished two significant things in my running life recently: I began training for the Steamtown Marathon, and  I ran another PR 5k race and won my age group!  I'll get to the training in a later post, but first things first. Lutz Independence Day 5k Since the earliest conversations I had with my boyfriend, Tim, a native of Lutz, he has talked about this 5k race. This is understandable, as it was the first 5k race he ran, which launched a significant lifestyle change for him; it was in his hometown; and it was the first race he ran with his dad, a longtime runner. He would tell me in the earlier stages of our relationship that if we were still together by July 4, I should run the race with him, his dad, and his cousin. I generally stop racing in May--maybe June, but even that's pushing it in the Florida h...

So, after the Nike Women's Half Marathon I ran in DC, I told myself I'd take a rest afterward. But then someone kept tempting me to sign up for races. And because I was on a PR roll, I thought, hey, why not--let's end the spring race season with a bang. So I ran three races on the three weekends following Nike: the Police Appreciation 10K, Miles for Moffitt 5-Mile, and the Secret Service 5K. I PR'd two out of three, and finally got my 5K (official) PR I'd been hoping for. Interestingly, I placed eighth in my age group for all three races. Police Appreciation 10K - 5/5/13 Official Time: 0:49:46 Official Avg Pace: 8:00 mins/mile Age Group Place: 8/45 The unseasonably cool and breezy weather that morning made for a great race through scenic downtown St. Pete. Even though we learned later that we were led backward through the course as it was designed, which explains why we only saw the back sides of mile markers, we still ran the correct distance.  ...

Last night, with fairly warm temps and a present wind, I ran the inaugural Tampa Bay Corporate 5K . The race started and finished at Curtis Hixon Park in downtown Tampa. The race was put on by Mena Shaw Races , operated by co-race directors (and my friends) Benjamin Mena and Beth Shaw . My overall takeaway from the night is that they put on a wonderful event. There was an issue with the course--it ended up being about a quarter mile long--and that might have kept me from PRing the 5K distance, but there's no real telling. Let's just say I was close at 3.1 miles. But one benefit of knowing the race directors is being able to get the back story on things like this, and it turns out the police or other city officials actually made them move the race start/finish about a quarter mile farther from where they had determined the correct start/finish point for 3.1 miles. These things happen, and it wasn't the race directors' fault. So what I can say is that I ran a PR for thi...

Almost two weeks ago now on a Friday evening, like late in the evening when I'm usually winding down for bed, I ran the Oldsmar Taphouse 5k . This year, local race director Fred Rzymek changed up this run (in its fifth year) by moving the date up and the time back--to 10pm--and adding a pajama party theme. Apparently this combo, plus the chilly temps, was a good recipe for a PR (25:16)! Perhaps wearing PJs in the cold is its own impetus for running faster, as my friend Nicole and I both finished together and ran our best 5K times! Thanks, Gap Body, for the two PJ rompers.  Nicole was getting fresh with me! This almost never happens (I didn't have to scroll down or go to the next page of results!). Here are our numbers. If we hadn't run over, we'd have probably come in under 25. But I can't do all that math. The necessary group photo (I guess some people go to bed in bow ties). We all earned beer boots! And yet Nicole and I bought wine :/ ...

When one of the founders of the nonprofit Women Helping Others Succeed (WHOS) came to the Four Green Fields Running Club a couple of weeks ago to announce their upcoming 5k race, my interest was immediately piqued. Aside from being sponsored by a women's charitable organization, the race proceeds would benefit athletes with certain limitations who needed special equipment to participate in races and the like. I thought it was a fitting event for Veterans Day, which I never really know how to honor, as many of these athletes were no doubt veterans who had lost limbs or mobility as a result of combat. As an added bonus, the race was to be held in Hyde Park Village, just blocks from where I live. I hadn't run a 5k race since May, and at that race I'd finished with a personal record (PR) of 27 minutes. That was quite an exciting accomplishment for me, as shorter races (read: fast races) were not my forte. All of my training since then had been for distance races, so I'd...