I found some inspiration on a blog that I follow. I thought I’d do a little experimenting with my regular chocolate cupcake and came up with my own chocolate peppermint chunk cupcake with peppermint buttercream. What I came up with is my new favorite holiday cupcake.
Chocolate and peppermint, what a fabulous combination.
I almost forgot about the 5k I registered for in the beginning of November.
The OCU Race with the Stars was a bargain. It was only $20 to register for this race and the race t-shirt was a long sleeve Brooks technical shirt. You can’t buy that for $20. My only regret is not getting a small, the medium is just too big.
When Josh and I drove up to the race I was thinking that maybe we should have stayed home. We didn’t get timing chips with our race packets and I had visions of a fun run with only a gun time. It was cold and windy on race day, and there was some confusion as to the starting line, but this was a race that turned out to be very well run and worth every penny we spent on it.
The route was a little hilly but for the most part was around campus, and we only had to run into the wind at the start and towards the end of the race. My official time was 24:06 and I won my age group. Much to my surprise they had actual prizes for the age groups. I won a certificate to learn how to row at the OKC Boathouse District. How cool is that?
And I got some pictures while Josh and I hung out and waited on the results.
I think we look fabulous and you can’t tell that we were freezing out butts off. What a great, well run race. For $20 I’ll definitely do it again next year.
The last 5k for the year was the Turkey Trot that was hosted by the Downtown YMCA. I lucked into free race entries because BMI was a sponsor of the event and they didn’t think anyone else would want 8 race entries to a 5k except for me. I was more than happy to take advantage.
All I can say about this race is that I am glad I hadn’t actually paid for it because I was very disappointed in how it was run. Josh and I picked Kim up and met Jen before the start of the race. It was chilly out, but much better conditions than the Route 66 half four days earlier. I was bummed that I couldn’t find Patti before the start of the race, but luckily she found me after we got started.
This race started with a couple of hills, then had a steady incline, and then finished with a couple of hills. Not my most favorite course, but I was pretty happy with my time. My chip time was 23:49, but they had me listed in the men’s division at first, and they had my age wrong. It wasn’t just me, I think everyone I knew that ran this race had screwed up info for their results. I know it’s just a 5k but it’s nice to see how you stack up against everyone else and I’ve never seen results as messed up as these.
Oh well, we did get a good picture at the end of the race…
It was nice to start Thanksgiving off with a run with some of my favorite running friends.
So it’s been about five weeks since we ran the Route 66 Half Marathon in Tulsa, and I am just getting around to writing about it. I figured I’d better get all my blogging in before I recap the year later this week.
Let me begin by saying how much I would love to run a race with good conditions. We thought it was going to be a beautiful day, temps in the mid 50s with no rain is what we were hearing all week, and that’s what I packed for. We headed up to Tulsa on Friday to spend time with the in-laws and met up with everyone at the race expo on Saturday afternoon.
I have probably said this before but I love race expos. I haven’t found one as good as the Rock N Roll in Dallas earlier this year, but I always have high hopes for freebies and all things running related that can be found at a good expo.
Kim, Rochelle, me, Josh, Jesica and Jeanne posing by the Route 66 sign. Since this was Josh’s first half marathon, we had to document it.
Me, Kim and Rochelle cheesing it up before we headed out.
After the expo we went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and dinner and headed home for a good night’s sleep.
I got all my gear laid out, and called it a night. I was quite surprised to wake up to temps in the 30s and while it wasn’t raining there was a lot of moisture in the air. I was very thankful for my long sleeve shirt I bought at the expo. Without it I might have froze to death.
Of course we had to take pictures before we left the house…
And then we had to ask a random stranger to take a picture of us freezing before the start of the race.
Once we got into the corral it wasn’t too bad. We were a part of what might be the world record for the most people doing the running man prior to the start, but I haven’t heard if we broke the record or not. What I didn’t remember, or decided to block out from last year’s race, was how many hills were at the start of the race. They changed up the course from last year but I recognized a lot of it at the start and it was about six straight miles of hills. That is a lot of hills.
Kim dropped back a little bit and Josh hung with Rochelle and I for most of the hills. Once it leveled out Rochelle dropped back a bit, but she wasn’t far behind me. The rest of the course was pretty flat and thankfully it didn’t ever rain, but the final three miles were straight into the wind, right by the river and they were pretty brutal.
I was hoping to finish in under 2 hours, and honestly I was pretty untrained for this race. I think Rochelle and I had ran 8 miles about four weeks earlier, but other than that I hadn’t ran more than six miles in the month leading up to the race. My chip time was 1:58:34 and I was very happy with that. Rochelle came in in under 2 hours as well. Josh finished in 2:06:01, and even though I was sure he was going to hate me forever for putting him through it, he is planning on running the half at the OKC Memorial this spring.
Of course there were pictures at the finish…
And more pictures when we went to our Tulsa office, which is conveniently located not far from the start, where we changed our clothes before we headed home.
I’m not sure if you can tell just how cold we were. I would kill for a race with good conditions.
I'm not sure if I've said before how much I hate the treadmill. I HATE it. I have done one treadmill workout since July and I have the remains of a nice blood blister on my center left toe. I won't include a picture of said toe, as always my toenails hate me and I have a few on their way out and a few on their way in as we speak.
That being said, it's been pretty dang cold around these parts.
I started running with my friend Patti in July. She was super intimidating at first, you've gotta love someone that is willing to get up at the crack of dawn and meet to run at 5:15 am three mornings a week. When we were running in July, and I might have mentioned this before, it was about 85 degrees at 5:15 in the morning with about 97% humidity. My how things have changed. Seriously, I need to live somewhere that there is actually a fall and a spring. This morning, I think my phone said it was 23 degrees out. I'm just going to say that 23 degrees with no wind is WWWWAAAYYY better than 30 degrees with north winds at 15-20 miles an hour. That was Monday, by the way.
I committed to six miles this morning even though the weatherman told me I was crazy. The hardest part of running in the cold is convincing yourself that you are not going to freeze to death. That would only happen if you stop moving. Did you know that if you are meeting someone to run at 5:15 you have to get up at around 4:45 in the morning? I am a morning person, and I have been for quite some time, but this is ALMOST too early for me.
I had all my stuff laid out. My one pair of long pants, my insulated shirt, a long sleeve technical shirt, ear warmers, my Bad Ass hat that my friend Kim bought me last year which doesn't actually cover my entire ears so I have the ear warmers too (I try really hard to not look like a dork in a knitted or crocheted hat but I have since been unsuccessful), my jacket, and my Gap gloves that I have had for about a million years (Patti said her hands feel cold just looking at me with these on).
I got up, got dressed and then I made a cup of green tea that I put in an insulated mug for post run warmth on my way home. I was surprised that it did stay pretty warm, I'd do it again.
All in all, the run wasn't bad because it was cold. It might have been the bootcamp class last night that has my booty all kinds of sore that was the problem, but I felt HORRIBLE. Sure we were running at about an 8:15 pace and we slowed up to about 8:45 or 9, but mentally it was a very hard morning.
Now I need to see about some real cold weather running gear and I'll be all set.
I still need to recap the Route 66 Half and the OKC Turkey Trot. Man have I been slacking lately…
