Biggest Loser 10K Recap

My husband and I originally signed up for this race back in April when I went on a race registration spree. I'm pretty sure in one day I signed us up for four different races, including the Biggest Loser 5K. Since my husband has been hurting I wasn't sure if he was going to be able to do this race with me or not and I had been contemplating emailing them to see if they would use his registration to upgrade mine to a 5K. However, he rallied and decided to do the race.

We met for lunch and then went to the packet pick up at one of the local Fleet Feet stores. They had a decent little area set aside just for packet pickup, a solutions desk, one vendor (besides all the store had to offer) and a table set up for Jay Sheets (BL season 15) who was signing autographs and taking pictures. We headed to the packet table and quickly got our bib and goodie bag. The bag itself was very nice and the kiddo has already acquired one of ours, the materials inside were fine for the fact that it was a little 5K; coupons, ads and a little bottle of sunscreen. The lady at the solutions table was very nice and it took less than 3 minutes to get me switched from the 5K to the 10K. Jay lives fairly close to where I grew up, as a matter of fact, the town he lives in was the big town that we always went to for our shopping and entertainment. I stood in a short line to get a signature on my shirt from him and he was genuinely nice. I told him where I grew up and he told me he was just there for vacation. After I got my picture I said bye and my husband and I headed out. (And yes he was wearing the same cowboy hat.)

The next morning we headed to Six Flags for the race. My husband wasn't sure if we would have to pay for parking or not as the emails (which I had never received) hadn't said anything about paying for parking or not. As it turned out we didn't end up needed to pay. After we parked we headed to the start area. Jay and Dan were hanging out by the start line and chatting about Biggest Loser and their lives afterward. The start line was outside of the park and we milled around until they asked us to line up at the start. There were no official corrals but Fleet Feet had pacers for 7:30 all the way to 15:00 and they spaced themselves out throughout the corral. They did a wave start pacer by pacer so it was actually not to horribly crowded at the front, since we were lined more toward the back it was a little less spaced out. We were wearing bibs with timing chips on them so we didn't think it would matter when we crossed the start line. I had convinced my husband that since we were doing 2 different races that he should run for a PR and not stick with me for the race, so he quickly left me behind.

The first 0.5 miles was outside of the park, in the parking lot. We ran into the park and ran through the park for about 0.25 miles until we hit the back service road which was the majority of our run. The back service road was incredibly hilly; it was just up and down some pretty significant inclines. There was one water station on the back service road with 2 volunteers manning it, when my husband made it to the water station, they didn't have any water and were waiting on a refill. When I made it to the water stop they had obviously gotten a refill and everything was fine.

After the water station we had to go about 0.25 miles through the back part of the park before we finally came back into the park for about another 0.25 miles before we came out onto the parking lot again. Since the 10K was just a double loop I knew that I had to do all those hills again. While I was running in the parking lot, they started opening the lot for people to park so we tried very hard to stay out of the way. At one point during the time I was in the parking lot I looked toward the finish line and I managed to spot my husband's bright blue shirt getting ready to cross the finish line! I looked at my watch and was sure he was going to have a PR. I was so excited for him and wished that if I would have screamed that he could have heard me but I knew I was to far away. The 10K split right before the finish line, which was the only other volunteer that I saw, to do the second loop of the course. Since my husband already finished he came over and walked and ran with me until I was almost back into the parking lot. They did have an additional water station in the parking lot for the 10K route which was nice, I used a GU at this time.

By the time I reached the back service road again, my legs were starting to get tired. I hadn't eaten breakfast like I usually do before a race and those hills had really taken it out of me during the first loop. I run hills almost every run that I do but these hills still killed my legs. I started to break up my run/walk times more and more to keep my heart rate under 183. By the time I made it to the finish line I was feeling fine, just tired. The only problem I had with the finish line was that they happened getting ready to start the kids fun run while I was finishing so they had to ask everyone to move over so that the 10K runners could finish. They had water, a protein drink, fruit and bagels at the finish line and they were printing out sheets with results and putting them on the bulletin board when they had a complete page.

My medal was also very disappointing to me. When I was walking with my husband previously he had shown me his medal, the medal was generic to the Biggest Loser/Six Flags race series and the ribbon was too, the ribbon was orange and said 5K. When I finished they had run out of the pink 10K ribbon medals and were giving out generic medals with generic ribbons and I'm not going to lie for the $50 dollars I spent the race, I expected a better course, course support and a better medal.

We decided to skip the board as we both didn’t need to know immediately and figured we hadn't placed anyway. I took the long way through the parking lot to our car to get some more mileage in since my GPS watch said 5.9 at the end of the race, my husband's GPS read 2.9 for the 5K and I really needed 7 miles for the day. My husband went to the car to sit in the AC. When I made it to the car I had finally reached 6.2 miles. So we headed out to a nearby park to finish up the last 0.8 miles.

When we finally made it home and checked the website my result came out just fine…

Female 25 to 29
Place	Name	City	Bib No	Age	Overall	Time Back	Chip Time	Gun Time	Chip Diff	Pace
10	Bethany		2864	28	112	40:42.2	1:29:42.7	1:32:43.1	3:00.4	14:28/M

 

However my husband had a bit of issue with his…

Male 25 to 29
Place	Name	City	Bib No	Age	Overall	Time Back	Chip Time	Gun Time	Chip Diff	Pace
6	Caleb	St. Louis MO	4939	27	160	11:07.7	41:32.4	41:32.4		13:24/M

 

He crossed the start line at the same time that I did so I'm not sure why he doesn't have a chip diff. His should be 3:00.4 also, which should have made his results look like this…

Male 25 to 29
Place	Name	City	Bib No	Age	Overall	Time Back	Chip Time	Gun Time	Chip Diff	Pace
6	Caleb	St. Louis MO	4939	27	132	8:07.7	38:32.0	41:32.4	3:00.4	12:24/M

 

Overall we weren't thrilled with the race, several people told us they have run Biggest Loser in other cities and the race was significantly better. So I can only speak about the St. Louis event. I don't know that either of us will do this race ever again because of the experience we had. Between the short course, running on a service road, the lack of spectators or support, difficulty with the timing and my disappointment with the medal it just left us very disenchanted.

A Long Post

So, what happened? I was posting somewhat regularly and then bam, I disappeared. It's kind of my MO for blogging though isn't it? That's why pretty much my only regular follower is my husband, bless his heart. Anyway, here's the long and short of what happened while we were away...

July 5th I woke up feeling miserable and had a particularly bad head cold. I ended up spending most all of Sunday and Saturday in bed trying to feel better. Thankfully I did end up feeling pretty good by the time I woke up on Monday, on the other hand, on Monday I woke up to my husband puking. I thought maybe he had food poisoning but when I went to work and experienced similar symptoms I realized that he probably brought home a stomach virus not food poisoning. So I spent Wednesday and Thursday dealing with a stomach virus. By Friday my stomach virus was gone but I had a nasty cough to replace it. On Saturday I finally gave up and got an antibiotic and a steroid taper.

After I was finally feeling better I'd lost a whole week. It was Monday again and I had three miles on the running schedule, I also wanted to get my kiddo and the dog out and about so I ended up doing 4 miles on Monday. My 3 mile run went very well, thanks to being on a steroid taper for my bronchitis. I decided to do Run 2 Walk 8, just to see how I felt and I wanted to keep the rest nice and long to keep my heart rate from getting to high which I frequently have trouble with during a steroid course. I  took the run times nice and slow to help keep my heart rate down and ended up having a max HR of 184 which is really my max. Right about there and above I start to feel like crap if I keep that up so I usually shoot to keep it around 180 or less.

Tuesday was back to work for me, this time feeling much better than I had in a while thankfully. I didn't run but I did manage to do around 5,783, I had been using the breeze app for iPhone but I'm not the best about keeping my phone in my pocket so I pretty much always assume that it's off by a bit.

Wednesday was a fun day for the kiddo and I, he did his usually chores and then we went to the park for a while before heading to his dentist appointment. I took a book and kicked back while he had his cleaning, his dentist doesn't allow parents back unless they are adamant about it or there is a problem. Honestly it would probably stress out kiddo out to have us back there and do more harm than good so I got to read for 30 minutes and he was very well behaved, it is a win win. My husband was already home by the time we got back from the dentist and after we made dinner and put the kid to bed, he was nice enough to do the laundry while I went out for my 4 mile run.  I did my usual leave from the front door and run down the street routine. I usually don't do that for anything longer than 3 miles out from my door, mostly because I never have but also because I didn't know how much further the sidewalks go once I get 1.5 miles down the street. I ended up being able to add the .5 miles without much difficulty but by the time I was on the way home it had gotten considerably dark and there weren't a ton of street lights on so I was concerned that I might trip or hurt myself. I keep saying I need to wear a headlamp when I do late night runs and I even have a couple of them, I just never remember it when I go for a run.

I had to work again on Thursday and also had a 3 mile run on the schedule. By the time I made it home after my 12 hour shift. (I have an 80 minute commute.) I was done and I just didn't have it in me to do the 3 mile run, I took a hot shower and ended up falling asleep and sleeping about 12 hours.

When I finally crawled out of bed on Friday I didn't have much time before I had to meet my husband for lunch and to go pick up our race packets for the Biggest Loser Run/Walk. We had both originally signed up for the 5K but since the marathon training plan I'm doing had a 7 mile run scheduled I decided to upgrade my registration to the 10K. I also got to meet Jay from BL season 15. He lives close to where I grew up and we talked for a few minutes about his recent vacation which was right down the street from my parents house. He seems like a really nice down to earth guy.

After packet pick up my husband headed back to work for a little bit and I headed home, lucky my hubby didn't have to work long though. We headed out to do a bit of shopping. My husband has really been wanting a GPS watch to run with. He normally uses RunKeeper on his phone, which he really enjoys using but anytime we have to stop at a light or to tie a shoe it is a long process for him to pause his workout, when I can just press a button. He is the type to research a purchase for months before buying something, where I am much more impulsive. He had looked at a lot of watches but still hadn't narrowed it down to just one. He was thinking he might get a Garmin Forerunner 220 like I have but ended up leaving the store with a Nike+ watch instead. He really wanted something to try out for our race on Saturday and decided if he didn't like it after the race he would return it.

We came home to meet up with his Aunt and Uncle that he had done some computer work for and ended up going out to dinner with them after he finished up the computer repair and had a nice dinner with them. On the way back home we decided to swing back by Best Buy for an activity tracker for me. I've kind of wanted one for a while and there was a fairly cheap one that I figured I would try out. When I got back I saw something I hadn't noticed before which was the Misfit Shine. I had seen it on the Apple commercial and thought it looked cool so I ended up picking one up to take home. I will write a review once I have used it for a little bit longer but so far I'm thinking I like it. If you haven't seen them, check them out. I know that they are another tracker in a sea of them but it's worth a look if you are looking for one. I included a link to it on Amazon below.

As for our Saturday, we stayed very busy! Kiddo got to spend the night with grandma since we has to be up at 6:15 for our race. We headed out and made it to the race with about 30 minutes to spare, my husband is early to everything, unlike me who usually shows up as they are releasing the first corral. Anyway my husband set a new PR and I finished the 10K in about the pace I expected. I will post a full race review in a day or so. After the race we had breakfast and headed home to meet up with the kiddo. After a nap and lunch we headed to a local park to do some hiking and a little bit of swimming in the river.  After that I was done with the activity but my husband decided he didn't like his Nike+ as much as he had hoped so he took it back and on my recommendation picked up the TomTom Runner Cardio which I'm a bit jealous of, I won't lie. Provided he likes it he has already agreed to do a review after a few days of testing it out.

*Bethanylosesit.blogspot.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. If you purchase the product through the link above I earn a percentage of the sale. 

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday I had to work all day and I got home a little later than normal so I decided that I would head to the gym to do it on the treadmill. Even though I have a treadmill in my apartment but I really wanted to check out the new location that my gym opened near by so I headed over. I managed to finish about a half a mile and was just done. So I headed home and vowed to do it on Friday instead.

After sleeping until noon, I finally got up and around and went out to eat with my husband and kiddo.  After we got home I continued my sleep with a quick nap on the couch. After I woke up, I got the boys packed up and ready for the pool and I headed out at 3:30 for my 3 mile run. My garmin is out in the car though so I haven't updated dailymile and I don't remember exactly what time I finished.

I did a some what new route from my apartment. I am planning on doing 5 miles tomorrow so I had already mapped out a route that would take me from my front door and down the street I usually run on the has a sidewalk to a busier road with a large shoulder to the running/bike trail I usually run on then I'll turn around and head back the same way, provided I time everything right I will finish my 5 miles at my gym and I'm hoping that I'll feel up to doing the 9 am yoga class.

After my run I met my husband, kiddo, aunt and cousins at the pool. The kids swam for a while and we ended up having a water fight and involving my husband and I so after I removed my heart rate strap I jumped in the pool and joined in. We headed home to change and then headed to the 4th of July carnival and barbecue in the next town over. We had barbecue, rode a bunch of rides and got a great spot for fireworks. The boys decided to sit on the roof of my SUV and The rest of us set up our camp chairs behind the SUV.

I really hate loud noises and we were REALLY close to where they were actually setting the fireworks off. I ended up covering my ears for most of the display. My husband loves fireworks though and I think he really loved getting to be that close to the action. We decided to let the boys have a sleepover so my cousin is staying over. They are both early risers but stayed up way past their bedtimes so we'll see if they wake up before me or not.

Frustrating Day

Today was an interesting, frustrating day. For a while during the last school year the kiddo has been asking to be homeschooled. Husband and I decided that this summer we would keep working with kiddo to prevent him from losing any of his smarts over the summer. We picked up a workbook for kids going into second grade and I have been giving him a few worksheets each day that he didn't have summer camp. How many he got was tied to what fun activity (and how long it would take) we were going to do after he was finished with his work.

Today we planned to go see a movie at the theater, something we don't do frequently in our family.  The local theaters have a "summer series" where most Wednesdays and Thursdays they play a previously released kids movie for $1 per ticket. I gave the kiddo very few chores and very few sheets. I told him we would check and correct anything that was wrong after the movie since we had to be there at 10.

When we got home from the movie I started checking the worksheets, I remembered last night when I was getting everything ready thinking that it was a lot of pages but most of it was really easy so I figured he wouldn't have any issue. The pile today seemed much lighter. I looked around for hidden papers and looked in the trash. I asked the kiddo about it and of course he had no idea. So I made him bring me all of the previous worksheets and told him I was going to put them all in order and see what was missing and that we were going to keep going until we figured out where all the papers were. So after he let me sort through all of these darn papers and I asked him again he finally confessed to throwing some away, then after I told him it still wasn't enough he brought me more from his room. After a bit more prodding he admitted he has been doing it for several days. Sigh 7 year olds!

Anyway, there was plenty more after that that was frustrating me but I did manage to get out of the house around 4:30 pm to do my 4 miles. I hit up one of my favorite running paths and even though there were storm clouds in the sky I completed my 4 mile run without any rain drops and actually enjoyed a drop in humidity and temperature thanks to the storm clouds.

My legs definitely felt like I ran a hilly 3 miles yesterday, the first few times I ran I felt like I was running in molasses. My legs started to feel better in the later intervals though. My heart never went over 180 which is better than I have been able to keep my max heart at for a while, and depending on who you consult my max heart shouldn't be above 181-192 so I kept it low enough to appease them all.

Getting it together

Monday was to be a 3 mile run that didn't happen. Once my husband got home, we had dinner and I did some much needed grocery shopping it was getting late and I had to work Tuesday which meant the alarm was going off at 4:40 am, like it or not. 

I know that they say if you miss a workout don't try to make it up but I felt great even though I had been up for almost 16 hours. I went ahead and went out for the run because it was my first day without a cigarette, I ate like crap mad for once I really really wanted to run, so I did. 

My run felt pretty good I did 3 miles in 47:30 on my usual out and back route. I changed my intervals from 1:14 to 1:9.  I had a little bit of shin pain but that was it. 

Tomorrow has 4 miles on the schedule. It's another busy day with the kiddo, dinner and early to bed for work on Thursday. I'm starting to formulate a plan and hoping my husband can help so that I make sure to get my miles in tomorrow.