Saturday Morning 8K and Afternoon Obstacle Course

The weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer.

I love this time of year in South Carolina.  The temperature has started to creep up into the seventies and the fun races are just starting to get going.

Yesterday I ran the MESSA 8K for H2O on Folly Beach.  I love this race for several reasons:

- It starts at 9:00am (sometimes its nice to sleep in on a Saturday)
- Its an 8K - one of my favorite distances.  Not sure why, but I seem to catch some of the 5K speedsters after the three mile mark, but not die at the end like a 10K
- It is very well organized and always has plenty of volunteers
- Its on Folly Beach and I never get over to that side of town

Three marathons in three months and being sick most of January has definitely taken a toll on my legs and dropped my speed.  I ended up running a little slower than last year, but I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that I had placed third in my age group!

The coolest thing is how well my running partners did in the race.  Both Cathy and Annie came in first in their age groups!  Annie also finished second female overall! 

I am so proud of them and really happy that we run together every week.  Its nice to have people around that will push you to keep getting better and are willing to do crazy races with you.

After the race, we all went home and tried to rest because we had also planned to meet at the Citadel to practice on the Obstacle Course.  We are running as a team in the Bulldog Challenge.  Michael (aka Ninja Stunt Man) is also on the team, but ditched us on the 8K race.

The Bulldog Challenge is a 10K obstacle course sponsored by the Marines at the Citadel.  Teams of four compete in male, female and coed groups.  I ran this race two years ago and my team came in third place in coed.  Last year I volunteered with my son to hand out water.  After watching the teams all day, I was ready to run it again!



We met two Marines at the Citadel track at 2:00pm and they took us over to the O Course to help us work on our technique.  These guys are so cool.  They took time out of their weekend just to work with a bunch of civilians trying to run a race!

Bulldog Team Hanging Out on the O Course
We worked on getting through the course and I felt pretty comfortable, but I could tell Michael was really struggling.  He is a pretty confident person and not being able to do some of the course was really pissing him off.  Cathy and Annie figured out ways to get through the course and were feeling a lot better than they did last week.

We ran the course a few more times and I was starting to get beat up, but I was still feeling pretty good.  Besides running the Bulldog Challenge two years ago, the only other time I have been on a course like this was over twenty years ago when I was in Army basic training!

The race is March 12th so more about the Bulldog Challenge later.

After I got back from the all these workouts, I got a really cool call from the producer of the new documentary My Run.  Next week I am going to write about our conversation and this new movie, which has a one night premier in five hundred theaters March 31st.  I have also been given two tickets to give away!

Until then check out the site and watch the trailer of My Run:

0 comments:

Copyright © 2012 Moore On Running.