Run for the Rose 5K

Every year, the Dr. Marnie Rose foundation host the the Run for the Rose 5K to benefit brain cancer research. It has grown every year, and it is now hosted at Reliant Center. They had over 4,000 participants this year. Since Reliant is only a short 15 minute drive from my house, I decided to sign up.

I ran as part of Team Brandi's Memory Rocks On! in memory of my good friend Brandi Ward. Brandi and I were friends from the time we were in elementary school, up through high school, and onto Texas A&M. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma (a very aggressive form of brain cancer) on Christmas Eve 2003. Over the next two years, Brandi would fight the disease with many ups and downs. She would inspire us all with her courage and faith. She even had gone back to her dream job, teaching kindergarten, but in early 2006, God called Brandi home. It was the same weekend she made her national TV debut on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Now, her mom and sister organize a team in her memory every year to help find a cure for this horrible disease. I believe this year the team was 60 members strong.



I did not have high expectations for the race. I had been taking it easy for the past month, and I had only been running for the two weeks up to the race. I set my goal for the race at 21:00. I kept questioning it though and thought it might be kind of fast. Friday morning, I woke up with what I thought were bad allergies. These continued throughout the weekend. Sunday morning when I woke up, I had a slight headache, and I was pretty stuffed up. I took some Claritin, and I was happy to readjust my race goal to 22:00. I thought 21:00 was kind of fast anyway.

The race started at 8:00AM. I went out at a comfortable pace, but I thought it might be a little fast. I looked at my Garmin around the 1/2 mile mark, and I was running at a 6:30 pace. HOLY COW!! I had to ease off, or so I thought. I slowed down, but my speed must have crept back up. I went past mile 1 in 6:35. I panicked. I've got to slow down. Mile 2 was 6:37. By this point, I decided to try to hang on and see what happened. There was only 1.1 miles left, and I could still finish with a respectable time even if I ran out of gas. With a half mile to go, I continued to feel good. I looked at my watch and saw I would have no problem hitting my original 21:00 goal so I put it on cruise control. I wish I would have looked a little harder. Mile 3 was 6:33. I finished with an official time of 20:01. I could have easily finished under 20:00 if I hadn't packed it in. Total shocker. I had never dreamed I was capable of running under 20:00 in a 5K this weekend, especially, with the way I was feeling. I hadn't done that since high schoool. Let's just say I was more than pleased with my performance.

I went home, and slept on the couch for pretty much all of Sunday afternoon. I also stayed home from work on Monday and a half day on Tuesday. What I thought was allergies, turned out to be a sinus infection that I'm still trying to kill the last of.

Texas Independence Relay

The first weekend in March, I did the craziest race I have ever done. Texas Independence Relay is a 203 mile relay race from Gonzales, TX, to the San Jacinto Monument on the Houston Ship Channel. Teams can have anywhere from 8-12 runners, and the 40 legs were anywhere from 2.3 miles to 8.78 miles. Most legs were between four and six miles.

I had not been expecting to run this race. I knew several people that had run it in previous years, but never thought I would be doing it. I got recruited by my friend Carlos to run about two weeks before the race. The team he was running on had some spots open up, and they need a couple of runners. Carlos was the only person I knew on the team, and I met two of the other runners two weeks before the race at a Pearland Area Runners Club happy hour. That's how I became a member of the Professional Pavement Pounders.



Our team of ten runners started in Gonzales at 11:12AM on March 5. Over the next day and night, we ran the roads of Texas throughout the light and dark hours. It took us 26 hours, 39 minutes, and 24 seconds to cover the 203 miles. We arrived at the Monument in the early afternoon on March 6, dirty, sweaty, tired, hungry, and not smelling so great, but we all had a blast. I was nervous going into the race because I didn't know what to expect, but I hope there's a spot open on the team for me next year.

Surfside Beach Half Marathon

After my rough outing at the Chevron Houston Marathon, I decided I needed a little bit of redemption. The Surfside Beach Half Marathon was four weeks after the big race in Houston so it provided the perfect opportunity. The only thing that had me a little concerned about this race was that it is run completely on the beach. Over the next four weeks, I took two weeks of easy runs to recover. Then, the next two weeks I stepped it up and did a little bit tougher runs, but still pretty easy compared to what I had been doing the past couple of months. I knew I could finish, but I didn't really know what to expect since I had concentrated more on the recovery aspect the past four weeks.

Saturday morning, I woke up early to head down to the beach to pick up my packet and race. I got there plenty early, and it was a good thing. The later you arrived, the farther you had to park from the start line. I made the ten minute walk to pick up my packet, and the walk to put my stuff in my car and back. I felt like I was warm and ready to race just from all of that.

The race started right on time. I had planned to run a nice easy 8:00/mile pace since I didn't know what it would be like running on the sand. It turned out the sand was packed except right at around 2.4 miles. After that, I began to pick up the pace a little bit. My goal for the race was 1:45:00. It began to be obvious that I would have no problem hitting this mark. With about 3 miles left, I did the math, and I would be a lot closer to 1:40:00 than 1:45:00. However, there was no way I could get under 1:40:00 so I let off the gas a little to conserve some energy for Texas Independence Relay the next weekend.

I finished with a new personal best time of 1:42:39. This wasn't too hard considering my resume only includes one other half marathon, and conditions that day were horrible. These were nearly perfect conditions. I had a great time running on the beach, and I will definitely plan to do this race again. I've even considered going back down to Surfside for a weekend run sometime. Hopefully, next year, I can stick around for the post race meal. It looked and smelled delicious.