California International Marathon: Pros and Cons

First off, let me say that I did what I set out to do…I beat Oprah! Hurray! 

source

Now, let’s talk about race pros and cons. The California International Marathon, held in Sacramento, starts at Folsom Lake and ends at the Capitol Mall downtown. It is a net elevation decline; however, this does not mean that it does not have hills! In fact, according to my Garmin, the total ascent was 3600 ft. and the total descent was about 3900 ft., which pretty much matches up to the course profile. 

The course itself is a beautiful course. There is still fall foliage. It runs mostly down Fair Oaks Blvd, which is a tree lined and sometimes winding road. The weather started out in the high 30s/low 40s and got up into the high 50s/low 60s by the end of the race. The race started at 7 am and although you could not drive to the start, there were free bus shuttles from several areas nearby. You could also pay to get the bus from several hotels. If you paid, you got to sit on the bus until the start of the race; if you took the free shuttle, you had to get off and wait in the cold. 

PROS:

Plenty of port-a-potties at the start of the race. In fact, there were probably near to 300 of them. This is a huge pro for me, since I have a bladder the size of a pea, especially on race day, when I am nervous and hyper hydrated.

Plenty of aid stations (17 total). There was an aid station pretty much every one and a half miles serving both water and Ultima Replenisher. There were three places where they were handing out Gu as well (miles 13, 20 and 23). They had the Gu stations right before the water stations, so you could take your Gu and then have a nice swig of water to wash it down, which I have found is critical. I carried my own water (24 oz) because I like to have more control over when I can drink, but I would have been fine without it.

Great race swag. The t-shirt for this race was a long sleeved technical tee. It came in both women’s and men’s sizes, which is great because the men’s shirts just don’t fit me quite as well. It’s light blue (the men’s were dark blue…what the heck), which is not that exciting, but at least it’s not white.

The Expo. The expo was huge. There were tons of vendors there, both selling and giving away things. There was a lot of information about other races in the area. REI was there, giving away money (I still don’t know if I won anything…fingers crossed!) It was well organized and easy to manipulate. I did not buy anything, since I pretty much have everything I need right now, but if I needed anything, this would have been the place to get it!

CONS:

The Relay. This race was not only a marathon, but also a marathon relay. What I did not quite understand is that they don’t split up the four legs evenly; it’s 5.9, 13.1, 20 and the end. Strange. Anyway, I wish that they had this as a separate race. The areas where the relay runners had to swap over was so congested. I think there were something like 1000 teams, so hundreds of people were lined up, ready for the exchange at the transfer points. At each transfer point, there were corrals and the relay people went one way while the marathoners went another. It was just a bit confusing and was a little too much hubbub for me.

Bivvys on the course. As I mentioned before, this is a very personal con for me, since I use the bathroom a lot. I had to go 4 times during this race. Each time I waited as long as I could, because all of the port-a-potties had long lines. At each aid station there were only 4 or 5 potties, therefore making this a con in my book. I think that without the bathroom lines, I may have been able to shave 5 minutes off of my time, maybe more! Or maybe I just need to learn to pee on myself, like the pros.

Walkers. This may be of no fault of the CIM, but what is up with the people walking in front of me when I was corralled in the 4:10 – 4:25 area? Shouldn’t they have started farther back? The race start was not corralled per se. There were only signs telling you what pace should be starting here, but no actual cordoning off of people (like when I ran in NY). I am not fast enough that it really made a difference to my time, but it is still annoying that people slower than me must have started way up at the 3 hour pace mark, when they are obviously not going to finish in three hours. I admit to sometimes corralling myself in a 30 second per mile faster than I normally run, but not HOURS!

SOME STATS:

Before the race started I asked a lady at the port-a-potty line how many people had signed up. She said 25,000. I remember thinking, “Holy &^%$”. Once the race started and I had been running in a pretty thick pack of people for about 2 hours, I assumed she must have been right. The crowd barely thinned; even by the end I was still running alongside a lot of people. Afterwards, we checked online. Here are the official numbers.

Marathoners signed up: 7909

Marathoners finished: 5900 (not official)

Relay Teams signed up: 1056 (x 4 people)

Course Record: 2:10:06, Jerry Lawson, USA, 1993

This Year’s Winner: 2:11:50 Erick Monyenye, USA

All in all it was a great race. I was pretty tired at the end, but I made it. I finished. Stay tuned for the race recap on Friday!  

Have you ever been to Sacramento? What did you do this weekend?

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Florida Bound

I'm heading to South Florida today to visit family and my mom is meeting me there. I am excited to see everyone and going to enjoy my last trip before baby comes!  The added bonus is seeing all of the beautiful holiday decorations this time of year.  I also took a trip to Florida last December and saw all of these gorgeous displays in Palm Beach:

The Impressive Lobby at The Breakers

Gingerbread House at Cafe L'Europe

Christmas Tree on Worth Avenue

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K.Will & Hyorin ~ Whenever You Call

K.Will'in sesini ne kadar beğendiğimi şu yazımda anlatmıştım. K.Will ve aynı ajansta çalıştıkları Sistar grubunun lideri Hyorin ile bir düetleri mevcut. 2010 yılının Aralık ayında noel havasına yönelik programlardan birine katılan K.Will ve Sistar ekibi ayrıca şarkı da söylüyorlar. Ancak aşağıdaki K.Will ve Hyorin düeti dinlediğim en güzel düetlerden biri. 

Zaten K.Will'in sesinin kalitesi tartışılmaz. Ama Hyorin'in sesinin ne kadar şahane olduğunu görmeniz için güzel bir fırsat. Ben severek, çok beğenerek hem dinliyorum hem de izliyorum. Whenever You Call şarkısının orjinal düetini Brian McKnight ve Mariah Carey söylemişti. 

Şimdi şöyle bir gerçek de söz konusu Brian McKnight ve Mariah Carey ikilisinin düeti şahane ötesi. Ama şunu da göz ardı etmeyelim Korelilerin İngilizce konuşmakta zorlanmaları göz önüne alınırsa K.Will ve  Hyorin'in de performansı bence şahane denebilir. 

O zaman şöyle yapıyoruz. Gözünüz boyanmasın diye önce K.Will ve  Hyorin'in performansını daha sonra da Brian McKnight ve Mariah Carey'in performansını seyredin. 

Buralarda adam kayıran birileri mi varmış :D Neyse ben kaçtım. Sizler şahane müziğin tadını çıkarın :) 

K.Will & Hyorin

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Ashes, Ashes, We all Fall Down

Lisa started a tradition of looking back each season at what things were like when we were kids. She calls it When I Was A Child. You can see my Summer list HERE.

I love this idea, and even though I am just barely squeaking in for Fall, I am still within the limits! When I was a kid, there are specific things that we did every fall. On top of that, there are many things that when I see them, hear them or smell them, completely take me back to being a kid.

Raking Leaves: To be more specific, raking, piling them up and then jumping in them. Or sometimes just what seemed like hours of raking. 

Leaves...and a dog in my sweater.

Firewood: The bane of my existence as a kid was the wood stove. There were endless hours of chopping wood, hauling wood, splitting kindling and stoking the fire. It seemed hard for me at the time, but now I look back and realize what little I actually did. I never had to get up at 5 in the morning to start the fire at least! Thank goodness I was a kid then!

Oranges and Cinnamon: My Mom used to put orange peels and cinnamon in a pot of water on the (wood) stove (and sometimes cloves etc) and it would give off such a homey smell. I loved coming home from school to the smell of that.

Apples: I mentioned before, and you have probably noticed from the Apple a Day series, that we had trees in our backyard (and still do!) Funny enough, I remember apple pies and always was a fan of eating apples, but what I mostly remember is chucking the hard apples at my cousins in the backyard. We used to have apple fights and those things sure would leave a welt!

School: Fall meant being back in school with your friends, watching football games, drinking hot cocoa in the stands and just general good times with friends.

Soccer: Even though soccer began in the summer, the actual games were played mostly in the Fall. We were a motley crew. The first year I played was the first year our school had a girls’ team, so we had our work cut out for us. This did not stop us from having fun though!  We didn’t have funding for a bus, so we had to carpool and we sure had fun on those car rides!

The soccer girls

Footie Pajamas: I might have to buy myself an adult version of those footie PJs, because those were my favorite thing ever. Although now I can’t stand having anything on my feet, so maybe it wouldn’t go over as well. They are great for wearing around the house though!

Daylight Savings: Since I didn’t care if it was dark or not, I always LOVED to Fall Back. This somehow meant an extra hour to stay up (feels like 10 but its ONLY 9!) AND an extra hour to sleep in!! It was a double bonus in my book.

Boots: As you can see, I used to be quite stylish. However, I have taken a significant turn for the worse, style-wise, since then. 

Me with my puss and boots

Hiking: Since my parents owned their own business which was busiest in the summer, we did most of our weekend trips and vacations in the Fall and Winter. We often went hiking in the Fall, since it was still warm enough to do so.

Mt. Whitney -- 1995

Mt. Lassen -- Circa 1987

Halloween: This holiday was a big deal. I remember getting homemade cookies and popcorn balls as the candy. Also, my Dad would buy our candy from us and then we could have it back, but only one candy per day. To me, this was the ultimate set-up because, a) I don’t really like candy anyway and b) I do like money. Money over candy was my motto. Cha-ching! 

See the wood stove behind me!? Hours of firewood splitting!

What were the autumns of your childhood spent doing? Are there some things you did then that you still do now? 

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Progress!

I have been waiting to receive my fabrics for the nursery from Quadrille for a long time.  After a mistaken order that I received in early October and waiting over a month all the while never receiving a replacement, I had to come up with another solution.  Now, I have all of the fabrics I need and sent them off to their respective places to be made into bedding and window treatments:

Speaking of baby stuff, J. Crew expanded their children's line and recently came out with J. Crew Baby.  I don't think I could justify buying a cashmere sweater for more than I pay for my own at Bloomingdales, but these booties and their price point ($12.95) are just too cute to pass up:

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Danity Aprons

Here are two new aprons to the collection. Both are white. One a picked up at an antique store and I think is late 20s early 30s.

Defiantly a "hostess" apron. Tea anyone?

An advertisement for a similar apron from the early 30s.

A closer look at the lovely detail.

  My Grandma gave this one to me. I am not sure if it is a costume apron or really old, I think really old. The fabric is beautiful! So soft and the stripes are actually woven it. It looks like it was handmade by a very good seamstress.

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The Low Down on FAT!

Low down on FAT When people tell me they want to lose weight, they are really talking about losing fat, getting lean, getting rid of the muffin top, back into the skinny jeans or bathing suits.  So what is a healthy amount of body fat?  Guidelines are between 8 and 18% for men and between 20 to 25% for women.  Maintaining a healthy body fat percentage is important for health.  Maintaining muscle mass, or adding lean muscle mass will help you burn more fat.  The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even at rest.  Strength training is your magic bullet when you are trying to lose fat - so get the resistance training going, either with weights or body weight.   This is important for maintain a healthy weight and body fat level. The low down on low fat - You get body fat from stored calories.  Fat in the diet, especially the good fat, has a place in your diet.  Beer bellies come from beer - and there is no fat in beer.  The "fat free" diet foods have added sugars and other chemicals and actually are much worse for you and your fitness goals than eating real food with healthy fat.  Healthy fat comes from fish, nuts, and avocados.  These foods are staples of a healthy diet. Cardiovascular (CV) disease remains the number one killer of Americans - more than all cancers combined.  By choosing the right fats we can slash the risk of CV disease.

The GOOD Good fats provide improved neurologic and mental health, protect from some cancers and diseases, decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, improve blood fat profile, create a more efficient metabolism and decrease inflammation. GOOD FAT #1 - Monounsaturated fats are plant-based fats that remain liquid at room temperature.  Sources are olive oil, canola oil, avocados, nuts and seeds.  The benefits of monounsaturated fats are improved health of your arteries, a boost to your metabolism, and protect against insulin resistance (an early precursor to diabetes). TIP - Consuming a small handful of nuts on 5 or more days per week can reduce the risk of death from CV disease by 30 - 50%, while prescription drugs only provide a 25 - 30% reduction.  The same serving of nuts will also reduce the risk of developing diabetes by 27%.  Pistachios are included in the healthy nut list - and also provide an excellent source of powerful antioxidants. GOOD FAT #2 - Omega-3 Fats - these are the heart health superstars!  Benefits include: ·         Reduced progression of atherosclerotic plaque ·         Reduced risk of arrhythmia and sudden death ·         Lowered triglycerides levels ·         Reduced blood clotting tendency ·         Lowered blood pressure ·         Enhanced arterial health ·         Reduced arterial inflammation All of this with no side effects. Where to get these foods: ·         Oily fish - salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines, herring and lake trout ·         Walnuts ·         Wheat germ ·         Small leafy greens ·         Whole soy foods ·         Omega-3 fortified eggs ·         Canola oil ·         Flax seeds ·         Oysters BAD FATs -  Bad fats are the saturated fats - or the four legged -as I like to call it.  They come from the four legged animals - cows, pigs, etc.  Along with clogging arteries, these fats impair the function of the HDL cholesterol particles (good cholesterol).   Limit these to 2 times per week. DEADLY FATs - are the Trans fats!  Stay away from these as much as possible.  Trans fats provide a quadruple insult to your arteries, clogging them more readily than any other ingredient ever identified in our food supply.  They lower your HDL (good) cholesterol, elevate triglycerides and directly incite arterial inflammation. In a Harvard-based Nurses' Health Study, subjects who substituted a mere 2% of their daily calories from trans fats with a healthier form of fat, diminished their risk of cardiovascular disease by 53%.  Trans fats are also linked to Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance.  Insulin resistance is the metabolic precursor to both metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes, which are both major contributors in the obesity epidemic.   Trans fats are found in three basic food categories: ·         Processed foods made with partially hydrogenated oils ·         Stick margarine ·         Shortening You must read labels to find these because food manufacturers are able to claim their food is trans fat free if it contains a small level.  Read labels and avoid anything with "hydrogenated" in the label.

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