Weekend recap: Baltimore Women's Classic, Supermoon and #Skywire

For the past few months, I had been volunteering as a running coach for a group of women who were training for a 5K.  It was a wonderful experience not only because I had so much fun doing it, but also because I met so many great women!  Well, the race they were training for finally took place yesterday here in Baltimore.  The Baltimore Women's Classic is one of the largest all-female races in the country and over 3200 women raced yesterday!  I knew it would be pretty impossible to find all of the women from the program in that sea of people but surprisingly I ran into a few along the course.  It was a great opportunity for me to pat them on the shoulder and give them some encouragement along the way! One of the ladies thanked me for stopping to acknowledge her and said "I'm going to keep you in my sights Coach!".  I also ran into a couple of people at the finish line in the race village.  As far as my personal race, I didn't really have much of a strategy.  It had been a year since I ran a competitive 5K and I don't really train for fast short distances.  In my mind I was hoping for a sub 25.  Well, I missed it by 16 seconds! Don't you just hate when that happens?!  I was also hoping for negative splits but in actuality I didn't really train for that either.  Negative splits generally just naturally happen for me in my runs because I usually start out slower and gain speed throughout, but it's not something I'm consciously doing.  When I checked my Garmin after the race, I saw I ran a fast 1st mile, slower 2nd mile and my fastest 3rd mile so I guess I somewhat negative split it :)  I ended up 30th in my age group - finishing 199 out of 3211 runners overall. Not too shabby I suppose but the fastest female finisher ran a 16 minute race?! WHAT? Mind blown.

All in all it was a great race and I actually enjoyed the quickness of it and the fun atmosphere.  I'm thinking about squeezing in a few more 5K's this summer before the Runner's World Half in October.  My sister just signed up for a summer training program and will be running her first 5K in the fall and I couldn't be more excited!  I'm hoping to do a race with her when she completes her program.  Ok now for some pics:

Post race - sweaty and smiling :)

 

 

Me, One of our trainees Ashley, and Wendy another great coach



 

 

After the race, I came home and settled in for an evening of Supermoon and Sky Wire.  Let me explain.

 

I am kind of an astronomy nerd so I was excited that yesterday was supposed to be the biggest and brightest moon of the year.  It certainly was beautiful last night but it wasn't one of those low hanging giant orange moons that we sometimes get in the fall that look like they're right out of a movie (Harvest moon maybe?).  So I came back inside and mentally prepared for this madness:

 

 via

 

Did anyone else tune in to the Discovery Channel last night for Sky Wire Live?!  Nik Wallenda is a professional wire walker who decided he was going to walk across the Grand Canyon yesterday with no safety net and no tether.  I have to admit this was incredibly hard to watch.  I was simultaneously watching, tweeting about this (the tweets last night were hilarious), texting with my sister and sweating like a maniac.  I just can't wrap my head around someone's desire and ability to do something like this.  It is completely beyond my comprehension.  However, just because I don't understand it, doesn't necessarily make it wrong. I mean if this guy is truly living out his God given talent and purpose on earth who I am or anyone else to say that it's irresponsible or crazy? I do have issues with him having children and having them watch this, but by all accounts it appears that this is truly what this man was meant to do and I don't think he could stop even if he wanted to.  It seems like wire walking is in his DNA?! In any case, it made me think that if we all tapped into our truest selves and discovered what we were put here to do, we could all achieve things that seem impossible.  This wire walking is extreme, but weren't the worlds greatest inventors, writers, artists, scientists, etc considered crazy or extremist as well?  I guess if we have the courage to tap into our weirdness some pretty great things can come of it.  Whatever you think of this guy, you have to admit he has great courage to follow his dreams. 

 

*Fun fact - Nik Wallenda performed in Baltimore last summer! He walked on a wire strung across the Inner Harbor to celebrate the opening of Ripley's Believe it or Not down here.  I didn't get to see him live because I was working, but I did have a view of the crowd outside my office! You can read the article here.

 

 

My questions for you today:

 

When was your last race and what distance was it? Do you enjoy 5K's?

 

Did you watch Sky Wire last night? What are your thoughts?