New Favorite Thing

You may have noticed the jackets that we have on in my post from yesterday. They are the New Balance Glow Beacon Jacket and I am in love!

I first saw this jacket on a blog about a year ago, thought they were great, but didn't want to spend $175 on it. I kept going back and doing online searches to see if I could find them cheaper, but my research was unsuccessful (until about a month and a half ago).

Enter Zulily and their wonderful sales. I was able to pick up one for Andy for half price, but no luck for me. I figured I would be a nice wife and get him one as his marathon training present (though I still wanted one for myself). I kept looking and finally found one of myself on a running outlet website, sadly I forget which one.

They were both on sale since they are last years version, but the only difference I can tell is the color. The new ones are yellow, for both men and women. The ones I picked up are green for men and coral for women, which I like better than the yellow anyway, so it works out!

This is probably the best training jacket that I have come across and will/have gotten tons of use out of it. Especially now that we live pretty much out in the country and there are very few street lights, it is great for those early morning/late night runs when the sun is not so bright. The jacket allows you to be visible during the day with the bright color, and at night since they have dots that glow in the dark! It is also nice and stretchy, not stiff like some other training jackets.

I am so glad that I found these bad boys and can't wait to rock it on my dark training runs.

Great Pumpkin Run and Colorado Springs Grand Prix of Running

On Saturday we got to sleep in and still had a race. I love when races don't require me to get up at 5am haha. So, we made our way to Venetucci Farm for the Great Pumpkin Run 10k, and got sweet hats instead of adding to our ever growing race shirt drawer. 

The first two miles were great, my time was pretty good and I was feeling good. Then we merged with the 5k runners, where the one course marshall told 10k runners to stay to the left, so I did. 

We got to a fork in the road, where the farm house is, and I kept to the left. Well, I ended up going the wrong way, which was the into oncoming 10k traffic, in the middle of the woods. I ended up going this way as the person in front of me did, so I assumed, follow the group. This was very wrong, and I was going against people for about 2 and a half miles. 

It really annoyed me that there was no one at the fork in the road. If you tell me to stay left, I am going to stay left. Andy said when he went past that fork, there was a person directing people. I guess that person got tired and left their post, which caused a few of us to go the wrong way for 2 and a half miles.

I just decided to follow the path in reverse to still get the miles. I finished the race, as I had to, it was the last of the Grand Prix of Running series that we were doing, but I won't do this race again. I did not like the fact that there was very little aide on the course along with very poor course markings (I am not the only person who thinks this, I spoke to a few other people and they had issues as well). 

Like I said, this was the last race in the Grand Prix of Running series. It is a 6 race series where you can pick short (mostly 5ks) or long (mostly 5 milers and 10ks). I ended up doing the long series since I wanted to push myself, and I am glad I did. I liked half of the races, and was not a fan of the other half, so I don't know if I will do the series again next year. But like I said, I am glad I did it and will get my award for completing the series at the dinner in December. 

Have you ever done a race series like this? Were you a fan?

Have you had any races that are just not run well?