This weekend: Race Pacing & Cake Competitions

Quick side note: If you haven’t had a chance to either enter the FR310XT giveaway, or at least read the various ‘Funny training stories’ entrants, definitely take a moment and do some browsing (or entering).  Some hilarious stories in there (over 700+!!!).  I’m seeing a pretty common trend in them though of guys running into poles, canals, buildings…all while checking out attractive girls.  Hmm…

As for this weekend, I might actually end up with some entertaining training stories of my own.  Well, racing stories rather.  See, as I’ve alluded to a bit over the past month, I’ll be running the National Half Marathon this weekend with The Girl.  While we’ve done many of the same races – we’ve never done a race ‘together’.  Nope, never.

This weekend though, that’s gonna change.  She’s asked me to help pace her as she aims to smash some of her PR’s (and run a really damn fast half-marathon split).  Of course, given all my running gizmos and gadgets, there isn’t a lot of ‘pacing’ for me to do.  I’m just simply following a few metrics on my FR310XT that will ultimately get us to her goal pace.  Though, as I’ll talk about next week in a dedicated pacing post – there’s actually a lot of ways you can use a running watch to pace by, all with slightly different results.

So in reality, I’m really there more as support than pacing guide.  Which could result in a very entertaining 13.1 miles together.  We’ve been doing paced couples runs (at race pace) the last few weeks now, and for the most part they’ve ended well.  So as for this weekend…it should be…fun. 🙂

Just after we finish the half-marathon though…that’s when the real race begins!  See, for the following 12 hours we have to run back and forth across DC like an episode of the Amazing Race.  The Girl is an entrant in the National Capital Area Cake Show this weekend, entering in both the ‘super-duper-fancy-tiered cake’ category, and also doing a cupcake cocktail hour later in the evening.

The cake design itself is incredible, and very relevant to things I write about around these parts.  It’s just really cool and I think you’ll love it.  But that’s just one part of the competition.

The second part is a cupcake competition with real live normal people selecting the winners.  It’s sorta like those reality TV shows where the contestants have to cook up dishes that are served to a group of folks and they get to choose the best cupcakes.  She has to cook god-knows-how-many dozens of cupcakes (many hundreds of cupcakes) using different flavor profiles that resemble fancy cocktails.

Of course, my role is officially registered as ‘helper’.  I think that there’s probably another term for that, but we’ll try and keep it PG around here.  In short, I do whatever she says…like a gofer.

Now that I think about it…I’m starting to see a trend for the weekend in whole.

So – if you’re in the DC area, and happen to want to check out a fun cake competition (complete with Food Network Cake Show stars) – wander on over!  The main cupcake event is in the evening on Saturday, but her cake will be there on display all weekend long.  Trust me, it won’t be hard to spot which one is hers.

Have a great weekend all!

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