Magic City Half Marathon Review

Well I ran my 3rd half marathon the other weekend, had worst time yet at 2:13, bleah.  I did not train long distance enough and around mile 10 my legs started being unhappy.  By the finish line I was shufflin.  Ah well, time to run longer.  So to post my comments about the race.
The Swag Bag - swag, we have no swag.  Nice dry-fit shirt, standard for many races now.  And that was it.  Not even a little packet of Bio-freeze.
The Weather - BEAUTIFUL.  November is tricky and it turned out to be a cloudless day.  Right nippy in the morning but warmed up a bit.  I get hot when I run so the jacket was off by mile 1.  Breeze was blowing so every now and then as I chugged along I got a nice cooling breeze.
The Course - mostly flat, some hills at the end.  I would have preferred the hills at the front and flat at the end.  Went by historic/interesting locations of Bham - Legion Field, Rickwood Field, RailRoad Park.  Pretty standard city running.  They had a 5K at the same time which merged with us for about a mile.  It was disconcerting to be jogging along and all of a sudden you run into a pack of 5k walkers.
The volunteers - They were GREAT.  At every drink stop they cheered, and smiled while handing out the Gatorade/water/gel packs.
The Police - at every intersection (and there were a lot). They put the runners 1st and traffic second.  Waving some cars through the breaks in the runners, and yelling at the idiots on phones while driving. Thanks very much to them.
The Spectators - what, was there a race that weekend?  Not so much, mostly at the finish line.
The Food - standard after race fare of bananas, cookies, etc.  Did not see any other water/Gatorade stations other than the water I was handed at the finish line.  Cold pizza was also served, not horrible.  There was a mini beer garden which had some samples, no beer was served on the course.
Entertainment - hubby was my chauffeur, big thanks, and he just milled around for a couple of hours.
The Medal - Design was OK, did not see an engraving station (I'm to cheap to do that anyway).

Overall it just seemed a long jumped up 5K style run.  It was only the 2nd year and they have to compete with the Mercedes Marathon for sponsors so I guess they are still feeling their way around.  It was a good test run for Disney to let me know I need to run more, but I don't plan on attending next year.

Half Marathon Fun

As we count down to the Disney Princess Half Marathon 2013 I decided to do a half marathon this year. So tomorrow I will be running in the Magic City Half Marathon.  Pray for me.  I admit to not running as much as I should so may be walking most of this half.  We shall see.  I did create some cute half and full marathon items on Cafe Press - Gryphonwycks.  The bad part about designing for CafePress and Zazzle is the design size.  It would be nice to make one design that fit on all their merchandise but they have different dimensions and different bleed areas.  Highly annoying. So time to surf the interwebs to see how others have dealt with this issue.  Now off to do a bit of a run before the torture tomorrow.  Good luck to all the runners out there.

Owl Wedding Cake Toppers

While surfing the web for Cute Hoots to pin on Pinterest I came across some owl wedding cake toppers.  They appeared to be salt/pepper shakers that had been decorated.  I followed a link to a web site DIY cake toppers and the photos are amazing.  You take a simple unpainted bisque salt/pepper shaker:

Any unpainted salt/pepper would work and make a nice themed idea for a wedding.  Once you have your shakers you can then decorate as you like.  The photos below are from the website linked above, these people have some mad skill.  I also think this would make a cute idea for christmas presents to a couple.