EDIT (11/22/13): I just want to give a warning on this race company. While I received my medal, I’ve been unable to obtain proof that my registration fee, as well as others’ fees, were donated to Wounded Warrior as promised. In the past month, this company has hosted several other races and unfortunately it turns out those runners never received their medals. There are too many stories of no medals, and no proof of donation about this company right now in the racing world. I just want to give my readers a fair warning before they consider signing up for a race through the company mentioned below.

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So back on Friday I ran the JD Ultimate Fitness Wounded Warrior Run! What I really liked about this race was that you could pick a branch of the military to run for and then that would be the medal you received. I opted to run in honor of the Navy. I split my time between two heavily Navy influenced cities: Annapolis, home of the United States Naval Academy, and Newport, RI, home of the Naval War College, Naval Station Newport, and the  Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Plus I have friends down at Little Creek (sorry my Operator friends, I’ll race for you in the next one!). As you can probably guess from the title, this race was a charity run to benefit one of my favorite organizations, the Wounded Warrior Project.

Cold air, crazy elevation, a twist and turn trail through the woods? Yup! This race had all that. Luckily this time I ran with compression socks on. I thought about those I know in the military who challenge themselves daily to be the best that they can be. For this race, I really wanted to challenge myself. Yes, I was at first disappointed that my time was slower than what I’ve been running lately… though I soon looked back on the trail I had run and couldn’t help but feel satisfied that I had finished what I set out to run. Phew!
So I think the compression socks helped, but with a slower time, I can’t tell if it was the elements, or if I’m pushing my body too hard. I didn’t have much issues with my knees in this race, but overall felt like my legs in general were starting to hurt. Now I know compression socks are suppose to help. So I’m going to guess my slower time mostly had to do with the challenging trail and cold air. I’m just curious though, to my readers who run, do you prefer compressions socks or no? Compression pants have always been suggested to me, so I’ve been meaning to check those out.

I also used a different app, Runtastic, to time my run. I’ve been having issues with RunKeeper not recording my distance and pace. It would give me my time, and then would come up 0 for distance. I was too scared it would do this during a race! I’ve tried to change the time/distance alerts for Runtastic, but it doesn’t seem to update me during my race as much as RunKeeper did. I’ve also downloaded MapMyRun. I’m going to alternate between the 3 to figure out which one I prefer the most for races.

My next race is the Battle Buddy Run next weekend. Wish me luck! This particular charity is close to my heart, as the Battle Buddy Foundation was founded by Marine infantry combat veterans in efforts to place therapy dogs with those serving/served who struggle with PTSD and other combat related injuries.

All opinions are 100% my own.