Lake Martin area runners take note – The third annual installment of the Russell Forest Run is scheduled for Saturday, February 25, 2012.

If you have run races before through Active.com – you will be saved a step in registering.  If not, that is OK too, an account is free.

The race fee is $40 for the 10k and $20 for the 5k.

I plan to run again this year, it’s my third year in a row. It is the only 10k I have ever run in, so I don’t have much in the way of comparison.  I think it’s hilly, but my Birmingham friends tell me it is not so bad.  Whatever.

At any rate, it gives me great motivation to stay active while I train for it.  Even though it’s not very hilly where I live, and I run only on roads or the treadmill, that seems to prepare me pretty well.

The race is run over the trails in Russell Forest.  Honestly, “trails” – is not quite accurate, they are really dirt roads.  True, there are sections that are gravelly, but for the most part it is hard packed red clay.  The roads meander through the woods by Lake Martin, and are just beautiful. Many moons ago, when Russell Lands still leased that area for hunting, my dad used to take me quail hunting all through there.

I think one of the best parts of the race is the after party.  Russell Lands the power of Russell Crossroads and has the Chef from Springhouse there serving tasties (I think they did a squash bisque last year) and the folks at Catherine’s Market are supposed to have cold beer and drinks.

Plug For Runkeeper

To anyone that is training for the Russell Forest Run, or if you like to run or walk in general, take note of the Runkeeper app.

A friend of mine told me about this app for my iPhone. I love it for many reasons.

First, it’s free. Secondly, it keeps up with all of your workouts and syncs them to the runkeeper.com site. You can set your own running routes, and it calculates distance for you. When you start your run, you let it know what route you plan to run, and it tracks the GPS on your phone and updates you with distance, time, and pace announcements through your earphones. You can even select what playlist you want to play while you run, and whether or not you shuffle.

When you are done, you let it know, and it uploads your results to your private runkeeper.com account.

My only complaint is that it is not compatible with my heart rate monitor. I have one of those older chest strap monitors that transmits your heart rate. It works great on the treadmill but my iPhone 4 won’t put it through to runkeeper. Maybe it’s an iPhone thing, I don’t know. It would be really cool to be updated on my heart rate because that’s how I train anyway, not by timed pace per mile.

Enough about me.

I hope to see YOU at the Russell Forest Run. It’s a fun event that shows you that there’s plenty of things to do around Lake Martin in the winter.