Monday, June 20, 2011

Grandma's Marathon race report

OR yet another sub- par marathon by yours truly.

The Before
Our running club got up to Duluth on Friday afternoon after a three hour drive from the cities. It was cold when we got up there, probably in the low 50's. True to form, I forgot any warm clothes even though I let everyone I knew know that it was going to be chilly that weekend. But did I heed my own advice? of course not. Nice one. First thing we did was hit up green mill like we usually do. Once we did that we got our stuff in the room and headed to the race expo at the DECC. After I got my race packet I talked to the kid working at the Brooks booth for a good half an hour- more on that in a later post. Once we got bored of that we chilled in the room for a while until it was time for the 5k. We had one runner in that race, Mike Davis, who ran 17:18, good for 13th place- then he closed down the bars, of course. After the 5k we had our traditional pasta dinner in the hotel room and then watched Run Fatboy Run until we all fell asleep around 9:30.

The During:
We woke up around 4:45 AM, since the hotel's breakfast didnt start until 5. I donned my TC running company singlet and American flag shorts and, since it was raining pretty hard, a T- Shirt and a garbage- bag poncho. We hit the busses at 5:15 after a breakfast of toast and coffee where it was still rainy and cold. On the bus, I joked that it was mirroring my race strategy- we passed two or three busses at the start, but by the half marathon mark we got passed by all of the busses plus a couple. It wasn't raining when we got off the bus, but it was still cold. I almost didn't make it to the start line in time because I was in the bathroom, but I just did make it to the 4 hour pace group. In the chute I met two guys who were running their first marathons and ran with them up until 15 miles or so. We were making decent time, running 9:20's and I told them all abut the end of the marathon- its three turns to the finish, even though you think you should be done after two.

After 15, things really started turning dark for me. My pace started dropping and to compound problems I had to walk. That lasted until around mile 20, when we made it to Duluth proper. After that I ran the whole thing, granted not fast. I was hitting high 10:00 miles but whatever. Through it all I saw my tile goals go down the drain. I was on a sub 4:00 pace through 15, which was good since that was my primary goal. That went down the drain early, the same with 4:15. I was pissed. No way a 20 year old should run 4 hour plus marathons. After that little temper tantrum I figured I might as well finish and try again next time. So that's what I did. I started knocking down semi- good miles around lemondrop hill, and it was on the up and up from there, really. My times didn't improve, but my mood sure did. There was about a half mile stretch after mile 24 where a few college kids started chanting "USA! USA!" after my flag running shorts. Soon everyone started doing it- probably one of the coolest things I have experienced ever. I still forgot there are three turns to the finish and was still cussing like a sailor when I passed the finish line there. I saw my running club there (most of them had already finished already) and that made it a lot easier, but it still sucked.

At the end, I had a crisis of sorts. Should I run hard at the end or not? Last year I did kick at the finish, and looked like an absolute douchebag. I passed a bunch of people, but it really didn't matter. This year I decided not to because, really, there's no difference between 4:39:20 and 4:38:17, you're still slow as hell.

The After:
It was cold. I mean, the last two miles had the "hypothermia alert" banners out, but I didn't get it. I was pouring water on my head from the first water stop at mile 3 and was still pretty hot. After though, I was freezing. It took forever to get my mylar blanket- the dude ripping them out was a total noob scout. It was also a long walk to get my drop bag, which was totally the opposite way from the hotel. After a couple pics with the fam, I went up to shower and then "walked" over to Famous Dave's, after an hour wait, I ate a whole rack of ribs. After that, my family peaced out and we popped in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie (the first one) and I took a four hour nap. After that we went to Green Mill and ate an unreal amount of pizza. The wait was pretty killer too, but that was fine since the waitress was super hot. After that everyone else went to the bars. But that waitress was super hot, so I went back to green mill and got her number. Good stuff.

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