The Road Race
It’s another good day for running.
The rain from Thursday and Friday finally comes to an end by Saturday morning. Things cool off, leaving damp brick streets and asphalt roads. Fallen leaves litter the ground. I position myself between the 8 and 9 minute/mile signs and wait for the race to start. A sound of an air horn begins it.
The majority of the roads twist and turn, beginning with the traditional bottleneck within the first half mile. You’re constantly looking ahead to see which way the road turns as the course winds through these neighborhoods. Small pools of water congregate at the street corners.
I decide to leave my Garmin Forerunner at home and realize that GPS watches are becoming more commonplace. I hear a myriad of watch beeping around me, turn a corner and lo and behold mile marker 4 displays a time of 32 minutes on it.
There’s the typical surge of people sprinting into the finish line, but I just hold my pace. They announcer says my name as I approach the finish line.
I latch onto a brunette lady with blue top and black shorts within the first half mile of the start and manage to keep up with her; however, she disappears around mile five (e.g. she leaves me in the dust). I tell myself, “1.2 miles left,” as runners form a two single-file lines in the center of the street.
Wrap Up
The smartest move per the recommendation from my uncle who resides in Minnesota who is one of the three running with me was a trip to Goodwill to buy throw-away sweat shirts/long running pants. Instead of spending $20-$30 for an article of new clothing, I spent $4 for used pair. The long running pants were an embarrassing light blue color which I wore through the first and the majority of the second day. My uncle suggested that I keep a patch of the long pants as a keepsake, but I discarded them around mile 21.
Upper layers consisted of the following.
- Long sleeve cool max shirt.
- Tank-top cool max shirt.
- Sweatshirt.
- Trash bag.
On the first day, we encountered sleet. There is nothing like the feeling of a small shard of ice striking your lips or landing in your ear. After about 1 hour 40 minutes into the race, people around me groan, “No, not again” as the cold rain resumes. I pull out the trash bag that I stashed in my pocket and put it over me.
Weather cooled down considerably on the second day. Water stations became more of an obstacle course where you navigate around patches of ice. Volunteers threw sand on standing water to try to prevent more ice from forming. It was safer to walk through these areas than to try to run through them. Paper cups filled with Poweraide or water are encrusted with ice.
Comparing the 2010 version of this race with 2008 included the following differences:
- The Race Expo expanded across two separate buildings instead of one.
- Disposable cameras with 27 exposures where included in the goodie bag. I tried taking pictures during the half marathon but left the camera at home on the second day since I found these as more of an annoyance.
- The portalet situation was improved in 2010. I no longer heard people complaining that there were not enough of them.
- Two lanes featuring music from the ’70s and ’80s were removed.
- Due to weather conditions on the first day most of the cast characters were absent; the choir normally located end the finish of the half marathon at mile 13 was not there.
A forty degree drop in temperature coupled with how to appropriately dress dramatically made the race much more enjoyable. The only thing noteworthy was the mishap trying to get to the race start for the marathon. Waiting in the car until the last minute yielded in a 12 minute waiting time before the start of our half marathon wave, but this technique backfired as straggling runners were barred from entering the starting corrals. This leaves me wondering what happened to the groups waiting at the closed gate or awaiting for further instructions with the lady near the wall of portalets. Did they ever start the race? I’m sure that there is a blog describing their point of view; it’s just a matter of finding it.
Anyhow, these are the obligatory finisher medals that you receive at the end of the race. The leftmost is for the half marathon. The center is for the full. The one on the right is for both. Since it’s the fifth year anniversary of combining both days into a unique event, the medal on the right looks different.
The inscription on the back of the right most medal reads:
These will be kept in a dresser drawer with the other finisher medals that will not see the light of day again.
Week 18 of 18 (Part 2)
“This was a stupid idea. I shouldn’t have signed-up for this,” she says. We are on a back-road working our way towards Animal Kingdom.
I didn’t leave her behind, instead of continuing onward I waited for her to use the restroom, and now she isn’t liking this. “This is why I signed-up to do this again; to see you crushed by the mileage.”
My cousin scowls, “Shut up.”
Instead of taking a walk break after every mile, we switch to taking a walk break once every seven minutes. “Just think of things in terms of theme parks. Right now we are going to Animal Kingdom.”
As we resume running, she staggers a bit. Looking over I ask if she’s alright.
“One of my legs are cramping up.”
In my cruel twisted mind I think, “Yes.”
This is the low point of the marathon. Animal Kingdom seems to erase any pain, and we continue onward to The Most Boring Place on Earth, miles 18-21.
A mental switch is flipped and she speeds up around mile 20. I complain, “Slow down. I can’t keep up with you.”
“Only a 10K left! I do these as training runs all the time,” she cheerfully exclaims.
Sh*t.
She slows down a tad, and I speed up. We continue zig-zagging around people through areas where I spent a good portion of time walking in previous years.
With three miles remaining she suggests, “Let’s not walk anymore.”
I agree, “Ok. This is our last walk break.”
As we resume running and she speeds up, fading away into the distance to finish her first marathon.
I wait for her to slowly shuffle up to me.
“Good. We’re almost there [to the car]. There’s the light pole.”
I correct, “Um, we at the end of the next parking lot.” A smile grows on my face.
Week 18 of 18
The moment of truth is not blocked by the fabled wall at mile 20, but by a closed, guarded gate .2 miles from the starting corrals. Simply find another route.
In the pre-dawn hours of a cold second morning, I overhear, “There are a few stragglers left” from personnel. Four bright lights near a red-stop sign illuminate a closed barbed-wire fence. Everyone comes to an abrupt halt.
Two security guards stand on the other side of the gate, keeping a growing mass of runners from passing. Listening to the masses, it sounds as though we are waiting for the wheelchairs who started at 5:35 a.m. to pass, as course crosses this point shortly before the fourth mile marker. By 5:55 a.m. by the light of my illuminated Garmin watch, I hear from the crowed that they will no longer allow people enter the start area. People are permitted to leave, but no one is allowed to enter. The starting corrals are approximately .2 miles beyond the gates.
“There are more of us than them [the guards],” I overhear someone say.
A lone runner dressed in black effortlessly soars toward mile marker four.
“We paid for this but we aren’t allowed to run?” another asks.
A small downhill slope leads to drop-off to the far right. It appears that I could swing around the last fence pole to bypass the gate, but I would have to pass the two security personnel. It’s too dark to tell if this is passable and a decision made amongst the three to follow part of the group to the spectators area.
Since we aren’t allowed to pass the closed gate to the start, we proceed to jog approximately .4 miles, backtracking to the “wall of portalets.” The group swarms around some personnel and inquiring what to do next. A lady in a white coat, speaks “Echo eleven” into her walkie-talkie, and a portion of the runners decide to run to the spectators area. The group appears to know what they are doing, and we blindly and faithfully follow them.
Instead of entering the “wall of portalets” we proceed down the road towards a median of trees and thick brush. The small group splits again. One group prefers to stay on the road and another doesn’t mind taking an off-road short-cut.
The off-road small group fragments into two lines, blindly making their way through small waist high brush. I hear cracking of palm trees and snapping of twigs, as I step through this area and run down a slope. Two of the three are here and we wait for the third. We follow the line as we step over a bend in a waist high green mesh fence. I see the dual starting lines down the road.
The group blends into the runners speeding towards mile four, and the runners beginning from the dual starts. One of the three goes towards one of the starting lines and a second proceeds to the other. With music blasting, it’s pointless to shout so I pick one and follow them.
Doing this throws the live tracking system off-whack. It shows us leaving with the first wave: 5:40:44 a.m., but we started 30-35 minutes later. Passing a mat at mile 5, leaves those watching us online in a state of wonder as it appears that we are walking. One of the three shows that she crossed the start but never crossed any of the timing mats, leading to phone calls trying to figure out what happened. My only means of communicating information to them is crossing over timing mats.
“She’s probably a minute or two ahead of us.” My eyes scan the group of runners ahead, looking for someone in a red sweatshirt and a brown cap. Nothing.
We speculate that she either went down the wrong lane, towards mile 4, stopped and turned around to reach a starting line or started at the other starting line.
An hour later I mention that I need to take my sweatshirt off. “Let’s stop up ahead at mile 6, and I’ll take a minute or two to look for her,” he says.
We pull over by mile marker 6 and he walks to the front of the sign. As I begin to tie by sweatshirt around my waist, I hear, “Joe! Joe!”
We found her.