2010 Houston Marathon

http://bit.ly/8r7Khz - What a day! This race really hurt. Of course, having run a full marathon as well as a half marathon the prior weekend probably had something to do with that.  I set out to run with the 3:50 pace group, which would have gotten me a 2 minute PR. The problem was that the pace leader never showed up. So off I went to run a 8:47 pace and finish in 3:50. Everything was going well until mile 16 or so when I was a bit ahead of pace and I did some math in my head and realized a 3:45 marathon was possible if I had it in me to pick up the pace and sustain it.

This seemed ridiculous with 10 miles to go so I pushed the pace gently keeping the thought in my head until the final 10k, just like at Disney. That's when I let it go and my splits started falling below 8:00 miles. Oh man that was painful. My legs wanted to quit, but I really wanted to get my 3:45.

Forget the future. Live in the now. I refused to think about how tired and hurt I'd be in 1, 2, 3 more miles and admitted to myself that at this very moment, I could handle what I was doing to myself. And so it went, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 26.2, cross the line and stop running.  Final score: 3:43:26.

Unfortunately, I think I really messed myself up this time and everyone is telling me to skip Rocky Raccoon in three weeks. I'll reserve judgment, but at this moment, I cannot imagine doing 50 miles on these legs.

Today I made a new PR by 10 minutes.

My father ran in the 5k event and his finish marked the first time he's been able to run a 5k race straight-through since returning to the sport after knee surgery.

There were also several other Dynamo supporters on the road wearing their jerseys, which is always fun. As I ran through the Rice Village, I came across Dynamo captain Wade Barrett with his wife standing on the sidewalk watching the runners.  As I approached, he saw me and cheered me on by name as I ran by and high-fived him.  It was an interesting role reversal and a hell of a lot of fun.

My qualifying time for Boston is 3:15:59 and while it seems a world away, I am steadily chipping away at the distance between my PR and that time.  All I can say is that I'll get there eventually, no matter how long it takes.  It's one of my dreams.

2010 Walt Disney World Goofy Challenge: Day 2

http://bit.ly/8k2l1U - I think I got sick from spending five hours in the freezing sleet/rain the day before. I had a fever the evening before and my wife tells me I was sweating throughout the night. Nonetheless, I woke up at about 2:45AM, a couple hours before my alarm and I felt really good, so that was my first good sign. Since I was up so early, I had time to eat a decent breakfast. That was my second good sign.

Learning from the mistakes of the previous day, I decided to skip the 3-4AM bus and just walk to the race start, which was about 10 minutes from our hotel. This would give me at least another hour of sleep and it meant I didn’t have to show up to the race line until just before my wave took off. First wave started at 5:40 so I figured I’d look to be there around 5:15.

It was a clear morning, but much colder than the previous day. I’d later read where someone said it bottomed out at 17 degrees. I didn’t want to be cold and miserable again so I decided to wear four layers, which is suicide in Texas. I had my sleeveless compression shirt, then the light long sleeve event shirt, then a thick long sleeve running jacket, and finally my Dynamo jersey on top. Since I only brought running shorts with me (ha ha) I had to bum a pair of my wife’s running tights. Of course, they were Capri length. The pants, combined, with my compression socks, met just below my knee and gave me what I refer to as the Pinocchio look.



Over these I wore the throw-away Tyvek pants that did an excellent job of stopping the wind.

Despite knowing I missed the last bus and my plan to walk to the race, out in front of the hotel was a marathon bus waiting to pick up the last of the stragglers. Well what the heck? OK, sure I’ll ride. I made it to the race start and started the race shortly thereafter.

The crowd was immense and I had to hold about a 10:00 pace starting off, which was just fine because I had no real agenda and I wanted to ease into the race anyway. The aforementioned Tyvek pants stopped the wind nicely, but they kept wanting to fall off of me so after a couple miles of hiking them up, I finally pulled over and ditched them altogether. Unfortunately, somewhere around mile 2, I also ditched my brand new sunglasses that I had bought the day before at the race expo. Oh well…

The four layers worked well enough at the beginning but half an hour into the race, I started to feel a little warm, so I shucked the race jacket and wrapped it around my waist where it stayed for the remainder of the race. Three layers would prove to be the perfect number on that day. The beanie and gloves stayed on for the entire race, which is also a first for me, as my head tends to get hot later in the race. Not this time!

Around mile three or so, I ran into a guy I met while walking out to the start area. His name is Jim and he’s from Wisconsin. We started chatting again and kept up a 9:30 pace, which wasn’t too aggressive and felt fine by me. We got to the Magic Kingdom and there were some new characters so we took some pictures with them and by the time we left and got back on the road, our pace had slipped to 9:40.





My first real indicator of how I was feeling occurred around mile 15 when I had to stop for a potty break. I sent Jim on without me at the same pace while I stood in line for a couple of minutes. I really wanted to catch up to him before we hit the Animal Kingdom park so I picked up the pace for the next two miles and caught him. I didn’t know how I would feel after that but it turned out I felt great.

Animal Kingdom, in case you don’t know, is an awesome park. I had never even heard of it before the trip. I wasn’t even planning to go there, but after the race course took me through the park, I blew off the rest of my day’s plans and we went there to spend the afternoon. Expedition Everest is the most awesome roller coaster in the whole park (except maybe Space Mountain) and the safari ride was badass as well. Lots of other photo opportunities happened while going through Animal Kingdom.





My next discovery would happen around mile 20 when Jim needed to stop. He told me the pace had been a little quick for him and that he planned to run/walk after the break so he told me to go ahead and meet him at the finish. The sun was up but the weather was still cold and crisp and I felt strong, so I decided to turn it up a notch or two. I picked up my pace to 8:00-8:30 for the rest of the race, including photo stops and water stations. I couldn’t shake the great feeling I had. I figured I’d run until I felt the miles weighing on me then I’d slow down. It never happened.

This was about the time when I turned into the Disney Hollywood studios and having another theme park to break the monotony of the open road was just what I needed to keep my focus on the last leg of the race.




The miles ticket by and I ran with newfound energy, passing many of the people who were slowing at the end or running even splits.




Let me tell you that seeing this sign was a pretty great feeling.

I thanked the volunteers at the aid stations. I congratulated the spectators on the sidelines who wore the Half Marathon medal from the day before. I joked with the other runners (some of whom felt like joking back) and I snapped photos of each mile marker as I went. When I hit mile 26, I picked it up and burned out the rest of my energy and finished with a big smile on my face. Final time was 4:10:29. I’m sure I could have beaten 4 if I never stopped for the fun things, but what’s the point? I’m going to run with the 3:50 pace group this weekend and see how long I can last. If I can go the distance, it’ll be a PR for me.

I cruised through the finisher’s chute and was directed into the line for Goofy Challenge finishers to get our special medal. It was a lot of fun and really nice to get additional recognition for the combined event. Something else that threw me off was the fact that all weekend long, people were wearing their medals from various races while they walked around the parks. At first I was put off by this since it seemed kind of egotistical. After seeing dozens of people doing it on Saturday, I realized it’s just part of the Disney experience so we did it as well. All of the characters we posed for photos with acknowledged the medals and it was fun to walk by a complete stranger and share a quick congratulations.

Plus, you have to admit, the bling on this event is pretty sweet.




Wish me luck in Houston!

Epilogue: I spent the rest of the day walking around Animal Kingdom and EPCOT. The next morning, I woke up and my legs were really not all that sore. I think it was because the walking stretched them gently throughout the day and never let the muscles tighten up. I'll file that bit of knowledge away for future use.

2010 Walt Disney World Goofy Challenge: Day 1

http://bit.ly/8auWzE - Where to start? This would be my wife's first half marathon so I decided to pace her for it. The idea was that I'd go easy and save energy for the marathon on Sunday. It only kind of worked out that way...

The temperature was right around freezing, which was not all that exciting. We got to the race site at 4AM even though her wave didn't start until 6:20. It was cold and very windy. About 90 minutes before start time, it started sleeting. Yeeeaaaahhhh. That pretty much sucked. There were tens of thousands of us standing around in the road miserable in the dark cold windy sleet waiting to do something.



When we finally got moving, we were both doing well. The course was fun even though we spent more time on the back roads than I would have cared for. Good entertainment along the way with local high school cheerleaders and bands, who I respect tremendously for coming out in the pre-dawn cold. Every mile marker was a neat billboard.



Once we got into the Magic Kingdom, things became a lot more fun with plenty of opportunities to get your picture taken with various Disney characters.





That became our strategy. We’d run for a while, they go stand in line to get our picture taken with another Disney character. It seemed kind of strange doing the stop-start race, but it was fun and after a while, you just kind of gave up on the watch and let yourself have fun. We got some really excellent pictures along the way and I snapped a shot of my wife coming out of the castle, which was great.

The route took us on a tour is the Magic Kingdom and we went through each of the different areas. My favorite, of course, was Adventureland because of Pirates of the Caribbean. We were not disappointed, as there was a whole ship parked on the side of the course with Captain Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, and several other pirates. The line for that photo was particularly long, but there’s no way we were going to miss out on it.



There was a price to be paid for the slow pace, though. Shortly after leaving the Magic Kingdom at around the 7 mile mark, staff members on mountain biked started riding up on us warning that we were behind the minimum pace and if we stayed behind at the 8 mile mark, we’d be picked up and not allowed to finish the race. I was a little nervous, but I also knew that our pace wasn’t the problem. It was all the time spent standing in line for photos. The minimum pace was a generous 16:00 per mile. Even though we were not hauling ass by any means, our running pace was better than the minimum, so I wasn’t too worried. Unfortunately, there were a few other photo ops we had to skip while we got back on pace.

Her foot started bothering her around mile 8, but it hurt worse when she walked, so we kept up a light jog and I glanced at my GPS pace from time to time to make sure we were in the safe zone. Someone told us that at mile 10, they stopped enforcing the cutoffs, which was just as well because she was pretty well finished and we decided to walk the final 5k. We found a woman from Seattle and struck up a conversation with her, which was a nice distraction.

Unfortunately, the final 5k felt like it got colder and the wind picked up as well. I’m sure some of this was our muscles stiffening and our bodies cooling down when we went from jogging to walking. There were also several overpasses to conquer and the rises that didn’t seem like anything special at the beginning of the race were suddenly a little more work to go over.

Nonetheless, we stuck it out and finish we did. The final time was 3:31:37. For me, it was a much harder workout than I planned. I figured it would be a light run while I kept pace with my wife. What I didn’t count on was doing a 3:30 workout the day before my marathon in windy sleet conditions when, in my mind, a light half marathon is a 2:15 run. I spent a lot more time putting out effort than I anticipated.

All in all, it was worth it to cross the finish line with her and get our finisher’s medals together.