This was the third year I have done this race. The first year I ran it four days after the Buffalo Marathon, and ran 8:35 pace. I spent much of the race passing people. Last year I was much faster. I lined up towards the front, and ran it in 24:24 or about a 6:58 minute/mile pace. I was hoping to be one of the four fastest men from my company, but I missed it by 2 seconds. After crossing the finish line that time, I sat down against a barricade to catch my breath, freaking out volunteers thinking they would need to call the EMTs.
This year I felt I was faster and stronger and thought I had a shot at improving my time. The weather forecasts called for thunderstorms. And it had been raining off and on all day. After work, I drove to Marketplace Mall to park my car, and catch the buses to RIT for the race. I had changed before I left work, and was wearing my company shirt. I had paid an extra $7 to get the tech shirt instead of the regular t-shirt.
On the bus I saw everyone else with their bibs pinned to their shirts. I had a horrible thought. Was my bib in the envelope that my shirt came in? I had thrown it away. If it had been in there, this will be a short race.
I got to RIT, and found our company tent. Fortunately, they were passing out our bibs here. I signed in, and got my bib as well as my Chase Corporate Challenge T-shirt. I pinned my bib to my shirt. I shed my nylon shell pants, and jacket. I changed into my running flats. After a couple trips to the porta potties, I headed to the start line.
I planned to start up near the front like I did last year. I went out a little fast last year, having run the first mile in 6:30. As we were waiting for the start, it started to rain lightly. The rain slowly picked up. They started the national anthem and speeches. It was starting to come down harder, and those guys were all under umbrellas. They gave us a 10 second warning. I turned on my mp3 player. When they said go, I started running, and started mp3 playing. The first song it played was The Eagles-Life In The Fast Lane…how appropriate. The father I got around the course, the harder the rain came down.
I passed a few guys from my company who had taken off at the start. I passed the 1 mile mark in about 6:40 or 6:45. A little slower than last year, and that was exactly what I wanted to do. There was a water stop here, but I ran passed. Last year, I dumped some water over my head to cool me down. This year, I didn’t need it. I kept running. I was soaked by now. Every now and then, I would splash through a puddle of standing water. I kept running.
I kept an eye on my Garmin 305 to make sure I wasn’t running too fast, or too slow. If you have ever had a Garmin 305, you will know that the pace display tends to bounce around dramatically. Mine was bouncing from around 6:05 to 7:05. I think I saw it flash a sub 6:00 minute/mile pace at one point. But I tried to keep it around 6:45-6:50 pace. I passed the 2 mile mark. Only 1.5 miles left to go. Just a little over 10 minutes I figured. I kept running. I passed another water stop around 2.5 miles. Only 1 mile left to go. Around .75 miles from the finish, I saw a guy from my company up ahead. I recognized his shirt. I wasn’t sure if I could catch him. I increased my pace subtly. I slowly got closer to him. In the last half mile, I caught up to him, and fell in behind him, trying to stay in his blind spot. This same thing happened last year. I fell in behind another runner from my company intending to pass him just before the finish line. But as we got there, he took off like a bullet, and I had no more gas. He had beaten me by two seconds, and filled out the forth spot on our company’s men’s team. So this year I planned to pass this guy earlier. In the last quarter mile or so, the heavy rain had caused the contact in my right eye, to float out of position. I was running, and rubbing my eye, to see if I could get it back into position. No luck. So I was running with one eye closed.
As we went around the final turn, I passed the guy in front of me, and sprinted with everything I had to the finish line. I crossed the finish line in 23:48. That was 36 seconds faster than I ran it last year. A guy in front of me has slowed to a stop at finish and I collided with him. I turned, and saw my fellow company man, cross the finish. I beat him by 2 seconds. And yes, it was the same guy who beat me by 2 seconds last year.
I felt okay. I had no need to sit down and catch my breath. In fact, I really didn’t feel too winded.
We made out way through the finish chute, and back to the company tent. We turned in our times. I got a couple burgers. I went back to check some of the recorded times. I found there were 4 or 5 guys with faster times than mine. And 2 or 3 girls as well. Geez. I got faster, but our company got even faster. Apparently we hired some fast young people, or some employees got much faster over the last year. Oh well. Hopefully our company teams will do well in the challenge this year.
Hopefully, I will be faster next year. Maybe I will crank up my intervals to faster paces. I wonder if I can get down to a 6:30 pace. That would be a 22:45 time. Or maybe a 6:15 pace which be a 21:52 time. If I can get down to a 6:00 pace (which I can run a mile in), I could get a 21:00 time! That would be amazing for me.
Here are some photos of the race that appeared on the local newspaper’s site. I am in photo #11 (bib #3051),
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=A2&Dato=20090528&Kategori=MULTIMEDIA03&Lopenr=905280806&Ref=PH&Profile=1007
I was supposed to have run 15 miles yesterday. But I had slept poorly, and slept in. Then ran a bunch of errands. I just didn’t feel like running at all. I finally start running in the evening. I managed to get 9 miles in.
So this morning, I got up and ran another 6 miles, to complete the 15. But then I was scheduled to ride my bike for two and half hours today. So I headed out for my ride. I did a 20 mile hilly backroad ride to a Burger King and got lunch. Then I rode home, stopping at a couple garage sales along the way. According to MotionBased, I did about 2450 feet of climbing over the 40.5 miles. I have a century ride coming up in two weeks. That will be interesting.
Due to the holiday, I didn’t have my normal Sunday evening karate class. I love karate, but it is nice to have a day off every once in a while.
I am scheduled to run intervals tomorrow. But I may sneak a short ride in tomorrow. Maybe down to Subway for subs and back. The intervals are ugly. 1 mile warmup, 1200m,1000m,800m,600m,400m, 1 mile cooldown. I hate 1200m intervals. And am not real big on 1000m intervals either. Oh well. Gotta do what I gotta do.
I got involved in this event when my uncle called me and asked if I wanted to participate. My aunt was the captain of a team. It was taking place down in Washington, Pennsylvania, about a five and a half hour drive from my home. I said yes. He also said I could participate in the torch relay. Hey, that sounded like fun. So I said yes, sign me up for the torch run.
Relay For Life is a 24 hour relay walk that benefits the American Cancer Society. My aunt is a cancer survivor. I have lost some relatives to cancer, including my mom and a grandmother.
I was part of a team, but as the event got closer, I decided to try to walk for the entire 24 hours myself. And I wasn’t sure how far I would be running in the torch run. My uncle said I could run the whole thing if I wanted. I had only planned to run a segment. My uncle said that it was about 8 miles. Okay. No problem. I was scheduled to run 13 miles that day anyway. I wasn’t sure how tired I would be, and how it would affect my walking later.
The day before the event, I googled the torch run course. Google said it was 6.4 miles. But later we drove it, and it turned out to just under 5 miles. But it was very hilly. I was a little leery about running the whole thing. I mean, it would be weird if there was a solitary runner with the torch running each segment, and here I am tagging along. But my uncle said there would be a group of runners. Well, okay.
The morning of the event, I got up, and we headed to the site. I caught a bus the start of the torch run. Lots of pictures were taken. Most people were wearing the event t-shirt. I hate running in cotton, and the shirt was 100% cotton. I wore my tuxedo jersey. I figured that would be fun. I was told we would be running at maybe a 10:00 minute/mile pace.
We would have a bus in front of us dropping off people. We would have a bus behind us picking people up. And we would have a cop driving his car in front of us, and he would stop and take pictures. We started about 10am. The first and last runners would be ceremonial people. I ran along side the first guy. Not sure who he was. SomeVIP. He passed the torch on to another person and stopped. Basically, I just followed along as the torch passed from person to person. The first runners ran at a comfortable 10:00 pace. The third or forth person to get the torch was a high school kid who took off at maybe 6:10 minute/mile pace. I ran faster and kept up with him. After a bit, he passed the torch on to another kid who ran at maybe 6:30. The kid who had just run, stopped and got on the bus. A horrible thought went through my head. Would I be faced with a series of fresh young runners who would sprint away for their segment, and then stop. ACK! Some of the next runners passed on the torch, and then continued running. Even the kid who had stopped and got on the bus, came back and started running with us again. The rest of the runners ran at 6:30-8:30 paces, with one exception being an adult runner who ran at maybe 10-12:00 pace and gave me a breather. I did get to carry the torch for a short distance.
As we approached the high school where the event was being held, we stopped in a lot across the street. It seems we got there 15 minutes too early. Go figure! So we hung there, until it was time to go in. A politician lady carried the torch in. She was a commissioner or something I think. There were speeches, and stuff. Then I left to go change for the walk. I changed into denim shorts, and a tech shirt, hat, trainers, etc. I smeared on sunblock, and got my mp3 player.
I started walking. I was walking at a fairly fast pace. 15:00-16:00 minute miles. I was passing many people. The inside lane was reserved for runners of which there were few. I stayed in the second lane as I could, but was having to go around many slow people.
Every 4 laps, we could stop and get a little plastic foot. They gave us shoe laces, and we would string the feet as little necklaces. So you could check out other people seeing how many miles they had gone.
I just walked, and listened to music. Occasionally, I would walk over to our tent to refill my sports bottle with Diet Pepsi, or go to the concession stand to get some food. A roundtrip walk to the tent was probably close to a quarter mile.
The track was crowded. A few people stood out. There was a girl dressed in goth clothing with knee high boots that couldn’t have been comfortable to walk in. One kid was wearing one of a couple different masks, and would walk in the opposite direction high fiving people. I just kept walking.
I did talk to one high school aged girl who I had seen often. Her name was Jericha. It turned out she was part of a 3 person team that was taking 30 minute shifts. So when she was done, I said I’d see her in an hour. Soon she would be back. Then I got to know her friends Emily and Sabrina. So I would often walk with them as they helped distract me from my hurting feet and legs.
The weather report for the day was strong thunder storms. Well, they were right. We had several waves of pounding rain. When the first one came, I was near the massage tent. I thought, hey, what a great time for a massage. They had massage chairs, and would massage our necks and backs. Hey, it felt good, but it was my legs that were hurting. *shrug*
My shoes and socks were wet. After a while, I changed into some dry shoes and socks. I had a large blister on one toe on my right foot. But I didn’t have anything to pop it with. My feet hurt to walk in them at first, but then it subsided. I think my feet were a bit swollen.
Around 9:00ish, my aunt and uncle were leaving. I had walked about 25 miles I think at that point. My wife went with them, and left me my car, just in case. They tried to talk me into leaving, saying that it didn’t matter how far I walked, that it didn’t mean any more money. But I was still hoping to walk all night. My cousin Nick showed up, and walked a few miles with me, then had to leave.
I managed to collect 30 of the little plastic feet before they ran out of them. There had been a bunch of the table, and then in a little while, there were none left. I think some people had grabbed whatever was left. Probably kids. But my Timex Ironman 100 lap watch was still counting laps beyond 100 laps. I wasn’t sure what would happen when I passed 100. Around lap 125 I think, it started displaying a message Memory Full every time I hit the lap button. But it was still counting laps. Probably just not recording the lap times anymore.
They started playing mellow music over the speakers. Great, people have been out here all day, it’s getting late, people are getting tired, and they are playing mellow music! Ack!
At sometime, maybe around 10pm, they gathered everyone under the tent. They had some speeches, and stuff. It was perfectly timed to be during a torrential downpour. And about the time the speeches were over, the rain had mellowed. I was still wearing shorts at this point, but went on put on some nylon shell pants over them. It was starting to cool down. But that seemed to be the last of the rain.
I liked walking under the big stadium lights. But at one point they lit candles inside these bags along the sides of the track. They had people’s names on them. Cancer victims I think. They shut off the big lights, but still had some smaller lights. So now we walking with these glowing bags. But now the track was clogged up with people looking for specific bags. I never saw any of the bags catch fire, but I had seen a few that had already burned.
At some point one of the relay team captains got on the PA system, and started singing and playing guitar. She was good, but not really my style. So I listened to my mp3 player again. At least when I wasn’t walking with the high school girls, or Jericha’s boyfriend Shawn who showed up later.
My feet felt like hamburger. I had completed 160 laps (40 miles). They were getting ready to start karaoke in the infield. They had also started handing out poker cards when you completed a lap, which you would collect to try to get the best hand. I had gotten one card. But I could feel the blisters on the balls of my feet now, and they were hurting. It was hard to walk now. I had ignored blisters on the toes. I had ignored the cramping calves, and the knee pains. I was getting tired, but doing okay. But the blisters on the bottoms of my feet were a little too much. Since I still have races coming up, I didn’t want to cause too much damage, that would prevent me from training or racing. I decided to call it a night. It was probably about 1:45am. With the walking and running the torch run, I had completed 45 miles. Actually, I had probably done a couple more miles if all the incidental walking were added up. Not bad. That was at least 12 miles farther than I have ever covered in a day.
I went out to the parking lot, and crashed in my car. I slept fitfully, but got up about 6:30 or 7am. I went up to the tent, ate some cookies, and drank some Diet Pepsi. I went out to the track. The people were all walking slowly and sort of looked like zombies. I found one of the high school girls and walked a lap with her. Then I went back to the tent, and started breaking stuff down. My wife, aunt, and uncle showed up, and we took down the tent. I was talking to one of the organizers, and she suggested I go have the ambulance crew treat my blisters. She said they had been sitting there all night, and were bored. So I went out there, and they said there was nothing they could do for blisters. Huh? Not drain them? No super glue. No duct tape? I need to play with coating my feet with Vaseline on training runs. Maybe that would have prevented the blisters.
They announced a final lap. So I went out and walked the final lap. Then they gave out awards for fundraising. Our team raised over $12,000 (I only raised a small part of that).
Then we started our drive back home. My wife drove, and I mostly slept. But we did stop and get some food along the way. And I did take some time to drain the blisters.
I have run the Damn Wakely Dam Ultra the last two years. And both times I have had to stop along the way to empty dirt, mud and rocks out of my shoes. So there is the time used to stop and take them off, and put them back on again. There is also the time while running with junk in the shoes, and the discomfort involved. This year, I decided to get some trail running gaiters. I have found various kinds. But I wanted ones with some sort of fun style to them.
I searched around, and found some made by dirtygirlgaiters.com. They have a whole bunch of fun fabric patterns. I have been putting off ordering them. But I finally broke down and ordered a pair. The debated which style to get. I finally settled on “lime gaiteraide hurl”. Part of it was I liked the in your face color. And the name is kind of cool. I will have to get out and do a trial run in them before the ultra. I would have to run 32 miles in them and have them bothering me. Of course, I could easily take them off if things got bad. But still. I will try them before the event.
If you are looking for fun trail running gaiters, check out http://www.dirtygirlgaiters.com
Having qualified for the Boston Marathon, and then to actually run, I had to buy a Boston Marathon jacket. I is sort of manditory. I knew that it wouldn’t be cheap, but the price was only of minor concern. Sort of like when I go to do the Ironman in August, I will probably be buying a bunch of Ironman stuff.
A bunch of friends of mine who had already gotten their jackets, were talking about the 2+ hour lines to get the Boston Marathon jackets in expo. There was a line to actually get the jacket, and another line to pay for it. But I had a friend who is a veteran runner, and local. He told me I could get the same jacket at a store near the finish line. So after our group finished brunch, a few of us went off to the store.
The store was Marathon Sports, and was location near the finish line of the race.
We went in, and the little store was crowded. But we could still move around easy enough. The jackets were hanging on the wall. They had the $60 screen printed jackets, and the $90 embroidered jackets. I wanted the embroidered one. Who knows if I will ever run the Boston Marathon again. I tried the large, and the sleeves were a little short on my long arms. So I tried the XL. It fit nicely. I got in line and less than 10 minutes later I was at the register. When the guy rung it up, the total came to under $90 with tax. Huh? I asked if it was on sale or something. Then I realized that the guy had given me a 10% discount because I was there with my friend who coaches local charity teams. Way frigging cool! So not only did I not have to wait in lines for over 2 hours, I also got a discount on the jacket!
Thanks Jeff! You rock!