Flying Pig Marathon Weekend

It has been forever since I have actually written a blog post. Life is so busy, but I really am sad about getting away from my race recaps. I am sure I will enjoy looking back on those at some point. This weekend was the Flying Pig Marathon.  My friend, Kimberlee and I really wanted to do this race b/c there was a 4 way option. This meant that we could do a 10K followed by a 5K on Saturday then a full marathon on Sunday. It is called 4 way b/c the 3 way was doing the 1/2 marathon. The names are b/c it is sponsored by Skyline Chili and I guess they have 3 and 4 way choices for chili. The original plan was that we would make this a double date type weekend. While the husbands were not doing the 4 way, they were always planning to do the full marathon with us. Clark needed the state of Ohio (I had done Cleveland) now that we have a goal of a marathon in every state.

As usual with our busy lives, plans changed. My partner, Dr. Julie,  has spent the last several months raising money for the lymphoma and leukemia society. This weekend she was hosting a big hockey tournament to raise money. This was a big deal weekend for her, and since my husband actually plays hockey, we felt it was important for him to be here and play in part of the tournament (on Friday and Saturday). So he stayed home until late Saturday, and I was the third wheel with Nate and Kimberlee. They were great and didn't mind. It worked out!

So the three of us headed off to Cincinnati on Friday. We headed to the expo first.

I was proud of myself for not spending any money. I figured we already got 4 shirts by doing the 4 way, and there are only so many shirts with pigs on it that one needs. Then we checked into our hotels and were thrilled that they were closer to each other than we thought. Our pre Saturday race meal was at Rock Bottom. We ate a lot of yummy food since Nate and Kimberlee got coupons for free appetizers from their hotel. After that, we called it a night. We are a wild and crazy bunch!! Clark had his first hockey game of the tourney, and I am pretty sure they lost badly but had tons of fun!

We were up and ready to go early for our Saturday races. The weather was perfect. Our plan was to run together the entire day and make sure we ran at conversational pace so we had something left for the marathon. I think our plan worked perfectly. The 10K was first.

It was a bit chilly but once we started running it was fine. We had so much fun running together. Lots of talking but still a decent overall time. My favorite parts of the run were running over the bridges. Even in the 10K there were lots of hills. Nate was along the finish to see us and take pictures. Here is when Kimberlee realized he was there.

 

 Here I finally understood what she was trying to point out. Oh hello Nate!!

 Here we are crossing the finish line!

Here are our results:

I better mention that while we had the exact same time, Kimberlee placed one higher than me on both the Saturday races. She was pretty excited about this!! In between races we tried to eat a little and warm up. We had just over an hour from the finish of the 10K to the start of the 5K.
Here we are at the start of our 5K.

The 5K was much like the 10K and included some hills. We were still able to talk even though we increased our speed slightly.

 

Once again, Kimberlee was one place ahead of me!

After the runs, we got ourselves cleaned up and decided to walk around town. We thought the walking would be good to keep our legs from getting tight. We had a nice big lunch at an Italian place to carb load. Then I spent the rest of the evening hanging out in my hotel room trying hard not to fall asleep for a nap b/c I wanted to go to bed early.

Clark arrived around 11:30pm. He had just played his second hockey game of the day and was less than thrilled with the idea of getting up in 5 hours to run a marathon. I was less than thrilled to realize I would be subjected to his snoring for the remainder of the night. Anyhow, we got up early and went thru our usual pre race prep. For me that includes shower, multiple bathroom attempts, and eating oatmeal. We hooked up with our friends and headed to the corrals. We all had different corrals based on our bibs but decided to start together in corral D.

Here you can see that my crazy best friend, Jaime, ended up running this race too. She and I attempted to run Carmel together but she had gotten sick the week of the race and needed to slow down for the second half. She was so bummed about her performance that without telling anyone she went out 2 weeks later and ran another full marathon. This time doing quite well. That boost of confidence turned to insanity (typed with lots of love and understanding....since she is my twin) when she decided to run this marathon one week later (making her 3rd marathon in 4 weeks). 

I will say that Clark was super excited to see porta potties in the corrals. He thought that was a brilliant idea b/c you always see people jumping in and out of the corrals for one last minute potty break. I took full advantage. For reasons I still don't understand he didn't (will expand on that later). The weather was perfect and although we all had throw away clothes to prevent freezing while waiting, it was probably not necessary. The time went fast and before we knew it the gun went off. We were doing our little walk/shuffle to the start line, and just about 15 feet from the start Clark tells me he has something in his shoe and we need to pull off to the side. Ummm.....WHAT? We waited in the corral for 30 minutes and you discover this problem NOW!!! I was beyond annoyed, but our friends went on, and we crossed in front of lots of people to stop on the side. At least it was before crossing the start line. He took his shoe off and got everything fixed, and we were off. Maybe b/c we started farther back than our assigned corrals or maybe just b/c the nature of races anymore, but it was crazy congested. I was going crazy. I actually started yelling things about people who started to walk within a hundred yards of the start line. I kept saying, "IF YOU ARE ALREADY WALKING, AND WE JUST STARTED, YOU STARTED IN THE WRONG CORRAL." It is so beyond rude,that I felt the need to say something...not that anybody cares. By this point we had caught up with Kimberlee and Nate, and they joked about me getting arrested for yelling at other runners (well actually WALKERS).  Clark and I kept weaving in and out of people, but our first several miles were slow simply b/c we could not move. In the end this may or may not have been good for us considering all the upcoming hills we were about to face.

I feel like I could sum up my entire race report with one word......HILLS!! The end! No seriously, we were all expecting a 3 mile uphill from mile 6-9. We were ready for it b/c we knew it was coming, and then I thought it was going to be much better from there. Oh wait let me back up. I think we were at mile 2 when Clark asked if I had to use the restroom yet. Ummm...NO.... why? Turns out, he wanted to go the bathroom. I was less than satisfied with his response to my question of why when he was soooo excited about the porta potty in the corral did he not actually use it. He, "didn't have to go then." I would like to see his reaction if one of our children tried to use that excuse for not going to the restroom prior to long car drive only to need to go in the first 10 minutes. I can assure you that would not go over well. I am sure our bickering back and forth provided some entertainment for those around us. Clark was going to "hold" it until mile 6 then the plan was to stop. I was stopping too b/c we were running this race together. We did stop at mile 6 but waited so long for one to be available that we gave up and started running again. So there we were running 3 miles uphill. That was an experience. I am proud to say we ran the entire way and actually passed lots of people on the uphill. I think our slowest mile during that time was 8:40 something. I will say it was beautiful at the top. At mile 10 we stopped again so he could finally go the restroom. It took 2 minutes b/c we had to wait. I was going a bit crazy trying to encourage people to pee faster.  My previous marathon I was so proud of getting my bathroom stop down to less than 40 seconds so you can understand how 2 minutes waiting for my husband was like torture. Likely b/c of this and the downhill, our 10th mile was our fastest of the day at 8:03.

Around mile 11 or 12 I started to have flashbacks of Cleveland, which was my worst marathon ever. I started to feel somewhat nauseated and almost a little like I could pass out. I was sure my race was doomed. I kept telling/yelling at Clark that we needed to  slow down. He eventually told me to "stop talking." He says I always say I want to slow down, but then never do. I really wanted to. I was still trying to decide at that point if we were on target for a 4 hour marathon. If so, all we needed to do was stay around 9 minutes. We agreed that if at the half we were on target for that 4 hours then we would keep trying ,but if we were over the 2 hour mark then we were going to totally slow down and forget the time and just run conversational pace. At the half we were close. I think we were around 1:56 which meant we were going to keep going but still only needed 9 minute miles. The promise that the majority of the hills were over after 9 was a lie. I thought they were going to be, but Clark enjoyed pointing out that I was VERY wrong. The hills (and downhills) just kept coming and coming and coming. By far the hilliest course I have ever been on (now super scared for San Fran). The miles ticked by. The crowd support was amazing. I felt like there were people everywhere. Lots of bands, lots of people cheering. Tons of food. I ate oranges and york patty mints. There were twizzlers. My only complaint about the race organization was that they had the Gatorade before the water at all the stations. I feel like it should be the other way around. I think it is why I felt so sick at the start b/c I was taking too much Gatorade.

Really during this entire race if I was feeling great, Clark wasn't, and if he was great, I was struggling. We were never the same. Still not sure if that helped or hurt us. In his defense he had just played 4 hockey games and was so very under trained for this race. A couple of months ago he ran 16 miles with me, but that was it for long runs. So at mile 18 he was hurting. I wasn't feeling great, but I wanted to try and at least get to 20 before walking. He said we would walk at 19. I came up with a plan to walk 0.2 miles and then run the next 0.8 miles. We did that for the next 3 miles and it seemed to work okay. Despite walking, our pace was not horrible (I think the worst was 9:36).  We skipped the walk break at mile 22 but then at mile 23 Clark was feeling terrible. I was doing okay and ready to be done. I thought it was his legs but later he said it was his stomach. At this point, I knew that we were going to be close to under 4, and I really wanted to do that. I was almost begging him to keep going and start running again. We may have walked slightly more than 0.2. This was our worst mile with a pace of 10 minutes.  Suddenly we get to mile 24 and I don't know what happened to Clark, but he just takes off like he felt great the entire time. I was feeling okay (tired and ready to be done) but NOT great. I just kept yelling that I could not sprint the last 2 miles. Maybe he was so sick of my nagging...... Anyhow, I did my best to keep up all while trying to slow him down. At mile 25 someone let there 1 year old run out in front of the runners. We nearly crushed the poor child. Our last mile was done with a pace of 8:25. We crossed the finish line at 3:54:27. I was incredibly happy with this time considering our lack of preparation, the HILLS, the walking, and let's not forget the 2 minute potty stop.

It really was a great race. So well organized. So well supported. So challenging....which gave me a huge since of accomplishment (b/c of the hills). We picked up my 4 way medal, shirt and medal hanger as fast as possible and rushed back to our hotel to shower before we had to check out. Here I am with all 4 medals.

Here's Clark

 

Kimberlee and Nate had a great race as well. Nate did not get any muscle cramps (which has been an issue of his in past marathons), and Kimberlee felt awesome from mile 9 on!  They loved the race despite the hills:) Jaime also had fun at this race. She loved the crowd support!
What a fantastic weekend!! I look forward to many more races with these wonderful people!!