Marathon Me

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from nowhere near Mt. Rushmore,
Aboard this tiny Ship (of fools).

The mate was a crazy runnin’ man,
Al was brave and sure,
Frank set sail that day
For a three and a half hour tour.

A three and a half hour tour. [ sound of thunder: crack! ]

The weather started getting rough,
The shipmate got soaked and tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
Frank would get lost.

Frank would get lost.

So this is the tale of our castaway,
He was lost for a long, long time
He had to make the best of things,
It’s an uphill climb.

No phone(s)! No light(s)! No motor car(s)!
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe, he got lost as can be.

So join us here each week my friends,
You’re sure to get a smile,
To hear the tale of the stranded castaway,
Who ran that extra mile

And thus began the Saturday portion of our double header. Shelley, Christopher, Scott and I flew into Omaha and then drove up to Brookings, South Dakota. Which as you can see here:

is nowhere near Mt. Rushmore. Why do you care, you might ask? You probably don’t, unless you were my 6 year old son or my wife, who had been sold on the joys of attending a double marathon that consisted of around 11.5 hours of driving, by the siren call of Mt. Rushmore. You can read more about that here, but suffice to say I failed to adequately plan for this trip and we had to pass on seeing Mt. Rushmore.

This wouldn’t be the last miscalculation I’d make this weekend. We woke up and it was raining pretty good, so Shelley and Christopher wisely decided to stay sleeping in the hotel. When we were leaving the hotel we ran into a fellow runner who asked what we do if it is raining at the start. I told him, “I guess just run faster”. Not sure if he thought they were going to cancel it due to rain. This isn’t baseball for Pete’s sake. It rains, you keep running and you get wet, no biggie.

However the rain would go from sprinkling to monsoon to light to heavy and back. I’ve never been rained on for this long. There was maybe a mile or so for me where it wasn’t raining. I saw Kami at the start and we wished each other luck. I hope Kami would avoid the missteps I’d take after the half way point.

The race started out okay for me and my first two miles just flew by, then the next couple miles I settled into an easier pace. We started at Pioneer Park which is near the campus of South Dakota State University. The course has lots of turns but was really well marked for the first half of the race. The volunteers did an amazing job out there given the horrible weather. I was glad that I was moving and not standing still in the torrential downpour.

0-1: 6:23
1-2: 6:24
2-3: 7:03
3-4: 7:03
4-5: 7:14
5-6: 6:54

My legs felt a little heavy at this point and I knew I wasn’t going to get a PR but felt I should be able to stay nice and easy and get a Boston Qualifier. Everything was going pretty good at this point, I was in 5th place and felt like I could stay there.

6-7: 7:05
7-8: 7:21
8-9: 7:24
9-10: 7:29
10-11: 7:15

I wanted to try and hit the half around 1:32 and then sub 1:38 on the back half and all was going according to plan until mile 13.

11-12: 7:46
12-13: 7:59

I was slowing down as the rain just kept getting harder and harder, but after turning down a gravel road near the rail road tracks, we get onto a bike path and come near a field. This is where everything goes wrong for me. The grass in the field is probably 18-24 inches tall but in the middle there is a orange cone and then a 4 foot wide mowed strip. There are cones throughout this field, so the guy I am following turns down the field and I follow. It clearly looked like the path we should be going down. We go quite a ways and don’t see any mile markers. We get back to the gravel road we turned down in the first place and none of the volunteers directing traffic have any clue which way we should go so we head back the original way. Oh, hello, mile 13, nice to see you again.

So we get back to the field again and see the nice mowed path again, now a few more people are turning down the route, so we figure we might as well do it again. We get back to the gravel road for the 3rd time and this time we turn left and now we know we have added a lot onto the course and so we pick up the pace, we’re running about 6:30 miles now trying to get back on course.

We finally meet up with the course again and then we see the mile marker for mile 15. Hooray! I am hesitant to even look at the time, but I do and it makes me sad.

13-15: 29:09

Quite a painful two miles, which wound up being right around 2.5 extra. We hit mile 16 and the GPS read 18.5, ugh! Did not want to run extra in this weather, but Al always says you can run extra and I figure I’m just getting my money’s worth now. Way to coach Al!

I am kind of disappointed right now so I start to slow down.

15-16: 7:30
16-17: 7:43
17-18: 8:04

I was hoping to stay under 8 minute miles, but alas couldn’t cut it. At this point I figure I will just phone it in and save it for tomorrow. But then I hook up with the eventual women’s winner, Jill Moncur, who said she was hoping to run a sub 3:34 and get a PR. I tell her that if she sticks with me I promise to bring her in under 3:34. We settle into a nice easy pace and the miles just start clicking off. We start trying to figure out how many women, if any, are in front of us. I told her I didn’t think there were any, but since I had gotten lost for so long, it was possible. She had said some people told her anywhere from none to 3 were in front of her. But either way we are going to get that PR and if all works out well then she wins the race.

18-19: 7:49
19-20: 7:35
20-21: 7:40
21-22: 7:44
22-23: 7:45
23-24: 7:50

With two miles to go I am pretty sure she is going to win the race, and I tell her that if we pick it up a little we will crush her PR and drop under 3:30, she is totally game and begins to drop the hammer. The next two miles are the fastest since the first 25% of the race.

24-25: 7:26
25-26: 7:10
26.2: 1:28
———-
3:28:25

We get her in well under 3:30, with a close to a 6 minute PR and she did win the race. It was pretty cool, so now I’ve gotten to run with two female winners. First one was Nancy Dasso, ironically also at a double.

Afterwards I see Scott near the food tent, he had some knee trouble and had to pull out after the half way point. I slosh over to the massage table and get a massage, Scott said he’d meet me in the car since it was so cold outside. After the massage I am so cold that I can’t even hold a cup of chicken broth. It is actually quite comical as my hand is shaking so much I keep spilling chicken broth on my hand. After pouring out more than half of it I finally manage to stop shaking for 1-2 seconds to drink the rest of it. I get back to the car and Scott has the heater cranked up and I head to the hotel for a hot shower. Normally after a marathon I’ll sit in a cold bath, there was no way in hell I was getting into a cold bathtub that day. I can only think of one or two times that I have been colder than that in my life.

So that ends phase one of the South Dakota/Iowa double. Iowa report coming up.

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Tags: Marathons, Race Reports //