Kelley's race report

5:56:00

Kelley was so excited to break 6 hours! I am incredibly proud of her. She did it, man. She really did it. The course was pancake flat and there was a huge crowd. She made the online photo gallery, that's her in the blue shirt running between the two superheroes. She's claiming now that batgirl and supergirl are really her bodyguards. The entire finishers list is online.

It was a one loop course, but it kind of went left , came back to center, and then went right. so you have to run by the finish line for the half marathon course, then you see the finish line for the full marathon course. when she passed the half finish line, she was suddenly running alone. a huge crowd was only doing the half. So she went from running with a nice big group of people to being all alone. The winners were crossing the full mary finish line while she was in view. that was still in her mile 13. that was just cruel, I thought. haha, here's the finish line, but you won't reach it for 3 more hours. In the second half of the course everything got different. it actually got 10 degrees colder and started raining. the half marathon crowd was gone so it was just her running alone. It turned up hwy 17, the busiest road in MB, there was one lane of traffic coned off for the runner(s), but still had cars whizzing by throwing rainwater into the running lane. and at that point you are like 17 miles into the race. Which is exactly when you want cars to start splashing you and potentially hydroplane and run you down. So that wasn't exactly the "calmest" stretch of the race. but then the course turned up off of 17, to head to the finish and everything was ok again. She was the 1683rd finisher, so her dad, mom, and the girls were waiting at the finish line. The crowd had thinned by then so she had no trouble finding them. Her dad got too many pics to email us, so I'll post some once the disc gets here in the mail.

She really dug deep and pulled out a great race. Her official chip time was 5:56:00, and the clock time was 5:58:04 so it must have taken a couple of minutes to get to the starting line. Her recovery time was fine, plenty of other people to hang out with the girls and she got plenty of food.

I got to give props to the awesome friends that also finished. Our friend Deb that talked us into this race finished in 8:09. Ryan plowed through everyone else in 3:29. He's nuts. My fraternity brother Jon ran the half in 1:52, and his wife Kim ran the half in 2:10. Jon's also doing the Grandfather Mountain marathon this july, it's one of the toughest marathons in the country. And Coach Katie ran this one in 3:21. Insane! she was the 15th female finisher.

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After spending most of the weekend praying for death to finish the job, I finally started feeling better sunday about 1 pm. That was a rough flu bug! I knew it was tough thursday night after it just laughed at the NyQuil. Then I knew it was going to be a rough weekend. But everything started clearing up slowly but surely, and by sunday night my appetite finally came back. Today I woke up with a migraine, but outside of that the bug is gone. and that's a big relief.

I think I might have found another marathon. I thought about heading to San Diego for the rock and roll marathon may 31st. Then I saw how expensive the flight, hotel, reg fee, every dang thing was and decided that would not be it. I have been having a west coast jones lately though. kelley doesn't fly, so the only time i get to go far enough to fly is for work. Now I don't have to leave the house for work anymore, so I haven't been on a plane in years. more travel talk later, though.

One of my favorite places in the country is Racine, WI. I don't know why. But I found a marathon nearby, I thought that was going to be it. Travel was too expensive. I thought about grandma's marathon in Duluth, MN. I've always wanted to go to Minnesota. But the date just doesn't jive and travel is too expensive. Our family has a beach house on Tybee Island, GA. Oh crap, the Tybee marathon was last weekend Feb 7. Dang. ING Atlanta? oh wait, it's the same day as my Assault on the Carolina's bike ride. So I really did a ton of research before I finally found.....

Hillbilly heaven. Turns out, there is an entire weekend of festivities for a reunion of the Hatfields and McCoy's, and the festivities include a marathon. The course goes back and forth between Kentucky and West Virginia, and I've never really explored much of that area. You run past the gravesites and homesites of some of the family members involved in the fued. And the whole thing finishes with a pig pickin. It's a small race with only about 200 runners last year, and 25 aid stations. the negatives: It's june 13th, so it could be a little hot. But it's in the mountains, so it will be cooler there than it will be here. But in the mountains the course will be fairly hilly. the web site says the first half of the course is more difficult than the second half, so it must level out some after a while. But I have always been a mountaineer at heart, so to run a marathon in the mountains is more my speed anyway. And one of the twisted parts of my personality wants to try something more difficult after the easier version failed just to prove to myself the failure wasn't my fault. So take a quick look at http://www.hatfieldmccoymarathon.com/race.cfm and see what you think. Am I crazy for wanting to try this one? Everyone is assigned to the Hatfield team or the McCoy team, and the team with the lower total finishing time wins something. It's only about a 5 hour drive north of here, so the travel is totally acceptable. So it looks small, fun, and I love the mountains anyway. Around here we train with hills because there are no flat spots in Greenville. Well, there's one place on the other side of town to bike in a flat area.

This marathon is june 13th, one week after the Festival of Flowers international distance tri. So I've got to find a training plan that will work with both. I think I can maintain current running endurance until then, just be sure that the saturday long runs can still build and get one 18 mile or 20 miler in a few weeks before. I guess I'm taking some inspiration from Frayed Laces, who's training for a half ironman and the Boston Marathon that are only like 4 weeks apart. So I think it's totally doable. What do you think?

So Congratulations to Kelley for running a great race. I'm glad to be over this flu thing. Tri season is upon us, and it's time to put the next training plan in place. My next race is the Assault on the Carolina's bike ride March 28th. We're adding a half marathon April 25, it's the Earth Day half mary in Greer which looks like a really nice half. I'll fill in more training details as I figure them out. Have a great day! and THANK YOU for all of the well wishes in the comments of my last post. It was so comforting knowing I had support and friends from all over the country wanting me to feel better.