Manchester City Marathon 2012 Race Report
"Ready... Set... GO!"
"Holy crap," I thought, "did this race just start with the words 'Ready, Set, Go'?"
This thought was thunk at the start line of the Manchester City Marathon two weeks ago (yeah, I reeealy procrastinated on this one).
The decision to run this race was very last-minute. Thursday before the race, I decided not to run New York. To be clear and answer one question I keep getting - No, I didn't have any idea they were actually going to cancel New York. I just simply decided that under the circumstances, this year's race was not the one for me. End of story.
At the time, I had no alternate plan. Well, I did have an alternate plan, but that plan was just "stay home". We weren't going to go to New York for our planned vacation, and I wasn't going to run a Marathon. However, my Mom encouraged Stephanie and I to still go somewhere - after all, she and Jace were in town to have an extended grandparent's weekend with our kids. So, Stephanie looked into changing our flights to... "somewhere". The airline said they'd change our tickets to anything within a 300 mile radius of La Guardia that had seats available, at no charge. They had plenty of stranded people trying to get into (or back to) New York.
As I was driving home from work on Thursday evening, we still hadn't decided on a destination. Then suddenly, in the middle of Mopac I connected a couple dots. Stephanie had mentioned "somewhere" in New England on the phone. A friend from my training group (later referred to as "Jason") was running a race "somewhere" in New Hampshire on the same day as New York. I got home and looked up the race - registration was still open! Stephanie was up for it - we could just change our plans a bit, maybe see a few friends in the area - and so it was settled. "Somewhere" would be Manchester, New Hampshire.
Just like that, boom! I was registered for a new race. One that was happening in roughly 60 hours. One that I knew absolutely nothing about. Well ok, I knew the distance. And the general location. And I knew at least one familiar face would be out there running with me. Even so, I had some planning to do. And I had a plane to catch in about 10 hours. So, I put together a somewhat hasty plan. I was helped (and harmed) quite a lot by the fact that there's a video of the course and an elevation profile linked from the web site. I don't know how long this link will last, but it is here in case anyone has 23 minutes to spare:
http://viewtherace.com/new-hampshire/manchester-city-marathon
I printed out a map, and studied the elevation profiles while watching the video on mute - we had house guests and I was the only one still awake. I surmised that although the race is hilly, most of the hills were pretty tame - 20-40 foot climbs - nothing too steep - maybe 80 feet top to bottom for the whole course. Most of them don't even really register as hills on the video. Piece of cake, right? I had no idea what I was mentally setting myself up for here. It was the beginning of my undoing. Dun Dun Dunnnn (that's the sound of ominous foreshadowing, in case the phrases "setting myself up" and "my undoing" weren't foreboding enough).
See, the one minor-yet-crucial detail that I failed to notice was that the units on the elevation profile were in meters. As in, not feet. I didn't figure this out until almost a week after the race. I went online and watched the video again but with the sound on. If I'd had the sound on the first time, I might have noticed how the narrator kept talking about this challenging hill, and that challenging hill, when it just appears kind of flat on screen.
But it's no good to dwell on might haves. Back in New Hampshire, the day before the race...
We went to the expo shortly after they opened on Saturday. This is a smaller race. Not super-small... but it's not on the same scale as most of the runs I am used to. In 2011, they had about 800 runners in the half, about 400 in the full, and about 90 in a relay. This year, they also had about 800 in the half and 80 in the relay, but around 700(!) in the full marathon distance. I overheard someone mention that registration for the Marathon doubled on Friday night, due to NYC runners looking for an alternate race. To get our bibs, we looked up our names on the printout hung on the wall, figured out our bib numbers, and then went to the people at the table, and told them our number. Very informal, no ID check, just "You said one, seven, zero right? Ok, here you go! Have a good race!"
Next, we went to drive part of the course and scout out some good spots for Stephanie to watch from. Driving the first few miles, I did have a few thoughts like "Huh.. this seems hillier than it looked on the web." (Ha!) But I dismissed those as just some pre-race nerves.
Regarding nerves, I was not feeling the normal sense of "dreadcitement" that I get before a big race. I don't know what was going on on Saturday. I found myself with very little appetite all day. I finished half of my breakfast. We met with some friends for lunch, and I had to force myself to finish a sandwich. Dinner wasn't much different. I may have been just having some delayed-onset appetite loss after getting so stressed out on Wednesday and Thursday. Or maybe this is just my new way of being nervous (if it is, I prefer the bouncing off the walls crazy-can't-sleep version, instead of this am-I-getting-sick? junk).
On race morning, my appetite hadn't returned, but at least I slept ok. I ate about 1/4 of my bagel and couldn't stomach any more. I was able to get a granola bar down by taking small bites and drinking lots of water. After all the usual pre-race rituals and offerings, we drove downtown.
We were pretty early, so there weren't that many people around. We wandered and we loitered. It was cold and it was windy. I was glad I had decided on long sleeves, but I was wondering if shorts were the right choice. More runners began to accumulate in the general vicinity, drawn into small clusters wherever there happened to be a stray patch of sunlight, and one giant cluster near the army of port-a-potties. For the size of this race, they were overwhelmingly prepared in the toilet department.
The announcer said several times that the start line was a couple blocks away, so we made our way over that direction and found some sunlight in a relatively wind-free spot. And we waited, loitered some more, etc. Finally, with about 10 minutes to go, runners started to gather at the start. I said goodbye to Stephanie and joined them.
The start line was simply marked by two timing mats on the road and a couple temporary fences to keep the sidewalks at bay. I kind of got the feeling that they were still setting it up as we all huddled together to keep warm. Suddenly, I heard someone to my left say "Bill!" and I turned to find Jason! I'd been looking around for him earlier when there weren't so many people, but didn't spot him. It was good to see another familiar face. We shared a big (but totally manly) bear hug, talked for a bit, and wished each other well. And then it was time.
"Ready... Set... GO!"
Yeah, I just wasted a bunch of your time talking about stuff that wasn't part of the actual race. I'll make up for it by including a bunch of pictures, ok?
So, repeating myself a bit, this got me thinking "Holy crap, did this race just start with the words 'Ready, Set, Go'?" I am so used to Mr. Evilsizer and his "The command will be, runners to your mark, and then an air horn..." I associate "ready, set, go" with my kids. Which immediately put a smile on my face. It was still there when Stephanie snapped the first picture of the race report.
It always amazes me how much of this physical running thing is really a mental game. I really convinced myself that the hills were no big deal here. After a first steep downhill in mile 1, the first five miles were mostly uphill. I knew I was going to take it easier for this part, but "take it easy" in my mind was to just take in the surroundings, not worry about pace, hang out with the crowd and try to get warmed up.
So that's what I did. I chatted with other runners, most of whom were running the full race. There was a lot of talk about New York. Most of the runners I talked with had originally planned to go to New York too, and still most of them were there and ready to run when they cancelled the race. A few were wearing shirts they picked up at the expo. Everyone had a different story. One guy was from New Zealand. One woman (I can't remember where she had travelled from) went all the way to New York, stood outside the expo hall on Friday, and decided she wasn't going to run it after all. She was walking back to her hotel when they cancelled.
The crowd support up that first section was pretty good. Lots of little kids - I distributed high fives generously - there were plenty of opportunities. My mind was in a lot of different places for those first few miles, but not really focued on the "running" part of the race - I was just moving and enjoying myself. Perhaps a little too much. In my mind I was running at a pretty easy pace. Occasionally, I'd notice that a certain stretch of road seemed really steep, but it all felt ok. As long as I was keeping it easy, it didn't matter, right? I did start feeling the uphills a little by the end of mile 5, and then quickly felt better again in mile 6, which is a pretty decent downhill. That's also where it got interesting.
Watching the video during my evening of prep work, this is the point where my jaw dropped and I stopped taking notes. In the video, the car takes a sharp right turn and heads down a hill (one that even looks steep on video), straight for a fence at the end of the road. There's a giant pile of dirt on the right side, and a gap in the fence on the left, but there's no more road there. And then suddenly, you're viewing the course from a bike on a dirt path.
This was a fun little section of the course. It is about 1/2 mile of little rolling hills on a dirt path through the woods. There was pond that was visible through the trees on one side, and a little concrete bridge at the end. Here I am looking far too over-dressed and under-framed, with my friends from New Zealand and Minnesota who ran through the woods with me.
Then the honeymoon was over, and we were back on the roads climbing more hills. It was on a hill in the 9th mile that I discovered that I was feeling a bit tired. That's not supposed to happen this early in a marathon. Mile 16 maybe, but not here. I started to take inventory - breathing ok - not too warm - not too cold - roll up the sleeves anyhow - legs... well, they're tired. Then once again, we reached the top of the hill and there were a few miles of flat and downhill running. Stephanie was out there near the 9-mile sign. She asked me how it was going - I gave a thumbs-sideways. I kind of knew at that point that this might turn out to be a rough day.
The half marathon runners vectored off around mile 10, and the spectators thinned out significantly. Very few of the roads on this course are closed to traffic, and at this point in the race things began to get a little lonely. I could only see a couple runners up ahead of me. Running on the shoulder with cars going by in both directions, the race began to feel much like just another training run on my own. That feeling intensified shortly after mile 11, where the route turned onto a second dirt trail. Unlike the earlier trail, this one was very flat. With a lake visible to the left, it felt a lot like running on the town lake trail.
"I'm a little tired" turned into "Hmmm, maybe I'm really in trouble" in the 13th mile of the race. It was a fairly gradual hill, but it just seemed to keep going. That was really the turning point for me in the race. Before, I may have been getting tired but at least I was relaxed. In mile 13 I tensed up, and began to fight it instead of just flowing along. I felt it happening too. I kept telling myself to relax, which I was only able do in small bursts. But then my mind would wander, and I'd find myself all tense again before long.
I also got a little paranoid. Mile 16 was a long, straight stretch on a semi-busy road through an area with a bunch of warehouses. I was over on the shoulder, cars were zipping by. The problem was that I could not see any runners ahead of me - just a couple people out for a walk way up ahead. For a while, I wasn't sure I was even still on the course. It was starting to look a lot like one of my crazy pre-race dreams where I take a wrong turn and end up having to run through people's back yards and living rooms (except before the part where I actually start running through living rooms). When I got paranoid enough, I looked behind me and saw that there were a few runners back there with race bibs on. That was encouraging. At least I knew that if I had missed a turn, I had some company. Hey, maybe I was taking the whole race with me a la the 2007 IBM 10k. Then I got close enough to the two walkers to realize they were actually other runners who had passed me several miles earlier (except now they weren't running). Eventually the mile 16 sign and the next intersection arrived, and my paranoia passed.
I should note for anyone considering this race - there really wasn't anything to be worried about here. Yeah.. the race is small. And all they really had for signage to mark the course were some big mile markers and these little orange arrows showing you which way to go - occasionally some spray paint on the pavement. Speaking of orange arrows, let's play Where's Waldo (ignore that this picture is seven miles in the past, chronologically.)
However, they had a fantastic set of volunteers helping to keep runners on the course. At more major intersections, there were police officers directing runners and traffic, and at every other twist and turn there was a volunteer keeping runners on the right track. There's no way you'd get lost out there unless you were trying to.
Miles 17 through 19 weren't too bad. I was still struggling a bit on the physical side, but those miles were were made up of smaller rolling hills in the front, and a long steady downhill section in mile 18. Plus, the half marathon runners and the spectators had returned. The half marathoners were finishing up their race back where the whole thing started in the downtown area, so it wasn't a big surprise to have the extra crowd support. It was nice to have more people around again, and it was great to see Stephanie again near mile 17. I started getting a bit of the superhero feeling, since the majority of the runners now, who were doing the half, were going at a significantly slower pace. I was passing people left and right, feeling pretty good (Amy - I wasn't flying... but it felt that way). I even passed Wonder Woman and Superman, so maybe the feeling of superhero was warranted. Unfortunately, I let that feeling go to my head a bit.
The mile 19 marker was in the heart of downtown, very close to the final turn for the half marathoners. They took a left, and we took a right. I was so busy soaking in all the extra energy that I completely forgot about my last Gu, which was scheduled for mile 19ish. After parting ways with the halfsters, the marathon course headed up the road towards yet another hill. At least there was some residual crowd support to carry us, but the number of runners had thinned significantly. One nice touch in that section was a guy with a microphone and a loudspeaker calling out names and where we were from. I was able to muster up a couple waves when he mentioned a certain runner "all the way from Texas". Then came a nice scenic downhill stretch on a bridge over the river. The problem here was, once again we were completely alone. Even more so than before, because they weren't any cars on the bridge. After the relative excitement of the last few miles, it felt so strange to be hearing only my own breath again. At least there was another runner in sight up ahead.
After the bridge was (surprise!) another little steep hill! That was followed immediately by what felt like an eternity of slow, steady climbing. The eternity, as I see it now through the lens of my GPS data, was only a mile and a half, but it felt like much longer (typical eternity behavior). To begin with the popular car metaphor, the wheels were beginning to come loose.
The most notable part of this section was when I started hearing voices. I had actually caught up to the runner ahead of me, while other runners from behind had caught up to me. We had a little pack of four or five runners. Nobody was particularly talkative, save for an occasional grunt. There weren't any spectators. And then I heard the voices, cheering kind of softly, saying things that were patently false, such as "you're looking great!" and "You're almost there!" But I couldn't see anyone. Then I caught some motion to the right side and saw a disembodied hand hovering in the darkened window of a passing house. I waved at the disembodied hand, and it waved back at me. Yes, this is pretty much what reality was like at that moment for me. A little taste of "fear and loathing in New Hampshire".
Entering the 23rd mile, there was a brutally steep downhill stretch. A volunteer was telling us to get onto the sidewalk and take a left at the bottom of the hill. Clearly, I was not the only person having some trouble with this downhill section. The guy in front of me hugged the curb for quite a while. His feet were barely clearing the height of the curb, and he stumbled a bit when he finally made the leap of faith onto the sidewalk. I thought he was going to go down. If he had, I would have followed him to the ground, because I simply couldn't slow down, much less stop. We both made it down the hill intact though, and were treated with a nice flat paved bike/walk/run path for the next 1.5 miles or so.
Although I was seriously hurting at this stage (I had at least one flat tire and a distinct shimmy in the back end), this was by far my favorite part of the course. It was very serene, separated from the road, in many places covered with a dense mat of leaves from the canopy of trees overhead. There were a couple bridges overhead and the trees still had enough leaves so that it kind of felt like running through a series of tunnels. There's was even a strange sort of crowd support in this section. The "spectators" were all mobile. I passed many runners and cyclists going in both directions, people just out for a walk, or walking their dogs. Most all of them had some encouraging words for those of us running the race. Then the course crossed over the river again on this awesome wooden foot bridge. I remembered this from the video as another one of those jaw-dropping moments.
The trail section continued on the other side of the river for a little while before dumping us, rather unceremoniously, into a parking lot where we ran up a flight of stairs. Just kidding... There were no stairs. Just another hill that felt like a flight of stairs. As much as the previous two miles were my favorite section, the final two were my least favorite. To continue with the car analogy, I had lost all my tires, one wheel was missing, and I was riding along on a combo of rims and axle, throwing sparks everywhere. To ditch the analogy and just say what was going on... my legs hurt. Bad. And they weren't working correctly. It has kind of happened to some degree in every marathon I've done. There's always that point where one of my calves starts misfiring and threatening to cramp up. That's just been idle threats in most cases - only turning into actual cramps once. I didn't get any cramps this time, but each step was a reminder that my calves were not happy.
Things weren't pleasant, but hey... there were only a couple miles left, and there was no way I was going to walk now, if I could avoid it. Adding to the physical pain was the mental pain of how the final miles of the course play out here. There's no out and back section (thankfully) but right around the mile 25 sign, you can see the runners heading up the final hill to mile 26. It is difficult to explain in words what happens here, and why my brain wanted to reject it. Here's a little map of just the end:
Basically, you get a glimpse of the runners who are about a mile ahead of you, and you begin to lay curses upon them, because you are then forced to turn down the next block and run back the direction you came from for a while. Just when you think you've run too far, you turn back around, go past where you were, and then finally turn again and come back to the same intersection where you see a glimpse of all the people who are now cursing at you for being a mile ahead of them. All of this takes place where you're kind of close enough to hear the hubbub of the finish line above, but nobody has ventured down the hill to cheer on the soon-to-be-soon-to-be finishers. So of course I said that word again... hill. I said it a lot in this writeup. I'll say it a few more times, too.
Man.. that hill. Who put that hill there? I think nobody ventured down the hill because nobody was willing to walk back up it. I eventually made it to the top, to the nice flat quarter-mile straight shot to the finish line. But I was getting a bit delirious. Every brief airborne moment was a relief, and those moments where my feet were on the ground were the exact opposite of relief. I even started to lose my poker face a little.
As I was running down the final stretch I couldn't discern where the (very clearly marked) finish line was. I could see lots of happy-looking marathoners on the other side of the road, headed in the opposite direction. Somehow I convinced myself that all those other runners (there seemed to be a lot of them) were ahead of me and going the other way because there was one more turn up ahead. Even though I *knew* that this was supposed to be the home stretch. I was probably only a couple blocks from the finish line when I finally saw it. Those other runners, by the way, were entering their 20th mile, back where the second half / full split took place. I was too far gone to realize that until I looked at a map later. I finished the race in 3:12:01.
If you love a good coincidence as much as I do, then you'll appreciate the fact that my bib number was 170, and I finished 17th in the M30-39 division. Neat! And if you don't love a good coincidence, then you'll be completely indifferent when I mention that I finished 70th overall. (Neat!)
After the race... well, there was some stumbling around, a tinfoil blanket and a medal, a welcome reunion with Stephanie and an orange slice (I still wasn't hungry). A Journey cover band was playing, and sounding a whole lot like the real thing. I can appreciate that, even though I don't often choose to listen to Journey of my own will. So.. we headed for the car. I stopped a couple times on the way - wherever there was some railing or other solid object to grab onto - and I'd let my legs shake for a bit. They were threatening cramps, and the cold air was making that feeling worse, but I didn't want to attempt to sit down to put on pants and then be stuck on the ground. Sitting down in the car however, was heaven. And shortly after that, the coffee fairy paid a visit.
So.. this may not have been my most spectacular race ever. I didn't get anywhere near my goal time. My splits are a bit of an embarrassing downward spiral. But despite all that, I am really glad that I did this race. When it comes to racing, I am not a very spontaneous person. The longer the race, the less spontaneous I get (and the longer these race reports get - whew!). I always have things planned out well in advance, and I know what I'm getting myself into. That's not at all the case on most of the runs I do any random day of the week. Those are the exact opposite. I rarely know where I'm going to end up running - I just head out the door and go wherever my feet want to take me on that day. Often, I find a new road or path that I've never taken before. This race had that feeling to it. It was new, and exciting, and just plain fun (ignoring all the self-inflicted torture, of course). If I'd been thinking of and planning for this race for months instead of days, perhaps I would have managed a better time, or remembered that last Gu and been a bit more comfortable towards the end. But I don't think it would have been nearly as fun.
The embarrassing downward spiral:
1 6:43
2 7:01
3 6:55
4 6:59
5 7:06
6 6:29
7 6:57
8 6:52
9 6:51
10 6:56
11 6:53
12 7:08
13 7:20
14 7:10
15 7:25
16 7:43
17 7:20
18 7:35
19 7:15
20 7:23
21 7:51
22 7:34
23 7:25
24 7:46
25 8:04
26 8:18
26.4 3:03