Race Report: Greater Hartford Quarter Marathon
This morning, I ran the Greater Hartford Quarter Marathon, at the MDC Reservoir in West Hartford. It's a lovely park, with trails and biking/running paths, and a lot of dogs! The field was limited to 500 runners, which was the perfect size for this venue, and actually, only 395 finishers were listed in the final results.
The weather was cold, but mostly sunny, and there were gusts of wind (not an issue yet, but they sure were later). It was warm in the sun, so I parked myself in a patch of sunshine and waited for the start. There were assembly areas for 5, 6, 7 minute runners, etc, but it only went up to 12 minutes before the walkers' area. Rather a dilemma for this 14 minute runner, but I just parked back with the walkers, who were having the best time at the start, anyway!
The whistle was blown, and off we went! The course is two loops around one of the reservoir ponds, and though the website described the course as "rolling hills", I would have described it as "damn hilly". Granted, the routes I usually train on are hilly, but these felt harder to me. Hmm, couldn't have been because I was trying to run fast, perhaps? :)
The first half of the loop was the uphill, and so I quickly lost sight of the pack. For a while, I was smack in the middle of a couple of walk/runners, and so I had the joy of passing/being passed over and over as I was fighting the uphill trek. I tried not to be demoralized by it, and stick to my pace, such as it was.
I was speculating as to when I would be passed by the leaders lapping me, and the answer turned out to be at around 2.25 miles. I don't know how they make it look so easy. All I know is that my quads were killing me, and then I was severely reminded of the aphorism that "What goes up must come down." Ouch, ouch ouch. I don't do downhills well because of my weight, so I probably looked like an insane mincing pigeon.
Rounding the loop into the finishing area for the first time was more demoralizing than I had expected. There was a man run/walking about my pace, and as we approached, he began to pull ahead, explaining apologetically that he really needed to use the portapotty, and to have a good second lap, because he probably wouldn't catch me. Then, by the finish area, and there were the finishers, already eating their snacks, and though the few spectators that were there were cheering for me, all I could think of was that I had to do the loop one more time. The crowning moment was when I heard a little girl watching the race say to her mother, "Mommy, that woman sure runs slow!"
As I went by, the clock said 45:17, and I wasn't too displeased by that. My super-secret bold goal was to finish in 90 minutes, and it was good to see that I wan't too far off.
Of course, I still had one lap to go, and I was alreay pretty tired. Having been around once already , I knew all about the hills this time, and so I just put my head down and kept chugging. I eventually caught up to the eventual winner of the F60-65 division, and she was very sweet and encouraging. "You're just like a metronome," she told me. "Nice and steady." I do like to run at a steady pace, and I practice that on my long runs, so it was nice to have it noticed.
But, hitting those hills the second time was one of the hardest things I've done running-wise, so far. Go ahead and laugh, but the one thing that kept me going was thinking that I'd be writing a race report later and I really didn't want to have to confess to you all that I had to stop and walk. And I won't even talk about the second time through the downhills. I was hurting in places that I'd never hurt before in training -- quads, hams, even my back and shoulders. At this point I just wanted to finish. Any hope I had of having a fun, energetic race where I got to run negative splits and finish feeling pround of myself were long gone. I just wanted to finish, damnit!
Rounding the turn into the finish area, many of the people who had finished were already leaving, but a good portion of them stopped to yell encouragement to me as I slogged on by. Now that I was nearly at the finish, my pride came back, and I found I had just enough energy to finish with a kick. The clock read 1:32:06 (14:03 pace), so a small positive split, but I'm not arguing at this point. And I wasn't last, but ended up 391/395.
Even better -- there was still food left! The snacks were fantastic; some store bought things (fruit and bagels), but the rest were homebaked delicacies brought in by the volunteers. Nothing like homemade chocolate chip cookies and cupcakes after a race!
I was at the race alone (the husband had to stay home with the kids, one of whom was sick), so I asked a random stranger to take my picture, and he good-naturedly agreed:
I'm not sure how I feel right now. Physically, tired and sore. Mentally... not sure. I'm glad I finished upright, and didn't walk. I gave all I had to the course, but a little disheartened that I didn't have that much to give to it. Perhaps a good night's sleep will help put things in perspective.
Anyway, it was a fun, well-organized race with fantastic volunteers, and I highly recommend it!
TL;DR -- I hauled my overweight carcass around a 10.5K course, and did not finish last! \o/ And, I had fun (I think).