My LONG report: 2008 5 Points of Life Gainesville Marathon (Read 453 times)

Here is my race report for the 2008 Five Points of Life Gainesville Marathon that was on Sunday February 24th. Fair warning: it is very LOOONG (5000+ words!) because I mostly write these for myself to remember what happened. I put in a pretty detailed description of the race course if you are into that kind of stuff. Does anybody know the WR for the longest race report? Since it’s always easier to remember the bad stuff that happens, I’ll start with a few bad things that happened during my 2 week taper. On the 2nd day of my taper, I ran in the rain and had a nice slip and fall onto the road but managed to escape with merely a few scrapes and a tight right leg for a few days. Then a week later I was running late at night and was attacked by a Krispy Kreme donut. To be more precise, I had a Krispy Kreme donut thrown at me by a passenger in a passing car. I didn’t realize what had happened for a couple of seconds whereupon for some reason I reached down to pick up the donut and started sprinting after the car probably setting a new 400m PR! Luckily I didn’t pull a muscle sprinting, so no harm done other than wasting a perfectly good Krispy Kreme (a crime deserving punishment by 100 lashes of a bamboo cane in my humble opinion). The Five Points of Life Race Weekend is run by LifeSouth which is a non-profit regional blood bank in the southeastern United States and headquartered in Gainesville, Florida. The goal of the Five Points of Life program is to raise awareness of the need for donations of: 1) whole blood, 2) apheresis, 3) bone marrow, 4) organs and tissue, and 5) umbilical cord blood. They have a cycling team that rides across the country stopping here and there to publicize the need for these life-saving donations, and a few years ago they thought about having a marathon to do the same. The event started as a marathon and half-marathon run at the same time on Sunday but has now grown to include a kid’s marathon and 5k on Saturday. The kid’s marathon involves kids from kindergarten to 8th grade who run and keep track of their mileage at school. They complete a total of 25 miles before race day and then get to run the last 1.2 miles of their marathon at the kid’s marathon. They even get a marathon medal at the end of the race! This event was held at 3 PM on Saturday afternoon and was incredibly fun to watch! The kids loved it, and it seemed the adults enjoyed it just as much, at least I know I did! Over 500 kids participated, so it really is a great program to encourage kids to run and stay active. A 5k was added to the schedule of events this year and would be at 4 PM on Saturday after the kid’s marathon. LifeSouth came to my running club (the world famous Florida Track Club, go team!) and asked if we would be interested in handling the timing and results. I and another member (Dawn Marie) said we’d be the race directors on the club’s side of things. So we had to set up the mile markers, a couple of water stations, the finish line area, and make sure the timing and results got done. Well, as anybody who has been a race director knows, the work is rewarding BUT it can be a LOT of work and somewhat stressful as well! The upshot of it all is that I spent Friday night loading trucks and all Saturday on my feet because of the 5k race. My feet were actually sore the night before the big race! The race expo was small but nice for the size of the race, and I got a good deal on some shorts but didn’t get a chance to look through all the FunnerRunner stock of fun tech shirts (only $10 each!). After the long day on my feet I headed over to visit my parents for dinner and made plans for my mom to see me finish the race and then go out to lunch after the race festivities were over. I went home and tried to get to sleep early but only managed 3 or 4 hours of sleep which I guess is par for the course. I got up at 5:15 AM for a 7 AM start. Early morning breakfast was a bagel with peanut butter and some Gatorade. The marathon race course is basically a figure-eight that starts on the University of Florida (UF) campus, returns to the start at halfway where the half-marathoners finish but the marathoners continue out for a different second half loop. The first half of the course runs through Gainesville and gives you a taste of what the city is like. We started by the Phillips Performing Arts Center, Harn Art Museum, and Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. For some reason, this year the portapotty lines were crazy long. Luckily I work at UF just a quarter mile or so from the start, so I just parked at work and chilled out at my desk and had private access to my own toilet before the race. No matter the weather, I can stay indoors until the last minute and then just rush out to the start line. The past two years, the weather was nice and cool around 50 degrees which led to fast times for me. This year the temperature was 62 degrees at the start and the forecast was for warmer temps as the sun came up. I hoped the cloud cover would stay in place and shield us from the sun. When I headed out to the start there was an announcement that it was fifteen minutes until the start which was apparently delayed slightly due to timing mat issues (the race is ChampionChip timed). I walked around staying loose and eventually ran into some running pals (hi West, Linda, Andrea, Christy, Abe) and even Marc, a.k.a. Mutthound, a fellow refugee from the Coolrunning running website (we both ran last year’s marathon) who drove up from Orlando to run the half this year. Even though the half marathoners and marathoners started at the same time and start line, I decided to line up fairly close to the front because typically the front of the pack is fairly shallow at this race and there wouldn’t be a lot of people running faster than I planned. After a booming cannon blast to signal the start, we ran from the UF campus and headed north up SW 34th Street which bounds the western side of UF, then headed west on Newberry Road past tree-lined residential and commercial areas. Lining up near the front, there was no congestion to run through which was nice. While my training has been pretty good this past year, I didn’t see any big indications that I would be much faster than last year’s 3:14:53 PR finish. But I’ve felt very strong through the training cycle even at the higher mileage, so my goal was to finish about the same time as last year but feeling better at the end of the race compared to last year when my legs, feet, and even arms were totally hammered to dust. I ran a PR and a minute negative split last year, but the soreness and pain after the race was worse than after any other race I had run before. I felt more prepared this year to hammer the course rather than have it hammer me! I clicked the lap button on my watch as the first mile marker went by. The first mile split was 7:16. The time seemed fast, but I knew from some runs late in my taper that my legs were feeling extremely fresh, so it was no big deal. It turns out the big deal was just a few moments later when I looked at my watch again it didn’t show any time whatsoever but instead showed a few random dots. A couple weeks ago on an early morning run, the watch had freaked out and reset itself to midnight January 1st, but it seemed to work okay afterwards, so I figured it was some freak accident, not a low battery or some other problem. Unfortunately, this time I realized the watch was truly on the fritz. I actually brought a backup watch with me that morning but left it on my desk before heading to the start – why wear two watches and weigh yourself down with the extra weight, right? Well, I like to say that it’s best to run the marathon by a combination of perceived effort and the your mile splits. Today would be my chance to run a marathon 100% by feel instead, which technically should be good enough. There’s no use wasting mental energy being upset or frustrated by things you can’t control, so I tried to push it to the back of my mind and just set myself on enjoying the race. We headed up north on NW 43rd Street which goes past a number of residential areas. For those of you who don’t know Gainesville, there are trees everywhere, so it is very pleasant. While spectators weren’t numerous, there always seemed to be a few here and there every few blocks for the first 7 miles or so. The course cut east at NW 16th Boulevard which changes name to 16th Avenue. Right at this turn is a local favorite, Leonardo’s Pizza, which makes the best deep dish pizza in town. Mile 6 and 7 of the route are on a stretch of 16th Avenue which is one of the few hilly areas on Gainesville. These rolling up and down hills are the famed “bacon strip” referenced in John Parker’s cult running novel Once A Runner and were a staple of training runs by many of the great runners who’ve trained in Gainesville like Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter, Jack Bacheler, and a whole slew of other runners who’ve trained here. At mile 7 we headed south on NW 13th Street which is one of the main commercial business drags in town. A few blocks later we turned east onto NW 10th Avenue to run through tree lined residential neighborhoods. I caught up with Reagan, a local massage therapist who also demos and sells “The Stick” massage tool at race expos and then runs the marathon the next day. Since my watch was dead, I asked him, “Do you know the time?” to which he cheerfully replied, “It’s morning!” Ha ha! Anyhow, I explained that my watch died and he told me we were about 59 minutes into the race. We had passed the 8 mile marker a little while back, so I figured I was still on pace, it still felt easy, so no problem. We ran past Main Street into the Duck Pond area of town. You can figure out for yourself why it’s called the Duck Pond. It’s a really nice neighborhood with some of the oldest houses still standing in town which is one of my favorite parts of the course. These are all narrower streets that were hold overs in the older parts of town. All along the course there were water and Gatorade stops about every 1.5 to 2 miles or so. Around mile 9 in downtown, I took my first Espresso Love Gu (extra caffeine!) and ran through a very colorful water stop that seemed to be sponsored by Marvel Comics! They had two balloon archways you ran through and for some reason I thought it was really cool, though right now for the life of me I have no idea why. As we ran through downtown Gainesville we headed toward the Hippodrome State Theater which is one of the cultural highpoints of Gainesville. Heading east we ran through student rental neighborhoods and back towards the UF campus where we ran through a pedestrian underpass running beneath SW 13th Street. At this point the clouds started to clear out and the sun started to beat down on us. On campus we ran past numerous UF landmarks like Century Tower and University Auditorium (which have featured in a number of movies as a double for Ivy League surroundings) as well as running into Ben Hill Griffith Stadium which is the home of Florida Field and the Fighting Gators football team! As we headed toward the southeastern entrance to the stadium some Gator cheerleaders were up early to cheer us on which was much appreciated! Once through the stadium, we ran past the baseball field, dorms, and down Frat row which is a nice curving downhill. Then we traced Museum Road around Lake Alice but didn’t catch any alligators sunning out there. Coming back near the start we passed by my workplace and the softball stadium whereupon the half marathoners turned right to finish and marathoners turned left to continue on. This is the point that in past years it got fairly lonely as the majority of runners were running the half marathon. Surprisingly it seemed like a large number of runners around me took the marathon turn off this year. My first pacing input since mile 1 was the halfway clock that showed 1:35:10. I was a bit surprised as my half marathon PR is only 1:34:31, but I wasn’t too worried as that was from 2004 and is a soft PR since I’ve only run one half marathon since 2004 (and that was back in 2005). Maybe I would run 3:10 today, after all, I still felt great and the running seemed fairly effortless. Once we turned off campus, the course runs on a paved path parallel to SW Archer Road which runs between Shands Hospital and the VA but soon transfers to a nice Rails-to-Trails paved trail. Around mile 15 I took my 2nd Gu and was surprised to see an old lab-mate (he got his Ph.D in the lab where I work), Adnan, manning the upcoming aid station and water stop! I wear my eyeglasses when I run, so I didn’t recognize him until I got closer, but he was yelling, “C’mon Mark! Let’s go! You can do it, keep running!” He gave me a water cup and an energy boost from seeing him out there volunteering! On the Rails-to-Trails it the runners really started to spread out as the guy in front of me seemed to get farther ahead, and I couldn’t hear anybody behind me. Once the course hit Williston Road the race went from city residential areas to a four lane divided roadway. There are some neighborhoods running off the side of Williston Road, but basically mile 18 through 22 is a fairly deserted stretch of road with mostly police traffic control and the occasional race volunteer and aid station to keep you company. It’s mostly flat or rolling, but there is one longish hill on this stretch that can be demoralizing if you’re fading at this point. One nice boost was passing a police officer that told me I was in 8th place. Whoopee! That was 2 higher than the 10th place finish I had last year. However, at this point there was no shade and the clouds had blown away to reveal the sun rising higher into the sky. It started to warm up. At mile 18, I had thought to myself, “Only 7 more miles. Less than an hour left.” At mile 20, I was thinking, “Even if I slowed to 8 minutes per mile, then I’ll still be done in less than 50 minutes.” I felt like I was overheating and getting very fatigued. The clock at mile 20 said 2:26:something. I struggled to do the math: under 2:30 at 20 miles plus 6 times 7.5 minutes per mile is, uhhh… well 6 times 7 is 42 minutes plus half of 6 is 45 minutes equals… ummm, under 3:15, so I’m still in PR territory, right? Okay, even 8:00/mile means something around 3:15, so don’t waste energy thinking – just keep running! This was the point on the course last year that I caught and passed a friend of mine, Matyas, who is typically more than 2 minutes faster than me over 5k. That made me do a double-take and think holy crap! So from that point, I felt strong and eager to catch as many runners as possible. But this year I could barely make out somebody a million miles ahead of me or was it just a mirage but who cares because he/she/it seems to be getting smaller and farther ahead. I want to look behind to see if anybody is catching up, but I’m too tired AND too scared to find some silent stalker on my heels! The next aid station was at mile 22, and since I didn’t want to run out of energy too early by taking in a Gu at mile 20, I held off on Gu until mile 22. Man it felt hot, then all of a sudden I had a side stitch. I’ve heard of such things before, but I’ve never had the pleasure of having one; in fact, I’ve never had any type of cramps whatsoever in my entire life. So when I’ve seen somebody cramp up or hear about it, I’ve had absolutely no idea what it felt like! The stitch was on the right side, so I grabbed it and squeezed with my left hand just out of instinct. I kept running but tried to breathe as deeply as possible to relax my diaphragm. It didn’t seize up completely, but I did spend a few miles grunting, groaning, and grabbing my side sporadically. The people at the mile 22 aid station were absolutely fabulous, a sight for sore eyes, tired body, and fuzzy mind. I took my Gu and water hoping for enough energy to power to the end. Just past the mile 22 marker the course runs north on SW 34th Street past apartments and businesses. It’s one of the biggest roads in town, basically a six lane divided roadway with a concrete median. However, the entire course had been coned off with excellent police traffic control everywhere, so I felt perfectly safe from the passing motorists but not from my own stupidity! I wasn’t weaving back and forth, but I sure felt like I should’ve been! At this point I had a lot of salt buildup on my face and arms, and it was clear that the sun and heat was a totally different animal than the great cool conditions the last couple of years. I told myself it was only four miles – in four miles it would be over and I could stop. At mile 23, the course turns east on SW 35th Place which is lined with many apartment complexes catering to a lot of students. It’s a two lane road, and the entire eastbound lane was coned off for runners. John, a really good runner I’ve run with a few times, drove by the other way in his SUV and shouted, “Go Mark! You look great!” It was terrific to see a friendly face at that low point, but I thought he had to be lying as I felt like crap! Last year I had some muscle soreness and foot pain at this point but was still scooting down the road at a good clip; this year I wasn’t sore at all (except for the side stitch) but just had a general feeling of malaise and why the hell won’t my feet move any faster boy everything seemed so promising a lifetime ago at the halfway point?!?! Historically, the split for mile 24 has always been long whereas mile 25 is short – I’m not sure why but they always average out to a pace that makes sense -- so the one positive about having a busted watch was not knowing how slowly I was going. Just after mile 24, the course turns onto SW 23rd Terrace, also known as Cow Road because of the UF Beef Teaching Unit that is located there. It’s a 65 acre farm with over 100 cows, and when the temperature and the wind are just right, it smells like cow poo all around there. I know because I used to live on that road! Luckily today it wasn’t ripe at all. The police always have runners jump on the concrete sidewalk on the far side of the curvature of the road when the shortest route is actually a bike lane on the inside. It does make for a better close up look at the cows, but let me tell you, it was a tough slog at that point. At this point one runner ran up on me but I had absolutely nothing left in the tank to go with him. I waved him on and must’ve said “Good job” or something like that. So much for 8th place, but 9th place was still one better than last year. Some friends from the Florida Track Club planned to have a cheering station right near mile 25. Dawn Marie is the member who has been in charge of FTC efforts to cheer on runners at this race. For three years straight she has gone to represent our club at the race expo, and she’s had materials for people to make signs for runners to see which she plants on the course early in the morning. So THANK YOU to Dawn Marie for all her efforts! She has also been in charge of getting volunteers to cheer at mile 25, and it was GREAT to see some friendly faces after that long slog. My friend and running pal Jennifer said she would be out there, and since she had been healing up from a serious stress fracture, I hadn’t seen her as much and was looking forward to catching her out on the course. She had recently come into possession of a cowbell for cheering on runners. So needless to say, I was looking forward to and, at that point, in dire need of some cowbell! I was extremely happy to see and hear all the people out there cheering for me! Thanks to Dawn, her husband (Rob) and kids (Shauna and Spencer – so cute!), Jennifer, and Don (VP of our club) for the encouragement! I remember specifically Jennifer telling me, “Go Mark! You look so good!” and Don, who seemed REALLY excited, came running up to me and yelled, “You’re 8th man!” I was just putting one foot in front of the other at that point and told everybody, “I don’t FEEL good. I think I hit the wall.” I wanted to high-five the kids but at that point they probably would’ve knocked me backwards. Dawn Marie shooed me away with, “Don’t talk! GO!!!” which was the energy-saving kick in the butt I needed -- not that I sped up any, just that it kept me moving forwards instead of stopping dead still! Anyhow, after mile 25, the course crosses busy Archer Road to the southern border of the UF campus. Running along the sidewalk here, a compact efficient looking woman runner passes me, and she looks strong, her legs just moving back and forth metronomically. Then some curly haired guy runs up to her, and for some reason he didn’t look like he was in the race and instead looked like some guy off the street, but he seemed to be pacing her at that point as they ran together stuck at the hip in front of me. We headed onto campus through a small tree lined road named Surge Road but there weren’t any surges left in my legs. It’s a curvy road, snaking back and forth. Gotta run the tangents at this point! Then I ran into another FTC member, Art, who took my picture and told me I was looking good, whereupon I immediately feel my right hamstring seize up! As I’ve said, I’ve NEVER had a cramp in my entire life, but NOW I know what it is like! I shuffled a couple of steps then stopped still for fear of having it lock up completely. I grabbed the affected hammy and squeezed it with both hands. Then I thought, “Keep moving ahead but not too fast” and it seemed to loosen up enough to run/shuffle again. Having run this race the first two years, I knew it wasn’t very far to the finish. After passing the entomology department, Surge Road runs inbetween a large experimental agricultural field and an experimental citrus orchard. It’s kinda nice since orange trees are very Florida, and the field has all kinds of crops like corn, sorghum, peanuts, what-have-you growing there. Right at the mile 26 marker the last 385 yards goes west on Hull Road towards the starting point. This stretch of road is very familiar to me as usually run on it 4 or 5 times a week during my daily run. It’s a very slight uphill incline to the finish, and then a sharp dogleg turn left into the parking lot where the finish line awaits. Maybe 50 yards from the turn, my mom magically pops out from the side wearing her trademark fishing hat and yells, “C’mon Mark! Come on! Run!” and starts running right beside me. I only live a mile away from my parents and see them all the time, but it was still very exciting and I can truthfully say that I was happier to see my mom than to see the finish line! The very last trauma of the day was that after making the turn left onto the last 50 feet or so of the course, there was a sign standing in the middle of the road! People started yelling, “Go to the right! Go to the right!” At this point in the race, I was totally confused and all I could think was, “What are these crazy people talking about, go to the right… they’re #@*%ing crazy!” But then when I came up right to the sign I saw it read “Half marathon” with an arrow pointing to the left and “Marathon” with an arrow pointing to the right! Ohhh… I leaned over to the right just after the sign to run over the timing mats set up for the marathoners instead of running over the timing mats on the left for half marathoners. I looked up at the clock: 3:17:48. The finish line area was terrific with great volunteers and medical staff. They were very efficient in clipping off my ChampionChip timing chip and asking if I needed water. After collecting my medal, I talked with my mom and ran into a good running pal, West and his wife Fran. The race organizers did a great job of getting some fantastic food donated at the finish ranging from the traditional bottled water, bananas, and bagels (Publix) to cheese pizza (Domino’s), ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s), coffee (Starbucks), and one of my favorites, those day-glo orange cheese crackers and peanut butter snacks! The race awards were very nice imprinted backpacks for the top 5 men and top 5 women along with some nice cash awards ranging from $900 for 1st place to $150 for 5th place. Age groupers won slightly less glitzy but still very nice imprinted drawstring backpacks – a very nice alternative to the typical shiny plastic trophies! I was 10th overall, 8th male, and 1st in my age group AGAIN like last year! If that sounds like a complaint, believe me it’s not! I feel it’s mostly luck when I am able to place that well because faster runners didn’t show up to run on that particular morning at that particular race. My hats off to Brite and Mary Kate, the race directors from LifeSouth who did a great job! Unlike 2007 when I ran a negative split, this year turned into a huge seven and a half minute positive split for the 2nd half. It had all seemed so promising at halfway in just over 1:35, making 3:10 or at least a PR seem so doable. Unfortunately, since my watch died barely a mile into the race, I don’t have a ton of mile splits with which to analyze my race. The official results show a few splits: halfway – 1:35:07 (7:16/mile), 20 mile – 2:26:55 (7:21/mile), finish – 3:17:48 (7:33/mile), net/chip time – 3:17:38. So there was an inexorable slowdown involved. The funny thing is that I was still on pace for a PR through 20 miles, but the last 6.22 miles left were run in just under 51 minutes (50:53) for an average pace of 8:11/mile. My pace was almost a minute slower the last bit, so I dunno if that actually counts as “hitting the wall”. The other bad thing I notice is that I also slowed between halfway and mile 20, whereas that is the point I usually picked up the pace the last couple times I ran this race. One confounding factor is the weather. While online weather resources seem to show that it only went from about 62 to 66 degrees from 7 AM to 10 AM, it definitely felt hotter than 66 degrees at the finish. That wasn’t just my observation but that of other people as well. Most of the course up to mile 18 has some shade, whereas once the course hits Williston Road at mile 18, there is very little to no shade for 5 miles. The direct sunlight seemed to make a big difference, and at the end of the race I was caked with salt all over my face and arms from dried sweat. When I look at the results, I see the majority of marathoners had positive splits, but a few still ran very evenly paced splits like the woman who passed me at mile 25. I’m not sure if I could’ve had a PR if I’d held back more on the first half. On one hand, I didn’t feel that 3:10 was an unreasonable possibility. On the other hand, maybe it really was too fast and I crashed at the end. I really wish my watch hadn’t died so I could see just how my mile splits went over the course of the race. I will also re-examine my race day nutrition. Last year at the finish I could hardly stand up and even told the medical guy at the finish I wanted to lie down, but he told me not to and instead to keep walking. Then my legs and feet were sore and in pain which lasted a few days. This year I really wasn’t much sore, the only thing that had me walking a little funny was a blister on my foot! Near the end, I just had the feeling that I couldn’t generate enough energy to move my legs any faster. After the race, my mom got me some water, and after pouring it in me and on me, along with eating a banana, I felt so much better. In fact, I could’ve done some running the day after whereas last year it was impossible. That leads me to think maybe energy usage and glycogen sparing through nutritional intake could’ve helped stave off the slow down. All things considered, I still had a very good time – by which I mean an enjoyable time! It was a lot of fun to run into so many people and talk with them before, during, and after the race! And just to end on a food note, here is what I ate after the race: 2 bottles of water, one small scoop of ice cream, one banana, half a slice of cheese pizza, 2 peanut butter crackers, and to top it all off, I had lunch at Cedar River Sea Food: a big ol’ glass of sweet tea and the lunch order of fried oysters with steak fries and fried okra! All’s well that end’s well!

Milkbaby, I don't know if there is a world record category for race reports - but if there is - yours is a contender. I loved every word. Thanks for sharing it! I grew up in Jacksonville and dated a girl in Gainesville way back in the day and commuted down there every weekend for a year. Your description of the course and various parts of town brought me back down memory lane to sometime in the mid-80's. While you didn't score a PR - you finished in better shape than last time - and got some take-aways - always a good thing in my mind. Congrats on a good race. I'm not sure if I would have stayed as calm as you if my watch (or garmin) had broken at the beginning like that.

Great report and congrats on a great race! I grew up in Ocala, so alot of the descriptions were very familiar. My dad used to drive me around Gainesville reminicsing of his days at UF in ag science (a long time ago ) Thanks for reminding me of those drives. Cedar River Sea food and some sweet tea = YUM, YUM, YUM!