Wishing our weekend racers good luck
11/19 RunnerKSA - Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon, Nashville TN
11/19 pfriese - Route 66 Half Marathon, Tulsa OK
This RA meet up last weekend is priceless!!!
Ohh and The Easy Pacer and I officially envy MikeE for having the chance to meet up with Tramps.
"Champions are everywhere; all you need is to train them properly..." ~Arthur Lydiard
Out there running since dinosaurs roamed the earth
Monkey race report- About 40 degrees at the start but with a "feels like" of about 36, so I wore a puff jacket with the zipper vents. I kept it on the whole time. I got warm a couple of times, but then we would hit some wind and I was glad I had it. Hoka Clifton 4s. I think I used 3 Humagels and drank the Sword electrolyte drink on the course and a couple of small cups of sugared Coke in the later miles.
The race is really hard, but I walked whenever I felt like I was pushing too hard, and that seemed to work. This was my second fastest Monkey, surprisingly. I ran a 4:18 (I think) in 2009 and have had 5:14 and 5:06 since. The course is a tad short, but we early starters, as a group, missed the first turn and added about 1/10 on our own! My husband was with me on the bike for a lot of the miles since he was a course cyclist. One of the big problems was that there were a lot of leaves, acorns and sticks/branches on the road since we had some heavy storms yesterday. I almost fell a couple of times and I felt like I wasn't seeing well (retina swelling issue), so I was VERY careful. I could just see my wiping out on a steep downhill.
There was a race walker who nearly beat me. He was hauling ass. I thought of Jay. I was not thrilled that a walker was going to beat me, and I said something not very nice to my husband at one point about this very lovely gentleman. I think it was something like "Where is that F....er who is race walking? Am I ahead of him?" I could lose him on the downhills, but he would get me back on the uphills when I walked. I did beat him. Yay, me.
I beat a lot of people I didn't expect to beat, and won the 5 year age group but awards were in 10 year groups, so I didn't get a sock monkey. Boo. I think my son could have won (if healthy) and I had been hoping he would give me his monkey.
Apparently the lead cyclist led the lead runner off course (not sure how that could happen with the course monitors) and the guy got pissed (understandably) and quit. So the 2nd guy won with a slow winning time of 3:14. My son said he would have murdered the cyclist. He's so tolerant...
One nice thing about the early start was that the main start caught up with us and we got to see a lot of the other runners. Normally we don't- well, some of them who lap you but not as many as this way.
Fantastic pot luck food at the end- and craft beer.Done!
Nice report Karen. I've not run the Monkey in a few years. Maybe the painful memories will subside enough & I'll run it next year. Though looking at some of the Facebook pictures will probably bring nightmares tonight.
I ran the Tulsa Route 66 half marathon this morning. This is a well run race with a large Maniac contingent. I would recommend running it to everyone. By Oklahoma standards, it is a hilly marathon (& half). Guess what, most of my recent running has been on flats. I paid the price on a few hills, especially the last one at 11.5 miles coming up out of the Arkansas River valley. Overall a good race in perfect conditions. Basically the same as Karen's, but without the wind. My goal was to beat last year's time of 1:49:57. I ended up with a 1:52:07. I'm just getting a little slower each year. I'm still ecstatic that I can do this though.
Paul
Paul's blog
Yes, it’s good that we are still out there. Good race, Paul. Come back to Monkey! They moved the beer tent to right near the finish line, so that’s better and not as out of the way.