Notes
67F 80%H 61DP, The Pensacola Marathon. I was number 230.
First thing was the confiscation of my peanut butter by the security
people at baggage check in. I could have kept it had I been willing to
check my bag, but I let it go. (I also had a couple of bananas and had
thought I would have peanut butter and bananas before the race.)
Well, I arrived in Pensacola and picked up my rental car. It seems my
glasses, that I had stuck in the neck of my shirt, fell out onto the
drivers seat and I proceeded to sit on them. When I put them on I
couldn't get my eyes to focus. It turns out that one lens had fallen out
that I couldn't re-seat in the frame. So, I had to drive an unfamiliar
car in an unfamiliar city without my glasses.
Got to the hotel and had a couple of hours to kill and managed to fix my
glasses. The expo was small and within walking distance so went to pick
up my packet.
The hotel room was nice in that they had a table on rollers under the
piece of furniture that held the TV. So I wheeled it out and it made the
perfect place to lay out the running gear.
With much of nothing to do that evening I wandered down to the bar and
was BSing with other runners and kind of lost track of time and the amount of
wine I was having. I certainly felt it the following morning. In fact
I kind of felt it all day.
Saturday morning I went out for a run, thinking that I would run to the
start line to find where it was and to do an Aussie Carbo Load at the
same time. I didn't realize how close that start actually was to the hotel
and ended running about a mile and a half past it. That was farther than I
had wanted to run the day before a race. So, the carb load was a
failure. It had worked well in Chicago in that I had enough energy to
run without stopping even though it was a slow run.
By the way, Virtual Racer in our Garmin 910XTs doesn't work on longer
runs. I know that 10 miles is too long. I tried a test on Saturday
morning and it did work ok. So, it kind of confirms what I had read on
the internet, that the problem seems to just be with longer runs. I've
called the problem into Garmin, but I was just confirming on Saturday
morning that it did work with shorter runs.
While looking for the start line I was walking over some grassy areas.
It seems I picked up some kind of real spikey seed pods. They were
brutal to touch. Anyway I hadn't noticed it, but I had them all over my
shoes. So, when I got back to my hotel room I proceeded to transfer
them to the carpet. I still hadn't noticed them. Only when I was
walking around with my socks or barefoot did they come to my attention.
They were lethal. Like little land mines. Seriously, landing hard
on one of these could have kept me out of the race.
Also, on Friday something bad happened to my netbook computer. Don't
know what the issue is yet. Either the recharger isn't working, or the
battery in the netbook has a problem. Even when it is plugged in no power is
getting to the netbook. So, I was limited to doing stuff on my phone. Since I
had planned to plug my phone into my netbook to recharge it, I suddenly
had no way to recharge my phone or to recharge my watch (should it have
been necessary.) So, after my screwed up run on Saturday I went to
Walmart in Gulf Breeze (about 10 miles away) to get a usb/AC converter.
I obviously have a couple at home, but had seen no reason to bring one
along since I always just plug into my netbook. Oh, well.... Anyway, got my
phone charged up and then kept it that way.
An update: The recharger seems to be ok. Have ordered a new battery
for the netbook.
Had an annoyance with clocks. Some of my time devices change time zones
automatically, some don't. It seems my car Garmin which I had taken
with me does, but wasn't set to do that. Anyway, I found myself being
an hour off everywhere. So, I set my devices to the time on the clock
in my hotel room. However, on Saturday evening when I went out to eat,
I ended up getting to the restaurant an hour before it opened. Had to
walk back to the hotel to kill some time. It turns out that the people
who had the hotel room before me had set the hotel clock to EST, even
though Pensacola is in CST. Sigh..... At least I finally figured out
what had been going on.
Got up at 0400 on Sunday, had my banana and peanut butter (the restaurant
had given me some packets that were more than enough) and made it to the
start line. Damn near forgot to turn on my Garmin in time. I had
planned to run to PODRunner music with a cadence of 86 bbm. I turned the volume
up a bit on my mp3 player but then felt it was a bit too loud, so went to
turn it back down. When I pushed the volume down button, the button fell
into the player so that I couldn't adjust the volume. This happened
about 30 seconds before gun time.
There is a way to adjust the volume electronically without using the
buttons, but I didn't remember how to do it and there just wasn't any
time left to screw with it. In fiddling with it I actually made it louder.
Sigh..... So, I just ran with the earphones around my neck. I run much
better when I can run to a cadence. I feel that I'm not losing the
energy caused by speeding up and slowing down. Such changes in speed seem to be
every few steps, like caused by an uneven cadence. Looking at my cadence
when I'm not running to a beat it looks like a seismograph from a San
Francisco earthquake. It was rather boring to run both without music,
crowd support, or even many runners in the vicinity.
Things started off well enough. I was staying on pace for a sub 5:00 up
to about 13 miles. There was a hill in between miles 1 and 2 that I
didn't like much (felt that it weakened my legs a bit) but it leveled out
afterwards. When we split off from the halfers at mile 6 it became a
ghost town. I mean I would be able to see just two or maybe three
runners in front of me and that was it.
It was really windy, but most of the time it didn't matter because the
wind was blocked by buildings. I was playing tag with these Gallowalkers
who were driving me nuts. They would run until they got about 20 feet in
front of me and then stop and do their walking bit. Plus they were
talking and I had no way to drown them out. I tried to speed up to get
far enough ahead of them that they wouldn't keep overtaking me, but
eventually they did and actually disappeared out of sight in front of me.
Most of the course was rather desolate. No crowd support. Just the
occasional road guard to control traffic until a runner had run by. It
also wasn't very scenic. This marathon made Fargo look huge in terms of Expo, crowd support and
desirability of course.
At mile 17.25 there was this monster hill, about a quarter mile or so,
but it was steep. I didn't see anybody try to run up it. That is when my
times started getting bad. There was also a really steep overpass over
railroad tracks. Don't know why it had to be so steep. They must have
some really tall trains in Pensacola.
So, after mile 17/18 my times started getting bad. At mile 25 I caught
up with those two Gallowalking guys again, and I was determined to get by
them. I finally did and left them in the dust. My last half mile was at
a pace of 9:30.
My official time was 5:11:45.27 which comes out to a pace of 11:54, but
even so, I came in first (of three) in age group. The funny thing is,
that one of those Gallowalkers was in the same age group so I managed to
beat him by a minute and a half or so.
I had thought that I would be easily under 5:00 and had fantasies of
4:50ish. Sigh..... It is embarrassing to have that slow a race. I
don't seem to travel especially well for races. I always do much worse
than I do in training. Of course it may also help not to get wasted the
evening before the evening before....
I didn't hang around for any awards, but dashed to the hotel for a
shower, check out, then to the airport to turn in the car. (The shower was
interesting. I hadn't realized that I had chafing on my back from the
heart rate monitor. I found out in a hurry.) As it turns out I needn't
have been in such a hurry. The hotel had moved check out time to
2:00 PM, so I had plenty of time.
The medal was nice, and will make some little kid happy (Medals for
Mettle program). It is in the shape of a jet fighter since Pensacola is the
home of Naval aviation.
I have no idea what the age group award would have been but it doesn't
matter. I don't keep them anyway. In fact, I had to go over to Fleet
Feet yesterday to drop off a bunch of medals for that M4M program.
While I was looking for them I saw some previously earned age group
awards and just threw them all away.
Pensacola itself was nice and I thought the people were very nice. I
just didn't like the run very much, so don't think I'd go back to do this one
again.
Anyway, consider this an official race report.
Next up is the Shamrock on March 17th in Virginia Beach, VA. After that
I'm also registered for the Lake Wobegon Trail Marathon (not a trail
marathon, but rather run on the Lake Wobegon Trail) and I'll do my usual
Chicago in October.