The morning started off just fine for me, having gotten to sleep early for Central Time (basically close to my normal East Coast time). Finished my usual prep relatively quickly and got out the door to the very warm morning. It was about 90 minutes before sunrise, and it was already in the mid-60s. Great for walking and spectating, but was a harbinger of the difficult conditions yet to come for those of us running, especially the full marathon.
Just like the Sydney Marathon when I ran it, the city was totally devoid of any advertising related to the marathon. If you didn't already know there would be a marathon being run, you'd have no way of knowing it until/unless you stumbled across the closed roads. There weren't even signs in the immediate vicinity of the "runners village" area pointing people the right way. But I made it to the pacer meet-up a few minutes early despite that.
But coming back up towards where I understood the start line to be, I was very confused about where I should actually be. I think the first several pace groups wound up lining up a little too close together. In the end, it likely didn't negatively affect anyone -- our signs were totally visible, and people spread out relatively quickly enough after the start, so anyone starting too far back compared to a pacer could relatively easily catch up in short order to their planned group.
The race was a bit behind schedule. In part because the person who was to sing the national anthem was behind schedule arriving to the area. And in part on the fact that he sang "America the Beautiful" first -- not typical; in fact, I've never heard anything other than the national anthem sung immediately before a marathon.
I took a moment ahead of the start to ask the people in my immediate vicinity how many of them were looking to run 4:15 (the time I was pacing). I had not quite a dozen people who appeared to respond.
After a little while, I started to engage in a little bit of chit-chat and found out that one of the people in my group was also named Jared -- one of the two high schoolers in the group. He and his friend Victor (a senior and a junior) were running their very first marathon. What I didn't know until well after the race was that they were taking video approximately every mile marker. It's all the more amusing in hindsight because, as you'll see, at Mile 2, they made a comment for the video that they were a little late... and I pointed out that Mile 2 was a couple of minutes prior.
The mile markers in the early going of the race were particularly awkward. No one in my group saw the Mile 1 marker, myself included. Without that, I had no good way of helping to calibrate my pace. Annoyingly enough, while my Garmin was showing me one pace through about 1/2 mile (pretty much where I wanted to be), it suddenly dropped to about 20 seconds faster for no apparent reason -- though my pace hadn't changed. So, what was the true pace? I was hoping to figure that out with the marker, but with it unseen, I had to go with what the watch was telling me. OK, so pull the pace back somewhat, great. I'll never get any complaints from runners about recognizing that and doing it.
The Mile 2 marker was a very small sign on one of the cones in the road. (Apparently, as I would find out later, so was Mile 1.) And we passed that when I still had about 0.05 miles to go according to my watch. Oy, great. A short "mile" and, again, in part because of that, my pace was too fast. (At the pace I was running, .05 miles is about 25 seconds or so - a major difference in speed.) And with the new marker, I would "lap" the watch so that the lap distance would start anew, as would the lap pace, so I could continue refining the pace.
And so it would go for the first SIX miles. Each marker was too early. And so, too, my splits were too fast. Try as I might to get closer to what the average should be, because I did *not* want to burn out my group by going out too fast.
Mercifully, I was able to slow it down to closer to 10-minute miles (rather than the 9:40 - 9:44 that it should have been) for the next several miles, to try to bleed back some of that time and help conserve some of the energy stores of my runners. (I don't like the theory of "banking time" and, unfortunately, I unwittingly managed to do so because of the way the course was marked.)
As you can hear in the previous video, I was mentioning to one of the runners right next to me (who asked each mile how we were doing) that we were definitely too fast, that I was trying to rein things in.
Given the excessive heat of the day, as is my wont, I made sure to announce at each water stop that people needed to drink and douse. After the first water stop, where I discovered just how small the water cups were, and many not even half full of liquid, we would certainly need to take longer at the water stops, which would also help some with the pacing issue. Also adding into that decision was the fact that there were very few lengths of tables for each stop, and not many volunteers to help handing out the cups. Often, we had to stop still to be able to grab the cup of water in question. I never like having to stop for that. It's one thing to slow to a walk -- no issues with that -- but to have to stand still, find what you're looking for, take it, and go, I find that grating. And then starting back up, especially in the later miles when legs aren't nearly as fresh nor as forgiving, that becomes increasingly more difficult.
As it turns out, I had a few half marathoners in the group, and they split off at about mile 9 while the marathoners turned the other way. After the split, we were a group of about 6 or 7.
But the heat of the day was certainly taking its toll. Alas, the high schoolers fell off pace shortly after the half-way point. (Surprisingly enough, not only was there no timing mat to get a split time there, there wasn't even a marker to officially indicate we had gone half way. Really?!) And then, a couple more fell off pace somewhere around Mile 16-18. In that area, though, I caught up with one of the people I knew had started out with the 4:00 group and chatted briefly with him. Given some jokes from earlier that morning when I met him, I joked that his (now former) pacer would give him a good-natured hard time after the finish. What I didn't know until well afterwards (when the pacers met up for post-race lunch/drinks) was that he was a huge bundle of nerves not because of the marathon itself (having run several previously) but because he was carrying an engagement ring, and was set to propose to his girlfriend right after crossing the finish line. (Apparently he had arranged in advance with the Race Director to permit his girlfriend (who was not running in the race) to join him for the last bit to run with him across the finish, setting up the finish line proposal and video/photo. Very sweet.)
I had two last people with me through Mile 20. About 3 hours in (so, somewhere around Mile 17-18) the sun decided it was going to come out from behind the clouds and stay out. That's when conditions really got really bad and took their most severe toll on the runners.
Around Mile 24, I crossed paths with one other person who I knew was starting in the 4-hour group (who I knew from other previous races). The sun very much did in both him and the person he was running with. He made the choice to continue with the other person's slowed pace to help him out. Definitely a mensch.
Finally in the home stretch, with less than a half mile to go, there was a spot (the 2nd or 3rd of the course) where I was unsure of which direction to go, and there wasn't anyone else running closely in front of me to blindly follow. Thankfully, I turned my head to the right just in time to see one of the arrows being used as course markers about a block away, so I knew to turn to get to that marker and turn.
And then my watch was telling me I was at Mile 26, but there was no sign to that effect anywhere near. I had no way of knowing how much of an additional calibration I might need to make sure I didn't finish outside my given 1-minute time window. I made sure to keep it at the ~10:10 pace that I had been doing, and thankfully that did the trick, barely. My final time was 4:14:05 -- just inside the acceptable region for my 4:15 pacing.
In the end, after collecting some of the post-race food and drink, sitting down to eat, and chat with the other pacers who were at our finish area table, I took a look at what distance my watch indicated I had run: 25.88 miles. Anyone who runs using a Garmin knows that it will ALWAYS show a distance longer than what your marked/measured distance is, because you are not running all of the tangent lines perfectly, and there's also weaving around people and to/from the water stops -- all of which adds distance on compared to what the official measurement would be. And since I did NOT cut the course (though I came close a few times to doing so inadvertently because of poor/confusing course marking), that means that the course was not just 1/3 mile short, but likely even shorter than that. Taking a quick look at the USATF certification, the only spot that I am pretty certain we ran differently than was measured is the return trip through Mission San Juan. The certification implies that we would be running back along the same exact path inside the mission as we ran going out initially. Instead, what we wound up doing is finishing the circuit of the interior of the mission, if I recall correctly. That doesn't appear to be *much* of a difference in distance, but each such similar difference adds up real fast.
I've since e-mail the race organizers, and they have acknowledged receiving similar feedback from several other runners of the half and full marathon. Enough so that they are starting off with the assumption that we are correct about the course being incorrectly set up. They are in the process of trying to figure out what went wrong and put in procedures to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. I'm hoping to find out what the actual measurement of the course as-run was. My prediction is that it was closer to 25.75 miles.
After chatting a little while at the finish area and slowly but surely gathering up more of the pacers as they kept crossing the line, many of us went to a nearby bar -- Durty Nelly's. While others had a cold brew, I had a pretty good cheeseburger. (I know, what a shock.)
And they had a great person on the keyboard entertaining everyone.
After hanging out for at least an hour or so, I bade farewell and made my way back to the hotel to shower, change, and recover for a few hours before heading out to dinner. (Rather than continuing to watch the news, I wound up finding a couple of documentaries on Mel Brooks -- hysterical!)
Along my walk, I was caught a bit off-guard by a highly unexpected sign in one of the windows:
Granted, they were closed, and confusingly enough had a couple of lit electrical hanukkiahs, but it was still amusing nonetheless.
In advance of my trip, I had decided that I would go to get barbecue at a restaurant one of my acquaintances is associated with. Along the way, I marveled at the extremely loud (and unexpected, to me) cacophony from several flocks of birds that seemed to swarm everywhere downtown. Apparently they are great-tailed grackles. Here's a large lineup of them, as if Alfred Hitchcock was staging them.
But the sound of them -- oy!
I finally arrived at the restaurant, and was simultaneously encouraged and dismayed at the enormous line outside. Clearly, I picked a supremely popular spot -- surely it must have been as good as I was expecting, to be this busy. Shortly after I got on line, there were a couple of people who had taken the initiative to go in to find out just how long the wait would be. Both times, they returned with the report it would take an hour. I wasn't happy about that, but could deal. But the second person also reported back that they were informed the restaurant was starting to run out of menu items. It was one thing for me to wait an hour to get in, under continuing threat of being
bombarded by the birds in the trees overhead. (One woman in line just in front of me actually did get hit by a little something from one of the birds.) I finally landed on a place that, as it turns out, was about 2 blocks from my hotel (as opposed to the mile away that I was).
As I was approaching, I was disappointed with my choice. The place was virtually empty. While the brisket that I did get was ok, it wasn't anything special. Oh well.
While it was certainly a difficult day, it was still a good time. Next up, pacing for Just A Short Run late this month, and then marathon (or longer) #95 for me -- Coast Guard Marathon -- the day after I turn 54 (my 6th race pacing for OnPace Race). Hopefully this time around, the neighborhoods will have traffic controlled well enough so that we don't have it coming at us (even if very slowly) from both directions when we aren't in a protected portion of the street.
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