Personalized Mesa Marathon video

While I didn't achieve my goals at the Mesa Marathon this year, it's still nice to get the personalized video memorializing the event.

Most giddy run ever

Eat your heart out, Kipchoge! What a fantastic and uber-consistent pace for my run last Monday:

Yes, the lap distance is 1 mile.

How did I achieve such a fabulous result? 

Hint #1: I actually only ran 6 miles, despite logging 18 miles.

Hint #2: I was on vacation, but not on land.

Answer: Garmin didn't recognize anything about my run other than my HR, since the forward motion of the ship I was on (Virgin Cruises' Valiant Lady) was much faster than the actual laps I was running on the top deck of the ship. We were off the coast of Cuba on our way to our first port of call at Roatan, Honduras.

Why was I so giddy? This was actually a very difficult run, but it was hysterically funny. The winds were at least 25mph and the ship was rocking quite a lot in very large-swell rough waters. As I rounded the track, on one half I placed my hand on the railing, readying myself to hold on if I was rocked too hard in one direction, and on the other half, I braced my hand against the low wall that was where a railing should have been. One one straightaway, I would be running headlong into that very strong wind, and then on the straightaway on the other side of the ship, I was running full-tilt wind-aided. I knew ahead of time that Virgin had a sign that declared 1 mile = 6 laps, so when my Garmin buzzed the first mile after only 2 laps, I couldn't keep from laughing even more so than because of the conditions that I was battling.

Making Amends?

Many of the racers who took part in the Combos Marathon last weekend are rightfully livid about the wrong turn immediately after the start. They refuse to return to this race lest this or something else major be problematic with the logistics of the race, especially that is so pivotal with respect to Boston Qualifying time attempts.

This past Sunday evening, the race director sent out an apology letter to everyone who participated. While it didn't go as far as many would have liked, and did have one or two incorrect statements in it (or am I conflating with quotes from her in the local Albany news reporting of the event?), she owned up to the problem and indicted that they were putting processes in place to prevent it in the future.

On Wednesday, I received a surveymonkey survey from the race. As part of it, they asked how we would rate the marathon (and why), and whether we would recommend it to friends (and why). I have no way of knowing if they were already planning on sending out the survey, or if it was a decision in the wake of the snafu. Either way, it certainly bodes well that they care about the opinions of the runners and just may make the appropriate adjustments to the race in response to the various feedback that they receive. Hopefully things will be better next year. Time will tell!

Combos Marathon 2023

The weekend started off nicely at the expo. Very small, but that was pretty much expected given how small a field of runners were expected for the half and full. I was one of the pacers that took the 3-5pm shift, the expo being from 3-9pm. We had a decent amount of foot traffic, asking us questions about how we would wind up pacing the marathon (even effort / even splits -- essentially the same for this mostly flat course), some questions that were otherwise answered in the materials we were provided by the race, and asking for advice on which group to join given their individual time goals. (When in doubt, always choose the slower of two pace groups you're deciding between.)

The Pace Team leader had arranged for a simple pasta dinner for the team at the hotel we were staying at: salad, rotelle pasta, meat sauce, tea (sweet and unsweet), and cookies. The vast majority of the pacers were from the South. (I think I might have been the only one who grew up north of the Mason-Dixon line.) The conversation was truly fascinating, not just north/south differences, but north Georgia vice south Georgia even, and generational. By and large, a very nice group of pacers. Hopefully I'll cross paths with many of them again at some other races I pace. The gentleman I was roomed with (as our Pace Team leader puts up the team for the night before the race) had just run all-out at the Publix Atlanta Marathon the previous weekend, and was pacing a reasonably zippy 3:40 for Combos.

Saturday was race day. In looking at the weather forecast during the days leading up to the race, the morning low kept creeping up. Turned out to be about 57F. Great temperature for standing around, but at least 10-15 degrees warmer than desired for starting up. OK, forewarned is forearmed about just how hot it was going to get during the race, and how early I was going to have to start dousing myself at water stops.

About 20 minutes ahead of kick-off, the pacers lined up in the chute, and runners started to coalesce around them. My group:

Opening prayer and playing of the national anthem, and then shortly afterwards, we were off! Despite having both written instructions in our packets and a verbal announcement (twice) that we were to turn left when we got just north of the starting line at the traffic light, we turned RIGHT! What the hell?! Very confused at the likely wrong turn, maybe there was something that was not communicate well enough to the runners? So, likely one of a few hundred other lemmings, I followed the people in front of me. Surely they knew what they were doing up front.

After about a minute or two, one runner sporting a marathon bib was screaming to the half marathoners that THEY were going the wrong way. What?! No. Not possible that only they were going the wrong way. Both course were supposed to overlap for the first ~2.5 miles. What the hell is going on?

Some of the half marathoners listened to him and doubled back. All of the marathoners kept going, since we weren't being addressed. Then another short while later, we had an official in a cart speeding by us on the left shouting to ALL of us that we were all going the wrong way. Turn around!

Fuck! My group quickly made the sharp turn around and proceeded back to the actual course. I quickly looked at my watch to see how far out of the way we had gone. About .25 miles, which means we would have an extra .5 miles on our full course, which translated to about 4 minutes. 

Shit! I needed to make up 4 minutes to be able to hit the expected time? First question was for the group to answer: how did they want to handle this: 1) Finish 26.2 miles in the expected 3:35 (meaning getting to the finish line at about 3:39) or 2) Get to the finish line at the planned-on 3:35 finish time? They all chose the latter. (Especially the one lady who was shooting for her first BQ and needed a 3:35.)

OK. That choice being made, I had to decide what was the best way to accomplish this. Again, there were two choices: 1) Blast through 3-4 miles at a much faster pace to quickly obliterate the lost time or 2) slowly chip away at the time across the entirety of the race. I chose the latter. It meant going about 10 seconds faster than planned pace across the rest of the race -- which effectively turned our 3:35 group into a 3:30 pace group through our 26.2 miles of the race. And, frankly, we probably should have advised all of the runners before the race began to move back one pace group, given how hot it was going to get. So, going even faster was NOT something that was likely going to go well, but much better to have a gradual seeping away of energy than an enormous drain of it all up front.

Possibly because of the enormous, embarrassing snafu of the start, I think I finally earned my chops as a pacer. In my prior two outings, I wasn't overly chatty. (And lots of times in groups I join as a hanger-on, the pacer isn't, either.) This time around, I was doing my best to help lighten the mood and distract them from their frustration/anger. What got them started marathoning? What is their favorite marathon memory? What are some of their goals? And interspersed with a couple of anecdotes from my prior 62 marathons. I think the last time I prompted them for any sort of response beyond 1-2 words was about 9 miles. By that point, it was getting quite hot, everyone was surely expending enough energy that their HR was too hot to carry on any conversation.

As far as course logistics, in addition to the bad start, there were multiple problems with the course, IMO:

1) There was absolutely no marking on the roadway as to which side of the cones the runners should be on. There were times in some of the neighborhoods, where there was space for one car to travel in each direction, where there WAS one car going in each direction. WTF? Which side should be closed? Where are we supposed to be? There are a couple other problems with that other than the obvious safety issue:

-- Lots of times where we were supposed to making a wide turn (be on the right side of the road and turn left, staying on the right side), we would use the literal tangent of the road, which technically cuts a small amount of distance off of the official distance.

-- And at a few of those cut corners, they had a timing mat on the correct side of the road, but there was no sign announcing it. Looking at some of the splits recorded, there were LOTS of people who missed multiple timing mats. Likely meaning that they actually cut the course by those few feet each time.

2) The aid stations were totally insufficient.

--Many of them were severely understaffed. Runners should not be forced to come to a stop to take water or Gatorade from an official table. (There was one unofficial table about Mile 19 set up by a neighborhood, unmanned, with small bottles of water and Gatorade. That was great to see at that point.)

--There was no consistency as to whether water or Gatorade would be first, nor whether there would necessarily be a sign indicating what was what. And there were one or two times when one person had BOTH cups. Far too confusing a situation -- the volunteer should only ever have one or the other at a time.

--The tables were too short. I know it's a small field of runners, but there should still be more than about 20 feet worth of tables at an aid station. Especially when you need to avoid other people who have come to a crawl to get their liquids and haven't gotten out of the way yet.

3) Photographers were essentially non-existent. It's not something that is usually a big deal to me, unless I'm shooting for a big goal (which, as a pacer, is not the case for me), but there were plenty of people on the course that surely would have liked to have some pictures of their performance. I only saw one photographer on the course, and figured there was someone at the finish line, too (though I didn't notice them).

Back to my group...

One of the people made sure to get my attention right before the halfway point and thanked me for getting him through the half marathon on pace, as he expected that he would soon drop off of pace. Slowly but surely, my group slipped away from the 9 who started with me to one last who was doing his darnedest to keep up with me through 20 miles, but faded off shortly after the Mile 19 unofficial aid station. By that point in time, I was even seeing that I was fading compared to what I needed to do to continue chipping away at the extra time from the bad start.

Final time: 3:37:24. My 26.2 mark was about 3:32:30, where it really needed to be 3:30 if I was going to be under 3:35 at the finish. Given the conditions, I think I did about as well as I possibly could.

I've heard from one other of my group that she was happy with how I handled the pacing. And despite not hitting her BQ, she'll certainly be back for more marathons as soon as she recovers from this effort. I'd like to think the others in the group felt the same way, despite the disappointing start.

Next marathon: Boston!