Armed Forces Challenge, Race #2: Air Force Marathon 2024 (part one)

Where I had done the Coast Guard Marathon several months ago for two purposes (try to get a useable BQ and kick off the Armed Forces Challenge), this time in continuing the challenge I was running the race as a pacer, not seeking a time for myself, but to "bring home" people in my group in 3:50. 

Several weeks ago, the owners of the pacing company that we're running for sent out a note to all of their pacers for the weekend that, once again, the team would be hosted at the home of the parents of one of the pacers. Despite not knowing any of the pacers, let alone our hosts, I RSVP'd that I would join in and canceled my hotel reservation. I am SO happy that I did, because it was a lovely time - whereas the other way around I would have merely been sitting in my hotel and maybe doing a little walking around in Dayton on Friday. Diane and Charles were totally gracious hosts.

I arrived mid-day on Thursday. Alas, there wasn't all that much for me to do while Diane continued her food prep (for some of the later meals she would be serving). We chit-chatted a fair bit, and I did a little bit of stuff on my cell phone and enjoyed petting their Yorkipoo, Hazel, who was happy to have the extra attention, of course.

One of the things that I did wind up doing was move boxes of Mush into the garage and then I unloaded them into one of the refrigerators. Mush is the pacing company's (On Pace Race) sponsor for Air Force Marathon. They provided the jerseys/tank tops that we were wearing as pace team members, and in return we brought two coolers filled with their product to the expo to give out to the attendees. We had 5 flavors of overnight oats: apple cinnamon, blueberry, peanut butter, and vanilla bean, as well as 1 flavor of their newer product Mushkins (oatmeal smoothie): strawberry banana. (There was supposed to be a second flavor (Apple Dreams), but that didn't get delivered until after we returned from the expo on Friday.) The product went pretty well. I had never had it before and wound up eating one of the apple cinnamon when somebody asked what were they like. Since I had no clue, I figured I should give a taste -- it was quite good. As odd as cold oatmeal sounds, it was really very tasty. And it's even gluten free and vegan, to boot.

 

A little later, we got a separate delivery -- the large golf bag that contained all of the pacer materials: pacer packets and the pacing sticks. My task was to take out the packets for those pacers who would be staying at the house, as well as add in jerseys to the packets for those male pacers who still needed one. And then pack everything back into the bag to be brought to the expo on Friday.

Diane made a nice meal for the two of us (as none of the other pacers had yet arrived), and a few hours later Paul Addicott, after a long pair of flights from the UK. And after his having some dinner and the three of us chatting, Diane's daughter, Bekah, finally arrived, right before we were all about to hit the hay.

Friday rolled around and after breakfast, it was time to load up the car with the various materials bound for the expo and head on out. The four of us arrived just after the start of the expo at 11am.

We were there until about 3pm when one of the other pacers relieved us to take the next shift. We had plenty of people stopping by asking us questions, ranging from whether we have a pacer for a certain time they were shooting for, to race day strategy, what the course was like, the weather, etc. 

The biggest piece of advice I gave to everyone who stopped by was for them to *not* attempt anything that they considered to be a stretch goal, rather that they should start with a pace group at least one group further back -- the temperatures were going to be far too high to expect to be able to push harder than they knew they could reasonably comfortably achieve.

Considering the size of the weekend's events, the expo was pretty good. There were two things in particular that we took advantage of:

Several us got a customized bobblehead from the State Farm Insurance booth.

They had lots of options to choose from, and I opted for the super hero, to act as the counterpoint for my still holding the record for the fastest marathon run dressed as a super villain.

There was also a booth where you could get a 360 video created. We each did solo shots, and did a group pacer jump shot as well.

The two people manning the booth were practically in hysterics with the four of us. We had planned to do a shot of us jumping, and the lack of coordination in our jumping was really very amusing. They were very patient with us. (Thankfully there wasn't a line of people looking to get a photo, so they could take their time.) After flailing a couple of times, we did several practice jumps until everyone was able to get onto the same page as to when to jump: "One, Two, Three, JUMP!" We actually had the brief conversation reminiscent of Lethal Weapon. 

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/6f917ae5-51c5-4147-b3cf-12b37da76754 

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/08ae12f9-2798-45b1-97e0-da83c7cc7877

This was the final result. Seems like I misunderstood just how high we could jump before going out of frame, so while I'm in the air in the shot, not nearly as much as Paul, Paul, and Bekah.

Back at the house that evening, we had a tasty pasta dinner with several additional pacers finally arriving, some in time to eat with the rest of us, some not.

Shortly before all of us hit the hay early at about 10pm (given we needed to be on the road by 5:30am), Paul Lloyd (one of the two Pauls pacing the 4-hour group) and Diane compared directions to the parking lot to make sure they were both on the same page with how to get there, even though the plan was for us to caravan it, anyway.