Upon arrival at Gaylord National Convention Center about 11:15am, the line outside the building was building quickly, and it didn't look like anyone was moving yet to get inside. Oy, was this going to be as bad as last year?
After only a few minutes, though, the line started moving.
And we walked down the entire length of the hall inside (as they set up tables as a divider so that people didn't cut to go around or enter the private event on the side), down a couple of staircases/escalators, back behind them, and snaked around to eventually get to the far end where the expo was being held. Given the logistics, they occasionally have to pause the line entering the expo to get anyone exiting to cross through to go upstairs and out.
At no point in time did we go through any security. It didn't look like they were checking any bags - somewhat surprising. Once we got inside, they had about two dozen marines at computers checking people in and telling them which booth to go to. They had the same sort of system set up as Chicago did last year, which works BRILLIANTLY to get people to move quickly, and the bib was ready and waiting for me when I got to the booth. Love it!
Around the corner I picked up my bag with race shirt in it and meandered through the expo, picking up a couple of samples, including a few mylar sheets -- always useful to have more. I was in search of some Bib Boards or something similar, since somehow I have lost one of the set of four (using three does suffice, though). I'm through with the Race Dots. While they do adequately hold the bib in place without marring the shirt at all, I have wound up losing three out of the set of four because of my having to move my shirt to access the belt I run with (to get out my nutrition, or to put in the emptied water bottle) or otherwise brushing the bib hard enough where the front magnet gets pushed off of the pair, and both wind up falling away. Or something else -- maybe related to when I get my medal at the end.
Finally finished with everything in the expo, I showed up early at the Elevated Running and Pacing booth to start my shift. There were LOTS of people who stopped by to ask us questions: do they need to sign up (no), how would they find us in the morning (look for our signs held high within the corrals), what was the race strategy, how would I handle the hills, would I walk water stops, etc. The most frequent issue was which pace group should they join. Often, they were trying to decide between my 3:55 group and the 4:00 group. The conversation always centered around their true goal: did they want to crack 4 hours (hit 3:59:59 and they're happy -- go with 4:00 pacer, break away on the last hill) or did they want to be significantly below it (stick with me the whole time).
Oddly enough, there was one person who was looking to have a huge negative split. While the theory of going slow to start and save energy for using in the second half is sound, the times themselves were impractical. He was looking to do the first half with the 4:20 pacer with a goal of finishing in just under 4:00. Hopefully I was able to convince him of how ill-advised that plan was.
After the shift ended, I headed on back and wound up having a slightly early dinner. It's quite good, and a good deal. And it's always dead when I arrive (and usually when I leave). Amazingly enough, it was actually pretty busy when I was leaving. Very tasty. I really should go more frequently than just once a year, the night before MCM.
Finally back in my apartment, I set everything out that I would need to wear for the race, and put everything into the bag that I wanted checked for after the finish line, including a little bit of extra food. Of course, it took me a while to get to sleep -- my adrenaline had already been pumping for a few hours, despite doing whatever I could to stay calm.
Morning arrived, I did my pre-race prep and got on the road to Rosslyn. Thankfully, the hotel where I get a parking spot was technically outside the perimeter of the Finisher Village this year, so it was painless getting into the garage to park. One last pit stop in the hotel bathroom and then I headed out on my walk towards the Runner's Village. (I verified at the expo that going this way would be permitted, despite an indication on the map indicating that no entry was permitted into the Runner's Village from the north.) Surprisingly enough, there was pretty much no one else at that time (about 5:45am) walking towards that security check. Strange, because there is usually a handful of people walking that way. The security check took about 5 seconds, and it was a total of about 20-30 minutes worth of walking to get from the hotel to the Runner's Village. I'd rather have a slightly longer walk than have to wait for Metro and hop onto a likely very crowded train, and take a potentially long time to get through security at the south end of the Runner's Village. YMMV
Gradually, the Elevated Pacing and Running pace team gathered up at the designated spot. We chatted it up, and eventually took off our extra layers to take the group photo with our pacing singlets visible. (It was quite chilly for those few minutes, since I had been wearing my nice, warm NYC Marathon poncho until then.)
One last pit stop before heading to the corrals to gather up our respective pace groups, the Marathon Maniacs in the group gathered up at the designated spot for the MM photo. Alas, the initial photo was taken prior to the MM/HF banner arriving on the scene. Oh well.
For some reason, despite the fact that both sides of the roadway were open, and they had both arches per normal, there was NO ONE on the left-hand roadway. WTF?
In the corral, slowly but surely, people started to gather around me. Many asked the same sorts of questions as I had gotten at the expo the day before. I told them about the several hills, "rated" each of them (the first is the worst, until the end), and how I would handle them. I also cautioned them about one of the water stops where we are going uphill on a very narrow strip of road -- that they should make their way over after the first few tables to grab their water. And a few minutes before the opening ceremonies, a friend from college (who had pinged me a couple of weeks beforehand to note he was running his first marathon and was going to be aiming for 4:10 or 4:15) showed up to join my pace group for the first few miles, fully expecting to fall off that pace and drop back to the "proper" group for his goal.
Opening ceremonies complete, the Osprey helicopters slowly doing their flyover above us, the howitzer finally sounded. We were off! (Well, it took about 7 minutes to walk to cross the start line.)
At the first "cut through" between the two sides of the roadway, there were several people who were taking it. I told everyone in my group to stay the course, there's no reason to add on the extra bit of distance already -- we'd meet up with them as per normal. But as we continued and got closer to Mile 1, just about EVERYONE was crossing over the simple median to be on the left-hand roadway. I was immensely confused as to why it was happening and couldn't see far enough ahead to see if there was an obstacle that was in the way prompting this, so I gave in and joined the lemmings. From what I could tell later on, the trucks that were blocking the right-hand roadway were properly positioned to make sure that anyone running that way would have turned correctly so that they'd merge up with the left-hand roadway, so the early shift was unnecessary. Thankfully I knew the course well enough to know we were not going astray by following the lemmings (unlike the mishap at the start of the Combos Marathon in 2023 - oy!).
From the early gathering in the corral and through the first few miles, while I was warning everyone about the usual tight crowd, it really wasn't at all crowded. There was room to move at the desired pace from the very beginning -- unheard of in my now 11 times running MCM or MCM50K. I don't know what the underlying reason was (that many fewer people? really?), but I was happy for it.
I chatted up with the group in earshot, asking some of the standard intro questions like where everyone was from, how many first-timers, why choose MCM as their first marathon, etc. It was a large enough group that there were a decent enough number of people who engaged. Definitely made it more interesting for me, and hopefully that helped everyone else in the group, too -- even those people who were simply in receive mode and concentrating specifically on their running.
As we took the initial miles slowly, we finally got past the top of the hill near Mile 3 and just flew down toward the GW Parkway. Garmin would later record that as a very fast 8:20 mile. I think it was early enough and on enough of a slope where it didn't really cause problems for my group. I gave fair warning many times that we'd be flying there, and that I would be reining it in as much as possible so that I didn't "blow up" the group -- I didn't want to drain their energy ultra early. Once we got onto the parkway, all of the rest of the hills we encountered were more easily controlled as far as speed. (Well, except for the really short but really fast one leading out of Georgetown toward the river.)
Having left Georgetown, made our way past the Watergate Hotel, and turned past Batman onto Rock Creek Parkway, we were about a mile or so away from the next water stop that I primed my group for as early as the start corral -- do NOT take the water from the first few tables, wait a bit so that you aren't part of the cause of the huge back-up/traffic jam of people that usually happens there, in this already crowded location. It was certainly less crowded than normal, but they also heeded my advice, which certainly helped even more.
After we exited the out-and-back, as we were in the vicinity of the Kennedy Center, one of the women in my group took a really nasty fall - it's unclear what she tripped on/over. Several of us stopped, helped her get back up, saw that she was ok. I advised her that she may want to stop at the next med tent to have them check her. She was definitely shaken, but shook off the sting of it (there was no noticeable bleeding, at least, at that point), and she slowly ramped up to running. A couple of times as she was running next to me I checked in to make sure she was still doing ok. I'm really happy to say that she stuck with the group for the vast majority of the rest of the way - only dropping off pace a little bit at the very end of the race. (I would find out afterwards that she went to the med tent after the finish line to get cleaned up. She was a little sore, but not appreciably any worse for wear.)
Because of some construction that is going on around the Tidal Basin, we had a slight diversion here which took us next to the back side of the MLK, Jr. monument (we were only able to see the large stones but not the sculpture of the man himself), and then to a brief out-and-back at the Jefferson Memorial (above), prior to making our way out towards Hains Point.
Finally at Hains Point, and we got to the Blue Mile. This is always a somber mile of the course, usually very quiet where people reflect on the sacrifice of the fallen service members pictured on the boards we run past. Alas, just as we were entering this portion, another member of my group tripped on something (I think it was one of the cones in the road) and had a brief fall. Not nearly as bad as the first lady's, she was up quickly and barely lost much momentum. But myself and a couple of others were chatting with her, checking to see that she was ok. While it felt awkward to be talking at all during this stretch, it was by far more important to make sure that she was doing ok. Soon enough, convinced she was just fine, we fell back into silent mode until we got to the flag-bearers at the end of the mile, which is always a loud, rousing portion.
The back side of Hains Point prior to getting to the hill that would take us into DC proper always feels a helluva longer than I remember. It's a bit of a motivational suck. I need to do a better job of engaging the group to prop *them* up at this point (which, in turn, would prop me up and make this more bearable). But by halfway into the race, everyone is far more focused on their specific performance (cadence, breathing, eating and drinking, etc.), including myself, that carrying on a conversation (even one-sided) is hard.
As I quipped a couple of times as we were running in its vicinity, the sight of the Capitol building is absolutely majestic. Would that what happened *inside* the building matched the view of the exterior.
Once we got around the east end of the Mall and were about halfway back on the south side of it, one of my running buddies who was in the 50K called out my name as I was about to pass her. We chatted for about a minute. She was aiming for 4:45 for the 50K, and despite hoping that she wouldn't have seen me until a little later in the race (from a pacing perspective), she was fairly positive that she would be able to maintain about a 10 minute per mile pace (I was doing under 9 minutes, hence the quick conversation) she would be able to get a PR with 4:45. (Turns out she nailed it at just over 4:45.)
As always, the bridge back into Virginia, which feels like it goes on forever (because it's about a two-mile stretch of highway before the off-ramp) was dreadful. I was able to engage in a couple of quips, and made a few other comments related to things on the course to beware of which helped break up the monotony a little bit. (And got some basic math wrong, partly because I didn't realize we overlapped with only *part* of the 10k, not with the full remainder of it. Yet another example of "marathon brain" that I had mentioned multiple times during the race.)
And as we were making the turn to "Take the Iwo," I said that multiple times to everyone around me. And at one point (pictured below, I think), I also showed "CHARGE!"
As always, too many people stop RIGHT at the finish line. No, people. MOVE! Get out of my way - I can not stop on a dime and do not want to barrel through you. It takes me a few seconds, since I'm going full tilt to get through the finish line.
I met up with one of the other earlier pacers who was waiting to hand off some pace signs. As I was standing around waiting to do similarly, there were many people who came up to me and thanked me for pacing. While the vast majority of my group seems to have finished within the 3:55 - 4:00 range (having fallen off pace in the last 1-2 miles), they were quite happy to have hung in as long as they did and, ultimately, to have finished.
It took the standardly long amount of time after picking up the post-race food and drink (though no paper jackets this year - shucks!) to make my way through the finisher's village because family/friends crowd around the exit rather than stand at more remote (and easily found) locations. That area is always such a cluster, it's immensely annoying, since I want to continue moving (though now I just need it to be at a normal walking pace, not a crawl).
Having gotten my drop bag from the UPS truck, I made my way back to the hotel where my car was parked and took my time in the restroom to change my shorts and shirt, and put on my flip-flops. SO much better. And once I got to my car, I actually switched out of my flip-flops and into knit wool socks and a different pair of sneakers than what I ran in, for the drive back home.
Having learned from Atlantic City, I chose to NOT have lunch. I ate one or two of the extra items I had brought with me, but that was it., beyond the post-race food we were handed, and a couple of small containers of chocolate milk I picked up along the walk. (Damn, is that great to drink immediately post-race.)
Finally showered and changed, I made my way for a celebratory dinner, and picked up dessert to enjoy later in the evening.
Next up? Harrisburg Marathon in a couple of weeks -- pacing the 4:10 group. So far, recovery has been going well, my legs feel fine, and I'm ok for running already.
No comments:
Post a Comment