I've heard about the Harrisburg Marathon several times over the last few years from several of my fellow pacers, but hadn't ever run it before. This year, I rose my hand early enough to be added to the team to pace. It's nice and close, but at two hours away and a 7:30am start, it's just far enough away that I felt it necessary to go up the day before and get a hotel room. Definitely lessens the stress level quite a bit.
Early check-in was easy, and they oh-so-graciously waived the $40 fee to do so (had they insisted on it, I would've just checked in at normal time, fine), and getting to the packet pick-up was pretty painless. It's a small enough race, there is no expo. And when I got there (about 2pm), it looked like there were TONS of bibs yet to be picked up. Clearly it's such a local's race, most of the people look like they were going to do their packet pick-up on race morning. I hate doing that -- I much prefer having my bib "pinned" to my singlet in advance. And given the fact that I was also picking up an extra set of bib snaps to use, it was best to do that up front.
After lounging in the hotel room for a little while, it was time to get dinner. Only a few miles down the road, it was nothing special, but it was sufficient for what I wanted and needed.
Given how small a field there was (< 600), we are all very tightly packed together at the start. While that's not overly surprising, it doesn't give the pacers sufficient room to spread out and make sure we had room to hit our proper stride and expected pace, especially if Garmin decides to be a little wonky. I was pacing 4:10 and I was too close to the 4:05 pacer. My Garmin was telling me that I was going slower than I wanted, but I refused to pass the 4:05 pacer, who could have also been having issues in the other direction with her Garmin. I basically trusted that we would wind up evening it all out by the time we hit the first mile marker -- which is exactly what happened.
I had a pretty good-sized group (once I was able to look over my shoulders and take stock of the situation). Try as I might, though, most of them wouldn't engage when I asked some of the typical questions (1st marathon? Why this one? Where are people from? What is a bucket list marathon?). However, there were two individuals who were definitely talkative, and the three of us wound up holding a decent conversation for several miles. One of them hadn't run anything longer than 13 miles this year, so he was unsure how well he would do, but was giving 4:10 a shot. It was his first marathon, and there were many things that he would wind up learning -- both based on some of the feedback he would get from me and a couple of the other runners, as well as his actual experience on the day.
Much of the two-loop course is run along the river, sometimes on the lower level directly next to it, and sometimes on the upper level pathway. One of the warnings that we received before the race was that after we make our turn onto the lower level and go underneath the highway, there are a couple of troughs that are used as storm drains. Thankfully, it was easy enough to see the pipes that led down to them to see the subtle dips in the concrete, flag them to my group, and avoid any injuries.
As should be clear from most of my other race reports, I carry my own water and nutrition on course, only ever relying on the water on the course to douse myself on hot days. (No dousing this time! It was in the 40s most of the race; glorious for running.) However, I still take note of the water stops. I'll often slow down a little bit to help the group get their water and not lose the pack. This time around, though, the vast majority of the time I didn't need to slow, because they were handing out bottles of water, not cups. I just hope they had cracked the cap on them, to make opening easier. The further into a race you run, the more you lose the sort of dexterity needed to open a water bottle. (At least in my experience post-race.) And there was one time on the course where one of my runners asked about Gatorade, and they were told that it was just now being mixed. To me, this is totally unsatisfactory -- no runner should be faced with the decision of skipping the Gatorade or stop running and simply stand around waiting for them to finish their mixing before heading back out, and potentially taking a while to catch back up to the pace group.
Another one of the runners in our group was an Army soldier stationed nearby in Mechanicsburg. One of his goals is to complete the Armed Forces Challenge - which I have just the Space Force T-Minus 10 Miler left to finish it next month. We commiserated over how poorly organized the Army 10-Miler was (despite this being the 40th anniversary!), and he pointed out that there is lots of disorganization within the Army -- rather a disheartening thing to hear.
As we were nearing about Mile 8 (?), one of the rest stops looked like it had finally finished being put up -- Fireball! This fed into some of the conversation with the first-timer and what he had done re: diet (he changed things up marathon morning compared to what he had done on any of his previous long runs, such as they were). The soldier (who had Red Bull as part of his pre-race) was not averse to getting a shot of Fireball, but definitely not quite so early in the race. While he had fallen off my pack in advance of when we would pass this table on the next lap, I have a hunch he still didn't take a shot. (Based on post-race photos, it looks like he finished in the 4:30 - 4:40 range; can't tell since neither the bib nor the clock is in the shot.)
Before Mile 10, we turned onto a "long" bridge (which pales in comparison to what we run on after we pass Mile 20 in MCM), which is the lead-in to the other dangerous part of the course. Once we descend off the far side of the bridge, and make a steep, sharp U-turn, we turn underneath the bridge in a brief little tunnel, emerge and finish off the cloverleaf to get back to the opposite side of the bridge. At either end of that brief tunnel, though, is a tall metal pole in the middle of the roadway -- far too easy to smash into if you're not paying enough attention. Again, I was able to warn my group in advance (as did the volunteers who were present there), injuries averted.
By that point, and for a few miles, my bladder had been telling me that I wouldn't be able to make it all the way to the finish. So, as we were running back on the bridge and I spied a couple of portapotties on the path we would be turning onto, I asked who would be willing to "take the stick" (the 4:10 pace sign) and briefly lead the group. While the first-timer was willing to do so, there was another gentleman in the pack that mentioned that his friends call him a metronome. Sold! I passed him the stick, and after we made our turn, I saw that one of the two portapotties was available. About 30 seconds later, I re-emerged and shot off as quickly as possible to catch back up to my pack (at about the same time, the lead half-marathoner was passing). The advice that we give to anyone running in a pace group that needs to make a pit stop is to take their time catching up, they have no need to expend a huge amount of energy. For pacers, though, it would be dangerous to follow that same advice, as you don't usually know how capable your temporary replacement is of keeping pace -- you're just taking it on faith. And the other tricky thing is trying to get back into the proper pace. After all, the watch will take a wee bit to average back out the excessive speed you were just running to catch the pack. Thankfully, my replacement did quite a good job, and within a minute or so of doing that pace, my watch was saying we were at the right pace.
Shortly after we finished our first loop, the first-timer slowly but surely broke away. Clearly he was feeling good, and I let him go rather than trying to rein him back in (which I had done a few times in the early miles). Gradually, unfortunately, much of my pack fell off pace. I wound up picking up a couple of people along the way who stayed with me for a while before also falling off.
I thought I caught sight of the first-timer several miles later during an out-and-back portion where he had finally caught up to the 4:05 pacer. By the time I was on the outbound side of the long bridge (about Mile 23), and the 4:05 pacer was coming back on the other side of the bridge, I noticed the first-timer was gone, but wasn't sure if that meant he broke further forward or dropped off. Turns out that he had fallen off that faster pace by then.
For nearly the entire race, I was trying to keep at about 30 seconds under the then-expected time to give me my needed buffer at the end. It crept up a couple of times, and mostly during the last mile. Energy and pace after passing Mile 25 usually increase to some extent, and at Harrisburg, after Mile 25, we are coming off of a short bridge, making a very steep descent on a short downhill segment before running around on a pathway, to eventually get to another short and more gradual downhill. Nonetheless, it is pretty hard not to get a big boost of speed in both of those spots.
I took note of how I was running "a little hot" and advised the one or two people still with me that they should break away as I needed to pull it back a little to hit my time goal. Shortly after they did so, I came across my first timer, found out that he was indeed with the 4:05 pacer for several miles and fell off. I encouraged him to stick with me and that I would tell him when to kick in another gear and set off as fast as possible -- he MUST finish in front of me, I wouldn't let him slow down any further. While he was a little dismayed at having been caught by me (another lesson learned for his future races), he was game for pushing on at breaking under 4:10.
And, given I was bringing the first-timer to the finish line, and told him to charge as fast as possible once we hit the 26 Mile marker, my pace increased a little bit to keep cheering him on and pushing him to the finish. He finished (pictured below) in 4:08:24 (congrats!), and my final time was just a smidge too fast, 4:08:58.93 -- 1.07 seconds too fast for the 4:09 - 4:10 window that I was shooting for as a pacer, with 4:09:30 being the "pin" I was shooting for.
Their intermediate timing mat was definitely not at 7.5 miles, because there is no way I had run a 9:09 pace for that distance, and then slowed down so much to average out to 9:30, and done that on both loops. Makes me also wonder how far off some of their mile markers were on the course.
After collecting the post-race food and heading back to my nearby car, I changed out of my sweaty singlet and shorts and into dry, warm long-sleeve mock turtleneck t-shirt (MCM's ugliest race shirt from 2018) and long running pants. And got my soaked socks and sneakers off and donned a pair of comfy, loose-fitting knit wool socks and my walking sneakers. If I couldn't end up showering and changing properly in a hotel room, I could at least get as close to human again as possible. I sat in the car for a while eating all of the food I had just collected and then went outside (with my umbrella, as the rain was starting up already) to cheer the runners for about 30 minutes before heading on back home. There were no issues along the drive like there were after Atlantic City. Making sure I don't have a lunch after the post-race food looks like it will be a good call.
Finally having gotten back home, unpacked, showered and changed again, I rewarded myself with a tasty post-race dinner of Chinese food (nope - not my usual cheeseburger nor steak). And the fortune cookie that came with it was very apt for the day.
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