Completing the Armed Forces Series Challenge: Space Force T-Minus 10-Miler

This past weekend was a big one for challenges. Saturday was the Space Force T-Minus 10-Miler, which was the culmination of the inaugural Armed Forces Series Challenge. Sunday was the Garden of Life Palm Beaches Marathon (which I'll get to in the next entry). I was the pace group leader for approximately the same pace both days. 9:00 minutes/mile was the pace for Saturday, and Sunday was a smidge faster.

Friday, I flew out, and below was the main decoration (that wasn't a very basic tree above the entryways) that I noticed in the airport.

                                         

Annoyingly enough, my flight down to Florida had a layover... in Newark. Upon touching down on the tarmac there, the overhead bin a few rows up from me (and where my bag was) popped open. ("Murphy" decided to peak out, I think.) The people seated there didn't seem to notice, somehow. Mercifully, all of the bags stayed put -- no one was injured. But several of us were rather nervous that they would drop on peoples' heads, given how fast the plane was still moving and turning.

                                                            

While getting my rental car, when I mentioned that I had my EZ Pass with me for the tolls, I was told that it wouldn't matter, even if the transponder were turned off on the car since the toll booths use plate readers. So, if I agreed to using the transponder, it would cost $25 per day. If not, then any time I passed through a toll, I would be charged $50. Well, there was no way I would pay $25/day for four days for one single $1.92 toll that was en route to my initial destination, so I made sure to re-plot my route to take advantage of other roads. ("Murphy" was starting to get comfortable.)

I arrived at my fellow pacer Laura's home a little over an hour later. Once she arrived from picking up her kids, we all went to the race expo.

While Laura was dealing with one of the vendors pitching his resort, I was dealing with the race officials because my registration was messed up.

I registered immediately when registration opened up back in April/May. It was set to be my fifth of the five races in the Armed Forces Series Challenge. Then, several weeks ago, On Pace sent out a note to its pacers asking if anyone wanted to pace it. I quickly rose my hand and asked if I could get a refund on the registration fee (since pacers never pay for the race they are pacing).

Well, with the way everything worked, not only did they refund my entry fee, but they wound up de-activating my entire registration! So, when I arrived to pick up my bib, they couldn't find me in the system.

First, I had to deal with re-establishing my registration. The lady who handled that was quite efficient at doing so, once I showed her the various e-mails related to my being a pacer for the race. Then I went over to get a bib. While doing so, I asked about the challenge, since this would be my final race. That took a little more time to find the appropriate information demonstrating that I had registered that intent before Coast Guard Marathon and that I had run all four of the prior races in the challenge. But, satisfied, she affixed the requisite sticker on my bib to signify at the end of the race that I should get the challenge medal. ("Murphy" was sticking tight to me. What the heck?!)

Finally all settled, we made our way around to the On Pace table to get our pacer packets and chat with Rhonda and Mike for a little bit.

                     

After the expo, the four of us went to a new '50s themed ice cream parlor whose grand opening was that afternoon. The ice cream was quite good (yes, I had my dessert a few hours before dinner), and the place was packed.

Outside, there were several vintage cars present for the grand opening. Neat.

The forecast for the race on Saturday was definitely concerning, with such strong winds and high temps. But I was unconcerned about the rain, with such low odds.

In the days leading up to the race, I saw some of the reviews from the previous year -- all of which were horrible, lambasting the organizers for the required transportation to the start line. Well, apparently they learned from the mistakes of the prior two years. We arrived on base and proceeded to Skid Strip to park. We were there early enough, it was a maybe 2-minute walk to get to the buses waiting for us, including the amount of time it took for us to go through the medal detector and security wanding. We got on the bus just in time, because after a few minutes (and while we were waiting for more people to board and get a full bus) it started to pour outside.

By the time we were let off the bus, the rain stopped. It was about 1/2 mile to get to the starting area. It was crazy early compared to our 7:30am start time. So, we took advantage of some photos, chatted a bit with one of Laura's running friends, and Laura even went on a 3-mile warm-up run.

(Kennedy Space Center in the distance)

(Relatively small pace team, since we had 30-second increments being paced, starting with Laura's 8:30 and my 9:00.)

The wind just wasn't letting up. I had telescoped up my race pole so that it could be easily seen by people who wanted to join my pace group.

I had (foolishly, it turns out) decided to run with all of my prior AFSC medals in a fanny pack around my backside. It was bouncing so much that it was highly distracting, so I wound up taking it off and carrying it in a cradled position in my left arm -- somewhat tiring given that I wrapped it around my hand to make sure it wasn't loose, and it was at least 2 pounds, on top of the 1-pound bottle of water I was also carrying in that hand. ("Murphy" decided he was going to torture me for the entire weekend, it seems.) And despite the strong wind and my pacer sign being raised as high as it was - becoming a wind sail - I was incapable of lowering it, since I didn't have the free hands to do so and the mechanism was tightened too much with my available grip.

Along the route, we crossed paths not only with several of the monuments/memorials (such as the memorial to the Apollo 1 crew and the separate monument to the Mercury 7 crew), but also the rocket that was supposed to have been shot off the prior day, but that had been delayed twice by that point because of weather.

(Photo courtesy Michelle Armstrong)

My group was excited for the run (despite the intermittent downpours that would dump on us along with the driving wind) and engaged with the conversation I would intermittently engage in.

But "Murphy" wasn't done with me. In fact, he decided he would glom onto everyone. How? By virtue of poorly placed mile markers. Every single mile marker on the course was off. While I know that I can't rely on Garmin to determine accuracy of a course ("the course is always right"), by forcing laps at each mile marker, I determined that I needed to show approximately 8:40 on my watch for my pace of the course-marked miles to be the required 8:57 - 9:00. Fine. But then the final "mile" was only 0.8 miles. At my pace, that means I was missing 1:48 of additional running. Because of that, I was under the 90-minute goal time by over 2:30, when my goal was to be no more than 1 minute fast.

That said, though, of the six people in my group who were captured in the photos, 5 of them finished underneath the goal time of 90 minutes. (from 6 seconds to 2:34 below goal time) And the last one missed it by just 59 seconds. Great job, everyone!

Despite my years' worth of practicing the 6-medal display at Disney Marathon Weekend and the Dopey Challenge, my full spread was inadvertently missing one of the medals. (The Coast Guard Marathon medal, huge as it is, slipped off my left forearm and was consequently not visible above. Oh well.)

The finish line was essentially at the Lighthouse.

After we took a finish photo outside of Hangar C, got our post-race snacks/drinks, and wandered around trying to find the bag to return our pacer sticks, we went inside to take some photos of the various craft and missiles inside.

Who can pass up taking a photo with Snark. Especially two people who very much appreciate good snark and sarcasm?

It was really impressive seeing the damage to the exterior of this section of the Titan II, presumably from when it fell into the ocean after it finished its task of lifting off its payload.

Finally, after a 10-minute wait for the return bus, we got dropped off at the opposite end of the Skid Strip compared to where we parked. OK, another 3/4 mile to walk to get to the car.

Merritt Island Pancake House was directly en route to get back to Laura's house, and the food was scrumptious and a huge portion, well worth the price tag. The bacon waffles (bacon stuffed and topped) with eggs, hash browns, and more bacon were great.

But given how long it took post-race before we left, it was only a few minutes before noon when we arrived back. I showered and changed as quickly as I could, and packed up to get on the road. I was slated to start my shift at the expo for the Palm Beaches Marathon at 2pm -- I knew I would be late. Thankfully, my 25-minute delayed arrival wasn't too bad. But more about the rest of that separately...