Slight nerves for upcoming race

The goal for next week in Little Rock is to break 3:15 (preferably breaking 3:13, even). I've been using the training plan that I used for when I broke 3:00 a few years ago. There have been a number of days when my results on the day were not what they should have been per that plan -- slowed down for bits, maybe even a brief walk break a la water stops. 

Certainly I'm not trained for sub-3:00, but I'm hopeful that I've done enough combined across all of the workouts, both those that worked perfectly and those that were suboptimal, that I can hit my goals.

Mercifully, the forecast has improved of late. I can only hope that this one stays as is. If so, I won't have anything to worry about on race other than me -- the only thing that I can control.

Fingers crossed!

Balancing Desires

As of a couple of days ago, the greater DC area was hearing forecasts for later this week of snow -- anywhere from about 5 inches all the way up to 17 or more inches. Wonderful!

As I thought about the possibility (however remote) of getting more than a foot of snow by me, I contemplated the fact that there would be no realistic chance of getting to the gym for at least 1-2 days. And on days that I was not set to have a rest day.

Well, as of earlier today, that dissonance was completely removed. The storm appears to be shifting far enough to the east off the coast that we will get NO snow.

Grrr... Well, at least I'll be getting to the gym as appropriately scheduled.

Miami Marathon

Originally, I was figuring that I would drive down to Miami -- it's only an hour from where I was staying with my snowbird mom. However, the more I thought about it, the more I disliked that plan. Instead, I decided to ride the Brightline. For those used to Amtrak, it's essentially that (actually, slightly better, IMO), where they also have your bags go through an X-ray machine and the passengers go through a metal detector to get into the station. The Boca Raton station was pretty comfortable, and the doors to the platform opened maybe 5 minutes before the train arrived.

We arrived in Miami 5 minutes early - astounding to me.

And the Brightline station was only two blocks away from where the pacing team was staying, at the Gale Hotel Downtown.

We definitely had a nice room, with balcony and a reasonable view, including being able to watch the ballet of a skyscraper being built right next door.

I was able to check in and fully unpack prior to my friend Ryan (whom I hadn't seen in 10+ years)  driving down with his young son. It took us a while to drive out to Miami Beach to grab lunch, given the expectedly hideous traffic. But it was a good time, and it was nice to finally meet Sammy, who I've seen only in Facebook posts previously. (I'm not so sure he was all that interested, but he was very well-behaved and is clearly a very smart kid.)

After lunch, we walked over to to the convention center where the expo was being held. And they escorted me in to drop me off at the MarathonPacing.com booth. That is, they would have if I had gotten the row correct. We were off by one, and given how crazy crowded it was, the better part of valor for them was to head on out to finish up their day at Miami Beach while I figured out where I was supposed to be.

I finally found the booth, late for my shift, changed into the shirt we were given for working the booth and donned the Shokz headset (around my neck), gifted to all of the pacers. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with my pair, since I never listen to music while running. I enjoyed talking with all of the runners who came over asking various questions about the race, our respective strategies for running it, etc. Especially with the forecast on tap.

                                                                

I left the expo shortly after 5pm and walked down to the bus stop, hoping to grab the next bus that would go to within a few blocks of my hotel, figuring I could get there about 6pm or so, and start setting up my gear before heading out to the pacer team. Ha! After waiting over 45 minutes, a few of us were griping, and one of the others decided to order up an Uber, and he offered the other two of us a lift. While the traffic sucked beyond belief, I still arrived faster than I would have waiting who knows how much more for the bus. (No idea why it never arrived.) And we ended up a few blocks closer to the restaurant than if I had gone to my hotel, so it worked out well.

After the team dinner, I went back to the hotel, set everything up for race morning per usual (to make getting out the door that much easier), and forced myself to get to sleep much earlier than normal. After all, I was going to be waking up at 3:45am for a 4:45am departure. (The pace team was meeting at 5am for the team photo.)

The start line was at the Kaseya Center, which they opened for the runners to be able to go in and use real bathrooms (though they did also have plenty of portapotties).

I was in Corral H at the assigned 5:15am, despite the fact that with a 6am Corral A start, we weren't expected to cross the start line until 6:30am. It was a lot of time answering the same question (yes, we start facing the "wrong" direction before crossing over and walking up to the line) and telling everyone who would be running with me my main strategy other than even splits: walking all of the water stops as a forcing function for everyone (me, included) to both drink something AND throw water over their head.

Finally, after a delayed start, and an extra delay for our corral to make sure that Corral G was far enough separated from us, we made the right hand turn at Mile 0.25 and effectively hit a wall of walking up the up ramp in a very cramped area. (At least I knew about it ahead of time and warned my group, too.) Once we got past that (and lost about 1 minute -- easy to make up over time), it was a straightforward race, despite the high heat and humidity.

I had many first-timers with me (both for the half and full marathon), and they were very engaged and chatty.

The lady in pink in these three photos stayed with me for the entire race! As did the man (above) in the gray.

The man in red next to me below was running his first marathon and, in fact, his longest run ever kicked in once he hit Mile 18. He stuck with me through about Mile 21 when, unfortunately, he fell off pace. But still finished very strong. But the man in gray started to pull away in front of me after Mile 25 - a great spot to do it if you know you have enough left in the tank to stay in front of me and certainly finish well under the posted time.

Given the additional mileage I had run (weaving a little bit, go to/from water stops, not running perfect tangents), looking at one of the data screens on my Garmin during the last mile was very confusing. It was showing me several minutes ahead of pace, which should not have been the case. So, I went more by feel of running the same pace as I had been and hoped that I would get an accurate predicted end time when I hit Mile 26. It showed me about 2 seconds too fast, and I was *not* going to do that again - so I slowed down just a little bit to make sure I hit the assigned sweet spot. And that's where I encouraged the lady in pink to give it everything she had left - finish in front of me. She did so, though with a bit of initial hesitation.

Having looked over my shoulder and seen a few people relatively close behind, I made sure to motion to them to get in front of me and go all out. That also helped me to slow down a little bit, too.

Made it almost exactly on time for being the 4:30 pacer -- 4:29:25.

After crossing the finish line, both of the people from my group who finished in front of me came up to me to get a photo. (My brain fog was enough that I didn't have it taken on my phone, nor did I ask for them to text them to me.)

The immediate post-race food and drink was pretty good and definitely plentiful. And there was enough space to move around before exiting into the chaos of the family reunion area and remainder of the post-race festival area, which had lots of stuff available, some free and some for charge. Thankfully I had my Life Time Fitness membership card in the LTF app on my phone, so I was able to skip the otherwise somewhat lengthy line to get a post-race dynamic stretch.

Here's the official recap video.

After finishing up in the festival, and with being pointed the right way by an official (since there were no signs to the exit or bag check), I made my way towards the bag check area. And passed by a few notables on the way.

And then bag check -- they did a great job with setting this up and having a relatively small number of bags in each of the differently numbered bays, making retrieval really easy.

This seemed to be a rather apt sculpture to pass along the way back to the hotel.

Luckily, I had gotten a late check-out, and wound up using every last minute of it before walking out the door and figuring out what I was going to do for lunch. I left my bag at the hotel, and headed up a few blocks to what appeared online to be an interesting place. I hadn't realized that it was 100% take-out, no indoor seating. But there was sufficient outdoor seating and an umbrella to stay out of the sun.

Unbeknownst to me, they were running a BOGO sale, so, I received two of the bacon cheeseburgers and fries that I ordered. Tempted as I was to eat it all, I knew that would be a bad move. So, I ate just the one of each and, given my suspicion about a couple of the blocks between there and the hotel, I walked down one in particular. Most of the way down, across the street in a stairwell, I saw a homeless man sitting amid a lot of bags. I crossed over and asked him if he would like the burger and fries; he gladly accepted them.

I eventually made my way to the Brightline station to head on back to my mom's for night before heading to Orlando. Flight back was Monday evening.

Definitely a good experience overall. Certainly would consider pacing this one again.

Mid-Week Zoo Outing

During the week between the Celebration and Miami marathons, I spent the week visiting with my snowbird mom. Among the things that we wound up doing was going to the West Palm Beach Zoo. While it's pretty small, it was uncrowded and a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

                    

This one fella kept pacing back and forth, while his companion in the other side of the pen was sitting stoically by the heating lamps.

Some of the lemurs in this area were moving about rapidly. Thankfully these fellas were a bit calmer, allowing for some photos.

This sloth being fed by his keeper was absolutely adorable. 

This koala was enjoying a nice nap.

This fella was very funny and quite friendly. Apparently, he likes to give gifts, so he was walking about occasionally with some small twigs in his mouth that he was hoping to give to the people on the other side of the grating.

Olan was the one of their three tigers who was "out and about" within eyeshot, though he was still a little tricky to see. They're in the process of redoing the walkways in the tigers exhibit for it to be more walkthrough for the walkways as opposed to two dead-ends.

Unfortunately the large iguana that looked like it was stalking this primate, decided to moving into the brush in the background when I was taking the photo, rather than continue on his previous path. I really wanted to see how the two of them would have dealt with each other.

Yes, that bag of needles is, indeed, a porcupine.

After seeing this rather large capybara, we went around the corner and came face to face with this adorable sea otter.

Shame I couldn't get better video where there wasn't any reflection of me visible in any of the view. Still came out fairly well, and that otter swimming by was too adorable.

When we first saw the crocodile on the right, there was zero movement - we couldn't even see him breathing at all. I thought it was a statue -- not dissimilar to several of the obvious sculptures they have sprinkled throughout the zoo. Lo and behold, he and the other croc (Fred and Ethel, respectively) are both indeed real.

This panther was pacing back and forth just like the leopard that we saw earlier. One photo that I didn't take was of the black bear that was slumbering soundly far away from the glass of his enclosure, where it would be an indistinct black lump.

All in all, while not the most exciting of zoos, and certainly low-traffic (well, it was in the middle of a school day, after all), it was still a good time. And only a few more days before I was finally on my way to Miami to pace the marathon.