Once again, Atlantic City proved to be more of a challenge than would be expected. But let's not get too far ahead of things...
Thankfully Atlantic City is close enough for me to simply drive up the day before, and then back after my post-race lunch. In previous years, the pace team was sponsored by a different hotel, but there have been enough issues with them that we switched hotels this year (and are now being sponsored by the AC Race Series itself -- hence the new singlets, too).
Decent hotel room, but the beds are WAY too soft (at least for me). Check-in was a breeze (even early check-in allowed), much easier than our prior hotel (which wouldn't allow anyone to check-in earlier than 4pm, and still had problems at that).
Facing our hotel, right at the Boardwalk itself, is the Korean War Memorial.
I arrived early enough to take a couple of hours shift at the expo.
It's a small space, but sufficient for the size of the field of runners doing the marathon and half-marathon. This year's shirt for the marathon has a nice design on it, but awkwardly has a hood on it.
There was a constant flow of traffic for the time that I was there. Standard sorts of questions about the course, course profile, how we would pace it (even pace, negative split, etc. -- even effort (which I do) is basically the same as even pace on this course), which pace group they should line up with / how would they find us, etc. Lots of first time racers or veteran racers finally choosing to run with a pace group -- either way, not really knowing how it works. That's what we're there for!
Wrapped up my shift at the expo about 4pm and went back to the hotel room to prep as much as possible for the morning before heading out to the pacer team dinner/meeting at 6pm. En route, I came across this statue that I hadn't previously noticed -- rather fitting for the weekend.
Despite a fitful night of pretty poor sleep (partly my own issues, but partly because of all of the extra noise from so many of the hotel guests on our floor up through about 1am or so), the morning arrived soon enough. Mercifully, given the timing of the race, having a 6am wake-up was on tap -- "late" by most standards. Quick check of what conditions we were in for showed a difficult set up for us, with very warm temps rising through the 60s, with very bright skies, and strong wind the whole time. Glad I chose to be at the slower end of my range.
After getting dressed and fully prepped for the race, I made sure to bring all of my stuff to the car (since I would be finishing well after check-out), drop off my gear bag (for post-race clothing change and protein shake), and join up with the rest of the pace team for our photo.
There was enough time before lining up in the start chute for me to take a first light (well, just not quite sunrise) photo of the crashing waves on the shore. While not necessarily captured well below, the waves were rather sizable, an ominous portent of the wind that we were already bracing ourselves against.
Finally lined up inside the starting chute, the runners started to gather around the respective pacers they planned to run with, or simply use as their own marker of where they needed to be to self-seed by expected pace. The way that Atlantic City arranges things, they put up a couple of barricades at the back end of a relatively short area for the starting chute, with additional barricades lining either side continuing back. It's as if they think all of the runners would be able to fit into the one area. No, not so. We lined up in such a way so that the pacers faster than 4 hours were in that area, and the rest of us were behind it, but the race organizers never came over to remove those extra barricades that were otherwise blocking the path for the runners going longer than 4 hours.
With about 10 minutes before the starting horn, I noticed that people were still crossing right-to-left in the area immediately behind those barricades. Clearly, no one had moved them away more closed off the sides of the chute. I took it upon myself to make my way up to the barricades and moved them (with the assistance from one other runner) to close off the cross-traffic. Anyone who wanted in needed to go in through the back (or, ill-advisedly climb over the side barricades). I made my way back to my approximate starting location where my fellow 4:15 runners (or 2:07:30 half marathoners) would most likely still be gathered.
Soon enough, we were off! Thankfully, this year I didn't trip on the boardwalk on my way across the starting line (or anywhere else, for that matter), and the tight crowd actually spread out quicker than expected -- maybe only 1/4 mile out. I was able to find my group, as many as a couple of dozen total between half and full.
By and large, the course is flat, though it does have some hills in the first 2+ miles, basically comprising overpasses and emerging from a tunnel just after Mile 2.
We run the first 7+ miles on city streets near the north end of the boardwalk before making out way south along it until about Mile 14 or so. (The half marathoners peel away from us at Mile 11.5 and double-back on the boardwalk towards the finish line, generally unaccompanied by pacers.) Once we exit the southern end of the boardwalk, we run around other city streets before returning to the boardwalk for the last approximately 4 miles. Alas, they only had one photographer on the course, so aside from start and finish photos, Mile 2 is the only other photo that was taken.
As is my habit of noticing, the water stops were lacking. Not in number nor in quantity of fluids available (it seemed like there was plenty), but in consistency and ease for the runners. There was no predictable order of whether water or Gatorade would be first, nor a standard differentiation of types of cups (some had only Gatorade green cups, some only white cups, some had both). And some of the volunteers were holding two cups in one hand -- actually a difficult thing to reliably snag just one cup, let alone when one is water and one is Gatorade. It would really be nice if races could get this very simple logistical issue correct.
Another difficulty, which they will hopefully remedy for next year, is the directionality of the course. It's tricky enough dealing with all of the "civilians" on the course -- not just spectators who might encroach the course, but the random visitors to AC who are just out and about on the boardwalk, not necessarily recognizing nor caring that there is a race underway and to pay a bit more attention than they might otherwise normally.
Visualize, if you can, a large group of people running down the left-hand side of the boardwalk (since we need to get around the start/finish line which is on our right as we run past it at around the 9 mile (?) mark). At about Mile 11.5, the half-marathoners make a sharp U-turn and continue back towards the finish line. If they were doing things correctly, they would stay on *their* left side of the boardwalk and go straight into the finish area about 1.7 miles later, as those of us still outbound are on *our* left side of the boardwalk. However, for some unknown reason, the vast majority of half marathoners on their return segment crossed back over and were running directly at the outbound runners on OUR side of the boardwalk. What the heck? Why did they do that? Not only do they now have lots of people running at them, but they're adding distance both to get to that side and then to cross back through that same traffic to get to the correct side to finish. The race desperately needs to have some semblance of signage to make it clear that runners should always be on the left side of two-way traffic.
Similarly, when we exited the southern end of the course, at least for me, we were pointed on the right side of some cones, so we naturally (though illogically) stayed on the right side after we made our next turn. In a short time, we had a police motorcyclist driving at us honking his horn, as he had one of the lead runners behind him. This got us back onto the correct -- left -- side of the two-way flow.
And there were other areas where there was two-way flow where there wasn't a clearly marked off lane for each direction, and some people ran on the outside of the cones -- bad move, since the roadway was OPEN for vehicular traffic still.
After the half marathoners split off from us, I still had a core of about 8-10 people who were running the marathon. There was one extremely eager lady who was definitely engaged in any of the conversation who was doing her darnedest to stay with me for the whole time. Unfortunately, the heat and wind took enough of there toll on her at about mile 20 where she started to fade. (She finally finished in about 4:27. Not shabby.) Most of the others also faded off in the traditional 18-21 mile range. For the first time in quite a while, I actually had one person stick with me basically the entire time (though there were many times I had to rein her back in as she started to drift forward to early). Once we hit the Mile 25 marker, I made sure to tell her that any time between then and the Mile 26 marker, if she was feeling good to break in front of me, and that regardless, once she hit the Mile 26 marker, she *must* give it all that she had left in the tank. She drifted up from me about Mile 25.5 and finished nice and strong.
I finished probably about 10-15 seconds behind her, in 4:14:34, just four seconds off of the "pin" for the 4:15 pace I was running. Amazingly enough, almost all of the pacers were within 1-4 seconds of the pin.
There was a guy who was lying down in the finisher's chute a little further up out of frame, not being tended to by anyone. I wound up bringing him a Powerade and a couple of bags of ice. Definitely hit the spot and enabled him to recover relatively quickly thereafter -- and he had already been lying there for at least 5 minutes untended-to.
This year's medal is pretty nice, and has a nice "surprise" when you open it up.
For those interested in seeing all of the different race medals (though not the challenge medals) that were available during the weekend:
Learning the lesson of the Air Force Marathon this year, I made sure to take off my shoes and socks as quickly as I could after getting my bag to put on my flip-flops and try to prevent blisters as best possible. (It seems to have worked.) I drank my Muscle Milk (fast infusion of some protein), had a banana and really good New York everything bagel, and change my shirt and shorts (so I wasn't sitting in that for the next 5+ hours prior to getting home and taking a shower), and then went for my obligatory post-race burger and shake.
This is the second year in a row that I missed the pre-race Elevated Running & Pacing team meeting for the Marine Corps Marathon, being held this coming Sunday (for which I'm pacing the 4:05 group), but was able to watch the recording. This year MCM is going to be HUGE for its 50th anniversary. More on that in the coming days pre- and post-race. Stay tuned!
