Space Coast Marathon

For several years, now, I've been hearing about this race from one of my friends and fellow co-pacers because she lives, literally, one block off of the course. Finally, I decided I would go down and be one of the pacers.

Another one of my friends, who has cheered me on at many race and is currently in med school and doing her specialty rotations right now, was able to come out for the weekend. After she picked me up at the airport and we grabbed lunch, it was off to the expo, to pick up my bib and do a brief shift for the pacer booth, where I helped answer a few questions from some of the weekend's runners, but there wasn't all that much foot traffic at our booth, so I was happy to have only a 1-hour shift.

After the expo, we made our way back to our hotel to check in, have me do my prep for race day the following morning, and then head on out to the lazy river pool for a little while.

(Getting the selfie just right was rather a comedy of errors. While the desk attendant came around to take a more "proper" photo of us, this one definitely was the better option.)

After being the curmudgeons who were slightly ticked with the little kids who pushed their way past us in our respective inner tubes on the relatively narrow lazy river, and feeling a bit chillier than we expected, we made our way back to the room in relatively short order to get ready to head out to the pacer dinner at the hotel that most of the pacers were staying at. 

It was a nice spread - your typical pre-race pasta dinner setup of salad, pastas and sauces, meatballs, bread, and dessert (brownies). I found out that I had been reassigned to an earlier pace time than the 4:10 I had planned on pacing. (I was given 4:05, and another pacer was given 4:10 -- so I needed to bring that pace sign to the start line to hand off in the morning.) After dinner was mostly dinner, we held our team meeting to go over our usual items - pacing expectations, emergency scenarios, pre-race photo timing, and shuttle bus schedule. There seemed to be a bit of paranoia about how long it would take to get to the start line area from the hotels, so most people sounded like they would be on the 4am shuttle (or self-driving by about 4:15am). While slightly concerned by that paranoia, I resolved to give myself the extra 30 minutes of sleep and simply make sure that we were on the 4:30am bus. Given it was only a 15 minute drive over and would only take a few minutes to walk to the start area, I was confident I could do everything I needed before we had to get the photo and then line up in the corrals.

We wound up taking the pacer photo about 2 minutes ahead of schedule, and all started to break off when I saw Laura (the local who lives one block off the race course less than a mile from the start/finish line) running over to the start. Sorry, you missed the photo! Two-pacer photo it was, then, after which we ran around to the fountain to have a meet-up schedule that Laura had arranged for with a group of runners, several of whom I associate with the Disney races.

 

While Jess tried to beg off of being in the photo, not running on the day nor "being a runner," she was encouraged to hop in -- there were others in the same boat who were part of the photo.

The space that we had in the corrals to line up was not much. For 1300 runners in the marathon, broken up into nearly two dozen pace groups, there was barely any space between the consecutive pacers. Hopefully things would spread out pretty quickly after the start. Soon enough, it was off we went!

Turns out, once we made the first turn after the course, it was almost immediately spread out, so the cramped corrals didn't really affect anything.

The race started at 6am, so it's dark for a decent bit. The main advice that I had been given by one of the other pacers while we were waiting in the corral was to make sure to run in the center, because it is far too easy otherwise to trip on the curbs on the side of the road.

After a relatively brief time, I tried to determine who/how many people were in my particular pace group. Seems like it was about a half dozen or so -- not that many. There were one or two people who were willing to chat while we ran, while the others were relatively quiet/non-responsive to some of the questions I asked/prompted them with; c'est la vie.

It was a hot, humid day, so as I am wont to do, every time I saw the water station, I made sure to scream out to everyone to "drink and douse!" It's one thing to stay hydrated, it's another to make sure to do your best to cool your core temperature as best possible. Doing both certainly helps prevent any problems from slamming you later on, once the sun is high and you've been baking in higher temps.

Shortly before Mile 13, one of the women in the group started to break away. I called out for her to pull back - no need to go that fast - but she answered back that she really wanted to get a first half that was under 2 hours. Seemed unwise to try that, given how late she was attempting it, she'd need to expend lots of energy to do that (since we were right on pace to get there at a bit under 2:02:30 -- making up more than 2 minutes in less than a half mile was unlikely). Nevertheless, she proceeded to pull off. And even though I could see she hadn't gotten to the 13 Mile flag yet when my watch indicated 2 hours, she remained in front of me -- somewhere -- the rest of the time; I never caught her again. Nice! I'm hoping that simply meant that she was successful in finishing well in front of me, rather than my passing her while she was in a pit stop, or her being tended to on the side of the course -- both possibilities, given the day.

 

Another lady broke away shortly thereafter, but I wound up catching and passing her by about Mile 23. And most of the men in the group when up falling off pace by about Miles 18-20. It was distressing and amusing when at one point in that range, I decided to do my MCM "give me an Oorah!" sort of prompt, and as I looked around, there was only one person remaining with me. (Dang! I waited too long!)

Relatively late in the race, myself and the one remaining group member were approaching a long line of half marathoners who were walking several abreast with barely any space between them. As I proceeded to approach on their left (and crossing over the double yellow line into the oncoming "traffic" of the back-of-the-pack marathoners to do so), I gave the gentle warning, "on your left" -- to advise the lady not to shift left. I got a snarky "go around!" reply. Um... duh! That's exactly what I was telling you I was doing. Maybe if you didn't have more than 2 people side-by-side and blocking the progress of other people, we wouldn't have needed this interaction. Sheesh!

Before we hit Mile 25, I told the guy who was still me (rather surprisingly, since he was a first-time marathoner, and somehow managed to avoid hitting the wall on a day that naturally would have had lots of people hitting it early, given the heat and humidity) that if he was feeling good in the next mile to break ahead of me through the finish. And that if he was still with me at Mile 26, I would yell at him to make sure to get in front of me. Needless to say, he took it to heart, and less than a minute after we passed the Mile 25 flag, he broke in front of me and pulled away. Turns out, he finished more than one minute ahead of me (4:03:06).

Despite some minor see-sawing within each mile (many times I was advising the people around me to slow down "just a touch" because we were going a little too fast, at which a couple of people responded positively to hearing we could slow down a little bit), I hit my goal almost exactly -- 4:04:21 (true goal being 4:04:30).

After getting out of my sneakers and socks as quickly as I could get to the gear check, where my flip-flops were awaiting (to try to prevent blisters from being even worse than I knew they already were), I grabbed the various food on offer and we headed back to the hotel for me to shower and change (so glad for a late check-out). But the bus ride back to hotel, in a regular school bus, was difficult on my legs -- especially my right knee. 

Then we headed out to Long Doggers for lunch. Yep, you guessed correctly what I got:

By the time we finished up, it was only a short time before our next adventure for the day:

Pacer Laura, having just paced the 3:55 group, was part of the ensemble along with her son, Soren. How she managed to do some of the moves after the effort she put in on the course and with minimal recovery time between her finish and when she got to the theatre to do that prep before going on-stage, I have no idea. While it is community theatre, and expectations as a whole are usually fairly low for community theatre, I must admit that they did a pretty good job with the show, and it was a pretty packed house, too.

But the production being three hours long (including a brief intermission and some speeches between the two acts) and sitting in cramped seats where I couldn't do anything for extending my legs -- they were really hurting afterwards. 

We met up with the burgeoning stars afterwards and grabbed some really good ice cream around the corner and just hung out for a while. (In fact, we closed down the place!)

At that point, it was time for Jess to head on out and drop me off at Laura's family's house (as they were generous enough to host me for the evening). 

Last selfie of the trip, this time with their dog, Lt. Barclay -- a very sweet fluff ball. 

With that, my race calendar for the year comes to a close (though I'm still looking to see if there's yet one more race I could/should run -- if I find out this week that I've gotten a charity bib for Boston, I might sign up last-minute for Dismal Swamp Marathon to try to get a BQ to use for 2027, one that wouldn't need a buffer.)