5 Really Hard Road Marathons

These are road marathons. Trail marathons, especially single track technical stuff, are different things entirely.

1. Hogeye in Arkansas. Hot and hilly.

2. Heart of America in Missouri. Also hot and hilly.

3. Mt Desert Island in Maine. Hilly and generally dismal (wind rain) conditions.

4. Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. Very hilly and stressful course.

5. Big Sur in California. Hilly. I really don't think this race is as hard as some people describe. There's a trick to it. Because of the windy road next to the ocean, you can see the long uphills for several miles in front of you. This is difficult psychologically, even though these hills aren't really any worse than hills in other races.

02/04-05/06 Tybee Island and Ocala Double

My First Double

Once upon a time, I thought about doing the Mt Si 50 miler. As a part of training, I knew I needed to do some back-to-back long runs (where you run long on both Saturday and Sunday)... so I decided to do a back-to-back marathon weekend. I found the Tybee Island Marathon (2/4) and the Ocala Marathon (2/5). The logistics didn't look too bad - about a 5 hour drive between the races; lots of hotels. I'm in.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I decided against the 50 miler. However, the idea of doing two marathons on consecutive days seemed intriguing. Let's do it.

Side note about Tybee Island. It's near Savannah, Georgia. Now... I travel A LOT. And I'm here to tell you that Savannah is one of the harder cities around to navigate. The north-south interstate (I-95) is actually about 10 miles west of town. There's a nice cut of east-west interstate (I-16) to get you into town. But that's it. Traveling east-west... especially on the side of town that I-16 doesn't touch... is really hard.

My Weekend Goals

1. Saturday - Tybee Island+ Beat 4+ Run evenly
2. Sunday - Ocala+ Beat 4:30+ Don't die

Ok. Tybee Island is, hello, an island, which means it is windy. This was one of the windier races I've done. It is also one of the flattest courses imaginable. Flatter than Houston, flatter than Bismarck. Way flatter than Myrtle Beach. Possibly even flatter than the old Mardi Gras course. The course itself is difficult to describe. Kind of an 8 mile out-and-back followed by a 5 mile out-and-back that you do twice. Except that they aren't quite out-and-backs. Sort of loopy, but not really. One icky thing. We passed the start/finish line 6 or 7 times. Oy.

The race itself started out somewhat crowded, so I started out slower than normal. This felt right, especially considering the extra race I'd be running the next day. The crowd stretched out rather quickly though, and I hit my groove by mile 3. I enjoyed the scenery... the houses... the lighthouse... the peekaboo look at the ocean. That's an interesting thing. Just like Myrtle Beach, you don't actually see the ocean much during the race, even though you spend most of it right there. Aid stations were good, though small. People wooted for us from their porches.
As I passed mile 8, I saw the eventual men's winner heading the other way. He was almost to 13. Hee. A few minutes later, I saw three women go by. One was running next to a really big dude (I don't know who was drafting whom). That would turn out to be our eventual women's winner... a coolrunning poster named 'katerun'. Go kate! The third was Molly. Now, Molly didn't seem overly friendly. But I won't forget Molly because she had a big label on her top that said, well, M O L L Y.

I ran well through 10. I was consciously holding back and running easy. My car was parked right around mile 12... I stopped there briefly to drop off a jacket that I clearly didn't need. It might rain and it WAS windy. But it was also very humid and the jacket was cooking me slowly. Alas, between the jacket stop, a real potty stop, and another dreaded false potty stop, I probably lost 3 minutes.

The hardest miles for me in most races are miles 13-20. But during mile 14 of Tybee, I noticed a spring in my step and realized I was smiling. Goofy. For no particular reason. I picked it up a little. Started passing people. I usually pass a few people in the last miles of a race, but I was passing tons. Am I cruising? Or did everyone just go out too fast? A little of both. I start playing leap frog with this older guy in an ironman finisher hat. He's NicePaceGuy... because every time I pass him, he says "you are running a nice pace". Then he passes me a few minutes later . Mile 23. I'm still going strong. I pick it up a little more. What's the deal? Was it something special at the Catholic School pasta dinner the night before? NicePaceGuy passes me. I pass him. Weeee....

I finish in 3:52:57. Cool. Especially considering the wind, the humidity, and the 3 minutes of silly stops I made. Cool. Just as importantly, I ran a 40ish second negative split... which means that I ran evenly. Both Saturday goals accomplished.

And then all hell breaks loose. Boom. Rain. Rain. Rain. I run a mile back to my car in the rain (hey, coupled with the mile I did to get to the start, and I actually did 28.2 on Saturday). The rain stopped soon thereafter, but I was very happy not to be a 5 hour marathoner on Saturday.
Drive to Ocala. In 5 hours, I stop at 3 rest stops to potty 4 times, plus a Wendys stop (2 potatoes and a salad. Almost some chili). The pasta meal at Ocala is suspicious. So I refuel at... Taco Bell. That's right. I carbo load/refuel at Taco Bell. Don't ask. It was there. I figured that I needed to eat 6,000 calories on Saturday to refuel and be ready for Sunday. In counting what I actually consumed, I hit 4,500. Uh oh.

Sunday morning. Time to run Ocala. It is 32 degrees and windy. It's Florida, jiminy crickets. The race is hard to find, but I make it in plenty of time. I'm there early enough to turn into a popsicle. Star Spangled Banner. We're off. And immediately, I notice two things:

1. I'm stiff, but I'm not dead. I start slowly, but I'm not hurting. At all.
2. Holy hell. Ocala is hilly. Who knew?

My Ocala race experience was really weird. I was totally zoned (out? in?) for the duration of the race. It was like I was a 3rd party watching the whole thing. It was sort of a figure 8 loop course... so I never saw the leaders. I remember that the rural setting was nice, but the traffic was sucky. I remember that the aid stations were fine, but that they used styrofoam cups. I remember that I stopped at a portpottie about mile 20. When I came out, all the aid station workers were kind of staring at me. So I raised my hands as though I just won something, and they all cheered. "WOOOO! I WENT POTTY... ALL BY MYSELF!!!!" They cheered more. And I ran off. And I was not hurting. Not even kind of. I didn't speed up in the later miles like I did at Tybee... but I didn't slow down either. I remember saying hello to some horses... lots of horses south of Ocala.

I finished in 4:02:58. 5th in my age group... partially because it was a hilly course, and partially because the fast people stayed home (due to the cold? the superbowl pregame that started at 5:30am?). The food at the end is almost nonexistent, but there's beer. I bypass the beer in favor of 3 full sugar generic colas. Go high-gly carbs go. I do not pee after the 3 colas and bottles of water. It's clear that I am dehydrated. I go back to my hotel room to take a bath and a nap. I hit my Sunday goals. Actually, I soundly thrash my 'beat 4:30' goal.

Two things from the TMI department:

1. I basically fell asleep on the toilet in "The Thinker" pose. Hee.
   
2. I chafed, just like at Disney. No, not my nipples or my thighs. Not my crotch-al area. Unh unh. My little fireman hisownself has been rubbed the wrong way! No! Yargh!

So the main thing I learned about running a double is that body glide needs to go on extra places.

Not really. I learned a lot more. Mostly, that I can do it. Also... in both this weekend and back at Disney's Goofy, I was soooo afraid of hitting the wall that I ran too conservatively. I could have beaten 3:50 at Tybee and definitely beaten 4 at Ocala if I'd tried. But I didn't want to 'splode.

But you know what?

I ran a double. 3:52 the first day, 4:02 the second. For a number of years after I was sick, my marathon PR was 4:04 (currently, it is 3:45). This weekend, I beat my old PR by over a minute. The day after running another full marathon.

I probably won't BQ this year, but I still think this was pretty cool.

You can do just about anything you want.

01/07-08/06 Disney's Goofy

The First Goofy

Disney expected "a couple hundred" folks would be interested in doing the goofy, and ultimately 3000ish brave crazy souls signed up. I was one of many. In my case, running tons of long races is pretty normal. I talked to lots of Goofy-ists, though, who signed up kind of on a whim. And not all of these people seemed to train for it. I have no idea how they did. More on THAT in a bit.

I trained for it. In fact, I ran a reverse goofy (I called it 'the serious') on Thanksgiving weekend: a full on saturday and a half on sunday. That gave me the confidence that I could do the goofy without spontaneously combusting. Other than that, it didn't teach me much.

So, let's talk about the weekend. Disney's Magical Express may be magical, but it isn't exactly what I'd call "express". I got to the Port Orleans - French Quarter on Thursday night... and went to the expo 20 minutes before it opened on Friday morning. There was already a snaky line out the door waiting to get in. Ooops. This didn't bode well. And once we got to the merchandise, much of the goofy stuff was gone - people had gotten to what little existed on Thursday. Incidentally, when I went back to the expo later Friday afternoon, basically ALL of the goofy stuff was gone. Oh, and the shuttles between the Disney properties and the expo? Kind of insane. Not magical. Nor express.

Time to race. I had two goals for this weekend:

1. I wanted to run the half in 1:40ish, which is good for me
2. I wanted my aggregate goofy time to be under 6 hours.

The half on Saturday was an out-and-back between Epcot and Magic Kingdom. I was in the first corral... but it was still unbelievably crowded as we got going. I knew early on that I wasn't going to have a good day and my goal was out of reach. My legs wouldn't move. Finish time? 1:50. Yuck. I was not happy.

Pop quiz, hotshot: Which of the following might contribute to a sucky race?

1. Running a full marathon six days prior in 75 degree heat, 75% humidity conditions.
2. Being forced to wait/stand/sit for TWO FULL HOURS in 28 degree wind chill conditions before the race.
3. Getting one hour of sleep the night before the race. Between my body clock being on west coast time and the need to get up at darkthirty to eat/prep/catch the shuttle, I only slept from 1:45-2:45.
4. Having a potty attack at mile 2. D'oh. I knew I should have visited the bushes beforehand. Didn't. Couldn't hold it. Lost a minute AND any chance of pacing myself properly.
5. Being sick. I am completely flu-like sick right now. I first noticed it right after the half. These things usually 'cook' for a day or two before you notice, so it was likely that I wasn't right during the race.

Yeah, there's a fine line between reasons and excuses... but all of those things were true and I definitely ran poorly. First goal - not met. Plus, I lost a little of my buffer for the second goal. In order to beat 6 for goofy, I now needed to run 4:09 or better in the full. Normally, this is a sure bet. But the day after a half? When I was already experiencing 'mummy legs'? Hmmm.
After the race on Saturday, I tried to eat eat eat. But I couldn't eat all that much (see, I was sick... and I hadn't quite figured it out yet). I don't much recall what I had, but I do know that it wasn't the typical pre-marathon carbo load.

Side note. I stayed at the Port Orleans French Quarter. They have these refillable cups that you can buy for 12 bucks... and you get unlimited drinks at either of the two Port Orleans hotels for the length of your stay. Highly recommended, even though the cups don't hold much (so you will refill your cup about 150 times during a meal).

Alright... so I noticed from the handy race map that the French Quarter was only a couple blocks from the race start. Wouldn't it be swell to sleep through the silly shuttles and NOT wait for two hours in the cold? Wouldn't that be cool? Nah, the race officials told me that I couldn't do it. Specifically, that the cops wouldn't let people walk it. So, like a sheep, I stupidly got up at darkthirty, took the shuttle, and waited at the start for two hours. During which time I watched other people walk from my hotel to the start. Fooey.

Now, Disney did a really interesting thing with their corrals. They had two different starts - red and blue. Red folks got to run through the front of Epcot. Blue folks ran through the back (the lands). The two colors merged right after Epcot into one course. What was interesting was that it was NOT "red is fast, and blue is slower". They alternated corrals. Red got elites, second fastest corral, fourth fastest, etc. Blue got fastest non-elite, third fastest, etc. I was in the second fastest, so I got to line up behind the elites. Interesting thing watching a few of the elites sorta saunter down to the start as we're all counting down the final 10 seconds. And then BOOM, fireworks, off we go. And that's the last I'd see of the elites.

After the merge, the course follows the beginning of the half marathon course up through magic kindgom. Then it veers off and you go visit animal kingdom, mgm, the boardwalk area, and finish back through epcot.

It was C O L D. But, unlike the half, it was not windy. I spent most of the race obsessing about my buffer and whether 4:09 was gonna happen and if I might hit the wall. I saw a few fellow Maniacs during the race and had lots of people ask me about my Maniac shirt and I recall that I talked a lot and I really don't remember much of anything. It was all very mushy. I do remember that the organization was great. I liked the HOOOOGE mile markers. I really liked that the early ones were lit for the pre-dawn hour. I liked the idea of the recorded messages from the race director at some of these mile markers. See, he'd come on and tell you about the upcoming miles and give you strategy tips. At least I think that was what was going on. Alas, I didn't really like the execution of this idea. It's kind of like encountering a band during a race... you aren't next to it for long enough to get the whole vibe. I never got to hear the full strategy... I was gone by the time he started talking about it. This was especially bad at M18. What I heard: You are coming up on the longest part of the course. The strategy I like to use here is... and that's all I heard. Gee, thanks for telling me that the next part is the suckiest.

In the end, I finished in 4:01, giving me an aggregate Goofy time of 5:52. I have no idea how this compares to others because they didn't do aggregation in the results... the Goofy results were posted alphabetically. Now that they know that people ARE interested in this, I hope they'll consider doing a little more with it. And I hope they print up more shirts and hoodies in S M and L sizes.

As for that 4:01, I ran waaaaay too conservatively because I was scared of, you know, scarywallmonsters. I had lots of gas in the tank when I crossed the finish line. And looking at some of my splits, I could tell that I pulled some (in hindsight) bonehead moves... including the dreaded false potty stop. The one where your brain says "YOU NEED TO PEE", so you stop to do it, but nothing happens, so you stand there trying to coax it out, tick tick tick tick, nothing happens, and you finally give up. I lost a minute to a false potty stop. I also had the mother of all UNNECESSARY walk breaks at mile freakin 24. I only walked for 30-45 seconds, but I didn't get my pace back afterwards - and usually I fly through the last two miles. I didn't need to walk.

Oh well. I'll definitely do this next year.

Favorite sensory memory: while it was way cool to see all the Disney characters (and I'm pretty sure that Hercules' babe was hitting on me in Epcot), there was something else entirely which has stuck with me. And it is a really odd thing. Right before/after magic kingdom on both days, there was a gigantic speaker that kept blasting the first few bars of When You Wish Upon A Star. Looped. Over and over. And it was so loud, you could hear it for miles. But the weird part was that it was NOT a nice piano or strings or a singer. No, it seemed to be some kind of Viking War Call Death Chant thingie. I have no idea what actually made that noise, but it still haunts me.

WAH DEE WAH WAH WANH WANH WAAAAAAH

Over and over again.

(I would later find out that this was the ship's horn from Disney's Cruise Line. Aha!)

Have I mentioned that I am now really sick? I am. I don't blame Goofy, though it is pretty clear that Goofy made it worse. I think being sick explains not just my (poor for my expectations) times, but also how I experienced the weekend. It was all very mooshy and surreal.

2006 (TX) Texas Marathon

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