Renae near the end of the half marathon.
Last Wednesday Renae and I flew to Canton, OH in prep for the Air Force Half Marathon in which my sister and brother in law would be running the full marathon. I got to spend some much needed time with my niece and nephew. Thursday after they got out of school Renae and I took them to Build-a-Bear, then Cold Stone for some ice cream, Borders (got some books), and then Chuck'E Cheese. What a fun night.
We headed to Dayton after walking the kids to school, mom came with us to Dayton. We got to eat at Cracker Barrel and I stopped by my house in Grove City outside of Columbus. We got checked into the hotel and then headed to Wright Pat to get our race packets and Renae was running the 5K. I know, crazy, huh the day before running a half marathon. I bought some Vibram fivefingers at the expo, mom didn't like the color of them but they go with my running gear.
We watched the Air Force Drill Team perform and the posting of colors. There were 1800 registered runners for the 5K, yet they still had to make announcements that kids needed to move to the rear of the pack. With that being said when the base commander said racers to the ready, a 70 something year old lady lined up in the front line in a racing position with her fingers on her watch just like everyone else in the front line, however, when the commander said go the old lady don't drilled, smashed, and crushed. I almost laughed if it weren't sad that a 70 year old lady thought she should be up front with the 5 min per mile runners. Anyway I predicted that Renae would be in around 40 min or later so mom and I lined up at the finish line and watched people finish the race. The first runner came in at 16'37' crazy I tell you. Not to long after that mom said, "I see Renae". I looked up and saw the time was 35 min and I said no way, but then here came Renae running towards the finish line. She crossed at like 36,45". She said she would have been sooner except a lady collapsed in front of her and she had to help her down to the ground. When I asked how long she was with the lady she said about 3 minutes. Yeah Renae.
So we met up with Jeff after they got into town and decided that we would leave for the base at 0530 in the morning. We followed the directions given to us at the race expo which was given to 8000 other people. We made it to Hartman Road just fine but then ran into the a line of traffic within a mile and sat there until about 0635. Jeff and Christi rightfully got anzy and decided to bail. They started walking to the base and called and told us what was going on. We got onto the base and got parked about 0700 hours. We made it up close to the start line and heard the gun go off signalling the start of the marathon. We hoped that Christi and Jeff made it to the start before the marathon started. We waited in line for the bathrooms about 40 minutes.
Renae and I then made our way over to our start line and found our pacing team leader Kristen from Columbus, OH. She said she had run 26 marathons. We were in the 2h30min pace group. We started way back in the pack and didn't cross the start line for 5 min or so after the gun went off. It's been a long time since I've run in a pack that had no real formation, matter of fact I don't remember the last time I felt like a gazelle running in a herd. But quite literally for the first 3 miles we were grouped so tightly that it was hard to not get stepped on I hopped and slide and did a tango with 250 other people. It would have been much easier had we been running in formation to a cadence. Our pace group in the first three miles was averaging between 10 and 11 min miles. I managed to stay with the pace group until about mile 4.8 when I was exhausted. I walked and ate/drank a gel and then started running again. I finished 5 miles under 55 min so knew that I was on pace to finish under 3 hours if I could keep forcing myself to run when I wanted to walk. I was able to reach mile 9 by 1h50m so had 70 min to finish 4 miles. Mile 9 I'm not sure where we were in relation to the base but it seemed like we were running on a highway right in side the gate (which gate I'm not sure but it had a beat the gate sign). This hill was incredible and I walked the entire way up but then was able to run down it. At mile 9 they had orange halves and that kinda revived me. By the time I hit mile 10 I was seeing some of the people from my pace group so was feeling a little bit better. There was another hill shortly after mile 10 and I just put my head down and powered/willed myself running up it. We then ran back onto base around mile 11 and I knew I was almost there. I started looking for Christi as she was scheduled to finish right around the same time I would if I kept up my pace. When I was at mile 11 I was like 2h20min into my run. I had aspirations to finish at 2h45m at this time but wasn't sure if I could keep running as fast as I had been. As we rounded into the runway area around mile 12 was getting more and more energy even bending over a couple of times to pick up whole gel packs that people had dropped. I saw mom and the kids at mile 12.25 and ran over to give them hugs. I then started running harder because I knew I was almost done.
The last 3/4 of a mile was killer for me because we were on the tarmac and it was hot and falsely marked. As I hit the sign that said mile 13 I started running harder but realized that the sign was wrong because I ran another 4/10 of a mile after that sign. There were thousands of people cheering on the runners as we got to the finish line. I crossed at 2h50m15s and a full bird colonel placed my medal around my neck and then suddenly I saw my sister. She asked if I had seen Jeff, but I pretty much ran with my head down for the last 2 miles at least. I went and got some water and then stood with Christi waiting for Renae and Jeff. It seemed like it was forever that we were waiting but in reality Renae came in 13 min after I did. I needed to go use the bathroom so Renae and I sat down on the grass near the porta janes and waited for Jeff to come in. Jeff finished about 30 min after Renae.
Next was the process of hooking back up with mom and the kids and walking the 1.2 miles from the finish to where the car was parked, YIKES. I send Jeff and Christi off to catch up with mom as they needed to check out of the hotel. Renae and I walked/shuffled/zombied to the car and eventually found our way to the car and made it off the base. Yeah.
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