I wrote briefly yesterday about my finish time and my first thoughts on the Flying Pig marathon .. it was a challenging day for me in many ways, and from what i’ve read, for many other people as well. Even though my finish time was 4:15, which was 15 minutes slower than I had planned for, I was still happy with the way I stuck it out despite the conditions.

This is definitely a first class event, I can see why its so popular. The between the expo, the freebies, the proximity to the local hotels, the crowd support, the water tables everywhere you turn .. and most importantly, the volunteers. I always spoke about the Steamtown marathon having the best crowd, I think it just got topped, thumbs up to the city of Cincinnati and surrounding communities for making us feel welcome.

I have a series of pictures I wanted to share, but it seems my blackberry didn’t make it through the trip this weekend, its dead. Verizon is sending me a new one, but i’m without my blackberry (and dealing with withdrawal because of it).

So here is how the story goes through my eyes:

pre-race

I watched the news in Cincinnati on Saturday night only to find that although the weather was expected to be warm, it was going to rain hard and not let up all morning. We’re talking downpours with thunderstorms and even flash flood warnings for the entire tri-state area. I chuckled to myself that this is always what you hope doesn’t happen for race day, but I guess its the reason why we runners train in ALL the conditions, because you never know what race day will look like, this is the perfect example.

I got up around 5am to head over to the starting line which was about 4 city blocks from the hotel.. or so I thought. When I woke up, it was raining, I mean raining .. I checked the news and they were expecting the heaviest rain right around the start of the race at 6:30am. I thought to myself that I didn’t have any real rain gear with me except my running hat since I was so far from home .. I dressed as light as I could, knowing that even though I put on multiple layers of vaseline and body glide in all the important places, chaffing and blisters were going to happen regardless.

After mentally dealing with this weather, it was finally almost 6am and time to head to the starting line and start to deal with the pouring rain. I made my way down to the stadium, only to find that you actually had to walk the 4 city blocks, and then around the entire Paul Brown stadium (using the crowded stadium walkways) in order to get to the start. And worse yet (if I hadn’t mentioned it), it was raining, I mean really raining.. I was absolutely soaked by the time I even got to the starting line at like 6:20am… which was much later than I wanted to be there. Thank heavens I didn’t need to use the bathroom before the race. Then we all stood there and waited, in the rain. There were some ‘ahh’ moments from the crowd when the lightning was flashing all around us in the dark morning sky, and then it was followed up by cracks of thunder. I somehow knew it was going to be a tough day however I did try to think positive in thinking that it could be worse, right? It could be 35 degrees and raining, which would make for an even tougher day, so things could be worse ..

At this point it was 6:25am, and the wheelchair participants were off .. just at that moment, the rain increased even more (if it was even possible). There was still some fun to be had as we bounced a beach ball around the crowd at 6:30 in the morning, in the pouring rain, what else would I want to be doing, right?

Finally, the race starts although we never would have known because we couldn’t hear anything because of the rain .. it took about 2 minutes for me to get through to the starting line and actually start running, which for a marathon of this size, seems about right … but the worst part is that I was cold and wet already. I think its one thing when you head out in the morning to run knowing you’re going to get wet eventually, but to start out your run soaking wet (shoes and all), just makes for a different kind of feeling. It felt like I fell into a swimming pool with my running clothes on, then got out and decided to run a marathon.

Miles 1-5

I had trouble getting into my rhythm and pace right from the start .. i’m thinking that it was the mental impact of the rain coming down so hard, and then the concentration on trying to avoid other people, puddles, trash bags (that people were wearing to stay dry). Basically it was a challenge just to get through the first mile. One kind of dangerous thing I noticed about the start of this course is the fact that the city roads we were running on had medians that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Talk about a tripping hazard, i’m sure someone took a spill on one although I didn’t see anyone do it.

Regardless, the first 3 miles were real bad for me, I expected to run about a 9:05/mile pace and after 3 miles I was past 30 minutes already (with mile 3 being a 10:00/mile).. so naturally I thought to myself that I have to pick up the pace to make up the difference, i was already 3 minutes off and I had just started. This was one of my mistakes, I never should’ve kicked the pace up as hard as I did… I pushed it and got back into a more normal pace as we were running through the downtown, and the rain had not yet let up, it was still pouring…

One thing that I didn’t realize is that I can now say that I actually ran in the state of Kentucky as well as Ohio because it wasn’t until the night before that I realized that miles 2-4 of the race have us crossing the Ohio River twice (once into Kentucky, and once back into Ohio). I’m not sure that means I can mark Kentucky off my 50 states marathon list yet, but it was something I was not expecting.

So as we headed out of the city, the rain finally slowed down a little bit, but now came the hills that I was expecting … my pace at this point was below a 9:00/mile averaging 8:45/mile ..

miles 5-15

I had studied the course pretty well to know that miles 5-8 are where the largest hills are on this course, but I failed to realize that the remainder of the course had a large amount of rolling hills, which I was not expecting, but we’ll get to that later.

As the rain let up a bit, I tried to dry out a little bit by ditching my hat and wringing out my shirt as best as I could. Now we were then faced with some strong winds .. nothing worse than being soaking wet and have the wind blowing on you. One thing I can say about this course though is that there seemed to be water stops EVERYWHERE, almost everytime I turned a corner, another water stop. I didn’t like the cups they used though, it gave the water a strange taste, but it didn’t stop me from taking it.

Anyway, I attempted to switch gears running up the hills so I would take it easy, but it didn’t seem to work so well as my pace was right on target as I passed mile marker 8 .. I was happy that I made it up the worst part without an issue, but forgot that I was running hills and I should have taken it easier. As things leveled out a bit, I finally got into my planned pace for the next few miles, despite the rolling hills.. so far, I was feeling good except that with the rain slowing down, it was getting increasingly warmer.

I had worked hard up until the half-point of the race to make up time and I was back exactly on target with my planned finish time at the half-point of the race. yep, I made it back to 2 hours exactly when I got to 13.1 miles. I always tend to try and do an assessment at this point of how i’m feeling .. the result? my quads were feeling some burn from the downhills and my upper left groin muscle was a little sore from the uphills. My core muscles were real sore though too … not sure why, but they were. I wasn’t dehydrated as of yet and I felt like I had enough energy .. Overall I knew I was still in decent shape.

miles 15-20

The rolling hills seemed to have picked up at this point .. I remembered back to when I did Steamtown, and how the rolling hills beat you up because most of the time, you don’t even realize you’re running hills and you’re pushing your normal pace. This caused me to start paying better attention to the ups and downs of this course, and although there were no “major” hills after mile 10, I still classify it as a hilly course. The unfortunate thing is that I really thought I had studied the course well enough to know what to expect, but I guess not. This caused me to not let up on my pace at all despite what I saw coming up ahead as far as hills go.

About mile 16, there was a nice gentleman passing out bottles of water .. so I swiped one of them up and continued on my way as the rain started to pick up again. About mile 18 though, the 8:50-9:00/mile pace up the rolling hills started to take its toll on me. I started feeling winded, like right in the pit of my stomach, like I couldn’t get my breath .. I slowed down a bit to compensate and then started to cramp up a bit on my right side, I knew my pace was catching up with me now.

I managed to slow down the pace enough to relieve the cramp and catch my breath, but the rolling hills would not let up as I headed into the last portion of the race.

miles 20-finish

The rain continued to come down as I ran past the 20 mile marker .. I had blisters on both my feet and I was chaffed on my thighs and around my waist, it hurt to even move, but I pushed on. At this point my quads and hamstrings were starting to burn also, things were slowly falling apart… I still wasn’t dehydrated and thankfully my stomach never took a turn for the worse like it did at the Ocean Drive, but it was the other stuff that was the issue.

Finally around mile 23, the course leveled out a bit as the rain started to lighten up again. At this point my pace was pretty slow, around 10:30/mile. Everything was hurting at this point .. leg muscles, ab muscles, foot blisters, the chaffing everywhere, even my shoulders were sore..

We finally turned the corner at mile 25 to see the last actual hill on the course as we approached the city. That hill hurt, it really did hurt, but I knew it was downhill from there and you could see the finish line from where I was. The crowd cheering helped me push through those last steps as I looked ahead to see people dressed in pig costumes everywhere… A big sigh of relief hit me as I passed the 26 mile marker and knew I was there.

Finally, I crossed the finish “swine” and just stopped, literally stopped … I had to lean against something because I was so sore. After a minute, I made my way through the recovery area to get my medal and some nourishment.

The day after

What a day it was … everything is sore today, I mean everything, legs, abs, back, shoulders, and i’m not sure why. Maybe I overexerted myself during the race, i’m not sure. Its a good burn though, the type of burn you get after a good workout… although it will take a few days to get myself moving again..

So 2 down for the spring, one more to go in 6 weeks, which should be a small, fun marathon … I know i’m a marathoner because i’m excited about the next one already…

Thanks to everyone who supported me with their comments, tweets and emails over the last few days, it really does make a difference…

Well, i’m off to rest… thank heavens I took a day off from work today ..