Philadelphia Half Marathon and my 2014 BRM contest winner

Hey kids,

It's been fairly eventful couple of weeks since my last entry. I ran my Fall goal race (the Philadelphia Half Marathon) and selected the winner for my 2014 Blue Ridge Marathon free entry contest.

The Contest
As I have been saying for the last several months, I would eventually be hosting a giveaway for free entry into the 2014 Blue Ridge Marathon. That contest began a little over two weeks ago. After compiling the entries, I selected the winner in the most scientific way I knew how: I put each entry on a separate sheet of paper, and then selected a winner at random from a top hat that I stole from a country club in 2009.

Dr. Peter Venkman- unimpressed at how long it took me to actually find a use for this hat.

The winner of my contest was Peter Morgan, currently residing in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He and I have had numerous seemingly-random encounters over the years. He first taught my Environmental Science merit badge class at Camp Davy Crockett in Tennessee, circa 1998. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that he actually lived in my hometown of Abingdon, Virginia, and even attended my high school girlfriend's church. Then, a couple of months ago, when I was running on Forbidden Drive near my apartment while wearing my Abingdon Football t-shirt (which I call my Miracle Shirt, since I've had it for around 15 years, have run literally hundreds of miles in it, and it still looks practically new), he flagged me down and asked if I was the guy that, "won the marathon in Roanoke." I recognized him right around the time he told me his name. Ultimately, his name was the one that I pulled out of the hat. This pleased me, largely because his entries were hilarious (see link to contest blog entry above). Anyway, he has confirmed to me that he will be running the double marathon event. I have confirmed to him that I will be running the "single marathon followed by setting up shop at the beer truck" event. Congratulations, Peter!

Philadelphia Half Marathon

In my entire running history, this was the first time that I had ever trained for a half marathon specifically. It largely stemmed from both the foot trouble that I had earlier this year and my overall need to just get faster. My training runs got all the way up to 18 miles, which was surprising to me, but I felt good about the faster workouts I had done over the last couple of months, as well as my handful of 10K-15K races. My only concern going into the race was that in the couple of weeks leading up to it, I was putting in a lot of long hours at work on my feet, and my legs felt sluggish and heavy. In the week leading up to a big race, ideally, of course, your legs feel life returning to them as you run less to rest up after months of abusing them. I felt no such return of life, and my concern for them was compounded when, on my last easy four-mile run the day before the race, my legs just felt like shit. They were really tight and sluggish and not what I wanted to be feeling after months of 5:00am and 8:00pm runs, both usually in the dark. I put on compression socks and stayed off my feet the best I could for the rest of the day and night and hoped that the months I had spent teaching my legs to rapidly recover would pay off. Since Meghan lives in Center City within walking distance of the start/finish line, Jeannine and I engaged in what has now become our Philly Marathon weekend tradition: We go to Meghan's, I walk to pick up my race packet, she makes us dinner, and Meghan and Jeannine do arts and crafts for the race the next morning. 

They did not disappoint. 

I ended up getting a really good night of sleep, waking up in time to have some coffee and do some reading, and get to the starting line with plenty of time to spare. I walked outside, and the first thing I thought was that the weather was perfect. I walked to the start/finish area, jogged around a bit, and then tried to get in line for the bathroom. This was a disaster. I stood in line for 20 minutes, and it literally moved less than ten feet. Realizing I would not get there in time, I tried to find a bathroom elsewhere with no luck. This means that in my time normally devoted to using the bathroom or warming up, I got to do neither. Seeing that the race was about to start, I just had to basically say, "Fuck it. Either this goes well or it doesn't." And so, with my cold-ish legs and my unsure stomach, the air horns blew to start the race, and I proceeded to throw myself down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in excess of 11 miles an hour.  Since my goal pace was 5:20 per mile,  my coach gave me specific instructions to go through the first mile at no faster than 5:20, maybe even 5:25. Naturally, I went through in 5:11 (dammit!). It definitely felt like I was moving, but it felt manageable. Any anxiety I may have felt was made somehow both better and worse by the fact that some of the mile markers were either inaccurate or had inaccurate clocks attached to them. They said that I went through two miles in around 11:10 (way slower than I was actually going) and six miles in around 29:45 (way faster than I was actually going). The middle miles went back through Center City, and there were a lot of screaming spectators lining the streets, which was great. I saw Jeannine and Meghan twice, which was a nice pick-me-up amid what felt to me like a pretty aggressive pace. There were a handful of runners near me, and we would take turns leading one another. We were probably in the 18th to 25th place range, with a big pack probably 30 seconds to a minute ahead of us, and then a couple of guys out front at sub-five-minute pace. Maybe not out of my league in a couple of years, but definitely right now. At around 8.5 miles, the cheers started to get louder, and I was quite sure that it wasn't because I suddenly became more awesome to look at. Just as I suspected, the lead pack of the full marathon started to catch up to me. We ended up running together from around mile marker nine to around mile 11. As we made the hairpin turn onto River Rd, I had the inside of the turn and had to make sure that I didn't elbow any of the tiny African guys surrounding me in the face. Once we made that turn, I took back off ahead of them and tried to make a strong drive over the last two miles. I was more or less right on pace to break 1:10, which was my goal. I tried to stay on the inside of the turns and run the shortest distance possible. As I passed the 13 mile marker, I got to hear the announcer incorrectly pronounce Bryn Mawr (it's pronounced brin mahr and he pronounced it brine mahr). Once the clock came into view, I saw it said 1:09:forty-something, and I started sprinting. I ended up finishing in 1:09:55, five seconds under my goal time. Especially given how bad my legs felt the day before, I was really happy with the time.

My stomach was quick to let me know that if this had been a 14 mile race, I would have enjoyed no such success. I found Jeannine and Meghan quickly (unlike last year, when I had to borrow a police officer's mobile phone), and shortly thereafter found Valerie's parents, whom I had met when she and I did the Philly Triathlon relay this past June. Valerie was also running the half, and she was due to finish at around 9:30. We all spoke for a few minutes as I put on my normal post-race attire (compression socks, sandals, and Wolf Hills Brewing Co. hat). Val finished in around 2:04:00, with which she seemed pleased. We met her at the "family reunion" station where meeting places are arranged by last name, and made lunch plans that involved, for me at least, a lot of beer and meat and fried things. We then waited for Jeannine's cousin Claire to finish running the half as well. We found her siblings Tom and Sandra, who ran Run the Bridge along with me two weeks prior, and we all waited together. Claire finished in a little over three hours, and seemed elated to be finished, and maybe even more elated that we were all waiting for her at the end. We got to recount this in greater detail when she, Sandra, and Valerie all came to our apartment to watch the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode the following weekend. Meghan, Jeannine, Valerie, and I went on to get lunch at Perch's Pub. We all had burgers. We all had beers. Happiness ensued. 

Anyway, I've been taking it easy since then. I've done quite a bit of easy trail running. Typically, my running group, the Manayunk Running Club, which is a subset of the Bryn Mawr Running Club, will see me for a few minutes on sporadic Tuesdays and Thursdays, at which point I usually show up late (thanks to my work), do my own workout, then leave immediately after while everyone else hangs out for a beer or two. I decided that the Tuesday after the race, I would make sure to be able to join them for beers and burgers. We all went to Kildare's in Manayunk for happy hour, and I got to feel like not the least fun person in the world for once, which was nice.
As for training I will consider myself "in training" again on December 1st. At that point, I will finally be training for the Blue Ridge Marathon specifically. This means that I will basically spend all of December running a lot of miles and hills. Then, in January, I will start doing focused speed work. For right now, my stomach is still hoping to return to normal size after Thanksgiving. You know who's really healthy? Future Jeff! That guy will sort it out! Now, time for leftovers!

Have fun,
Jeff