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yes, right. i owe a race report. but first, i must build suspense!
i logged 85 miles in september, which is pretty good since i missed about a week and a half's worth of mid-week running (20 miles) due to a confluence of issues, not the least of which was cutting my thumb pretty badly and not wanting to deal with the assoicated pain while trying to log mileage. more than august, and a little less than july. overall, not terrible. i'm at 501 for the year.
so. beat the blerch.
as i reach back into the hazy recesses of my mind, i recall the course being described as a run through some paths in a park in morristown. so i'm picturing something akin to what i ran on in cross country in college - soft, mostly gentle trails through the woods, with some roller-coastery hills; challenging, sure, but sane; and also some roads mixed in for good measure. the course wasn't determined at the point we signed up, but how bad could it be, right?
flash forward to saturday. we park at the morristown armory, line up to get into school buses to take us to lerwis morris park. the race volunteers are doing their best to get everybody parked in an orderly fashion, stacking the cars in like any bulk-parking operation would. then this one jag-off comes in, blows past the line of at least 30 cars, and makes his own spot (facing the wrong direction, and kinda diagonally parked, natch!). like, dude, there's a shit ton of people ALL GOING TO THE SAME PLACE. if they're starting without you, they're starting without us all, too. his ladyfreind gets out, but then a volunteer comes over and actually makes the guy go to the back of hte line. which.. well, he kinda does, but not really, and tries to spin his tiress when he did. ooh, he was sooo angry... lol... and for nothing too, becuae he got on the same damned line as everybody else, and if he was really running late, he should've just gone straight to the park and tried to get in by the actual start.
anyways, with that nonsense out of hte way, we got onto the bus, got to hte park, and got ready to run. as we get there we notice, hey, there's some legit hills here. fun.
so the race starts, and there's matt inman, the oatmeal himself, at the starting line wearing a bacon suit. also noteworthy, as we got ourselves into the corral, we were treated to the soothing sounds of the motherfucking pterodactyl. fucking awesome. there was a tent selling oatmeal merch, and i was instantly sadened by my failure to bring a credit card along with me to the race. but anyways, the race starts, in fairly small waves of 20-30 runners at a time, every 20-30 seconds or so. altogether not a bad idea! the crowd was goofy and in a good mood, and generally happy to be there. it was an overall odd vibe, aas any internet-centric community/cult would tend to be, though generally positive and somewhat affirmational with a good bit of millenial/hipster ironic affirmation.
so yeah, the race starts, and the going is fairly easy. nice gentle wide trailway through the woods, a sketchy, but wide, wooden bridge over a little stream, some smaller but sturdier wooden bridges over tinier streams, and some roads. then it got interesting. at 3 miles, there was a big, massive slogging hill, sandy dirt with big ol' chunks of granite, like 2-4" jagged blocks, that were clearly brought in by an off-roading club to control trail erosion. those big rocks were just begging to destroy ankles, and faces, too, if they succeeded in their primary goal of bringing a runner down. they were not there naturally, that's for damned certain. anyways, navigating a big ol hill, fairly early in the race, with a bit of a crowd, was tricky, challenging, and at times punishing. but at that point in the race, i had enough room where i could mostly find my own pace up the hills. mrs.mm, however, was not as happy with the terrain, as her smaller feet couldn't absorb the giant rocks as well as mine. but she persevered, and we stayed together. the hill kept going up and up and up, gaining 100' in 1/4 mile. and then it went down again, almost as steeply. were it not for the giant rocks placed there, the trail thus far would've been fine. but hten after about mile 4, it took a turn. instead of hte giant rocks, there were now a massive tangle of raised roots all over hte place. at about 4.5 mile in, mrs.mm finds a root, rolls her ankle, and goes down, scraping her hand, but otherwise ok. as soon as she's up, another runner just ahead of us goes down harder, and busts his glasses. shit was getting real. the big giant rocks weren't nearly as prevalent here, though there were still a few, as well as those which should've been there naturally. luckily, we avoided any other issues in that stretch, which also featured some hilliness, and finally exited onto the roads. and a big paved hill. and then another big paved hill. well, at least there weren't any roots or rocks to dodge.
at just before 6 miles, there was a couch with a blerch. we stopped for pictures.
and then there was more uphill trail running. this hill was big, but the path wasn't awful. it was wide, and lacking in giant imported rocks. at 6.5 we got onto a park road for abouth a half mile, and then finally entered the park's trail matrix after mile 7. these were the surfaces i was expecting - good for running, or mountian biking, and not used for quads or ATVs, so no more of those fucking rocks.
also a thtis point i started noticing a distinct difference between the distance my phone was telling me and the distances on the mile markers, and mrs.mm's watch. now, you know me, i don't complain about these things. but our 6th mile, the one with the couch, was our fastest. no fucking way. also, there was a difference building between the two apps i was running. eventually, as i would come up to the 13-mile mark, dailymile would report out that i'd just hit 12 miles, where mapmyrun said i was sitting at 12.5. these apps were started at the same time, and running on the same phone. actually, mmr started about 10 seconds late, and had me running farther. what the seriously fuck? aaaanyways... we're on the regular trails. and, as we then come up to mile 8, we start to notice... hmm... we're starting to pass some really slow people. also, there are some sections of the trail here where it's maybe room enough for one person to run, and one to pass, if the other will allow it. frequently, they did not. we had caught up to the back end of the 10k, which started significantly after us. the participants were walking, and they were largely quite unhappy. they were clearly not expecting to tackle technical trails, and were likely just looking to take part in a big jokey fun thing where we all get to beat our blerch and laugh about eating cake while running. no, they were cursing every step, every rock, every root, every hill. they weren't nasty, but they were miserable. and it was infectious.
to this point, mrs.mm was struggling with the trickiness of the course, and the roots were trying their hardest to take her down. now, there were rolling obstacles, and we were no longer able to run our own pace, and have room enough to see what we're about to step on or in or around. after a few too many roots, trips, and near-falls, and one exceptionally steep downhill, mrs.mm's brain finally said, "hey, you, lets not do anything stupid anymore" and her race was effectively over. her hand was hurting, her ankles sore, and she was tripping over everything, while surrounded by a slowly moving roadblock of negativity and despair, and it swallowed her whole, as she admitted afterwards. her focus was gone, and she told me to run along ahead. this was at a little before 12 miles. i was getting frustrated, too, and she knew it. and i was no longer able to pull her along and she didn't want to pull me back.
i did my best to check my aggression for the last mile, as the trail was supernarrow and there was almost literally nowhere to go. finally... finally... we came down a little hill onto an open, flat section by the finish, that would curl around the staging area and a little lake. and when it opened up, i opened up. full throttle, like a cat in a bathtub whose owner just loosened his grip! i had SO! MUCH! PENT! UP! ENERGY! also, RAGE!!! i hit the 13-mile mark, passing my fellow runners with gleeful abandonment, and also a wee bit of self-consciousness that i had saved so much in the tank, through little fault of my own. and as i pass hte 13 mile mark, daily mile happily tells me that i've run only 12 miles. um, okay, sure. as i scan ahead, i see the rest of the course, and i know for damned sure that there's more than 0.1 miles left to this thing - more like a full quarter mile left as we continued our loop around the staging area. whatever, i was almost done. and ain't nobody gonna pass me. according to mapmyrun, i ran that last quarter at about a 7:40 pace. i know, i know, i was that guy. but i did ease up at the very finish so as not to blow by anyone like a complete jerk. i finished in about 2:25. i don't think the course was a full half marathon, and might've been short by a quarter mile. i mean, i don't think that my gps was accurate in the least - correction: i KNOW that my GPS wasn't remotely accurate - but i also know that the official mile markers were also misplaced. at least for mile 6, and the last 0.1. did it all even out? dunno... but i think it was short.
unlike mrs.mm, i'm really, really looking forward to doing htis race again next year. it was a more treacherous course than the other trail half i do that's local to me, but not more challenging. i think that i can, with even just a modicum of training, knock it out in about 2 hours. alternatively, maybe if i were running as fast as i would have wanted to, i may have taken myself out on all the rocks and roots... who knows.
there's a trail 8 mile in two weeks that i'm strongly considering doing, though my training plan says i should be running 16 miles that day instead... so tempting...
so, one thing i learned during hte race... whole wheat & nutella sandwiches should be at every aid station in every race ever. fucking brilliant, and really actually quite helpful. the cake, ehhh.... not so much.
the staging area at hte race needed work. it was simply too small, and disorganized. there was no clear setup for how the portapotties were to be queued up for. as we got there, there was a big ol line that brought people to the two dozen potties. and it had built up over time. there was a nother line next to it going the other direction for oatmeal merchandise, and then gradually, the people who had gotten onto that line thinking they were on the potty line peeled off and formed a second line on the other side of the potties. then everything broke down and lines formed in front of each pair of potties like it should have in the first place, but there was just not enough room for it all. there was also not enough room from the end of the finish line to where they were giving out medals and postrun food, and it backed up into the finish chute. the other issue was that the water stops were not at all ready to go during hte race. the volunteers were still trying to fill cups as people came, despite having had a ton of time to set up - the full marathon had started an hour before the half, and was on the same course. everything should've been good to go well in advance. similarly with the sandwiches - there was one stop where the volunteer was actually trying to make up the nutella sandwiches as people were coming. no, no, that just won't work...
that said, for a first year event, they did quite well. i got a sweet blerchy headband, stickers, and tattoos. i was really REALLY hoping that a blerch stressball was going to be included in the free stuff, but i guess not. mrs.mm had thought hte same thing, so somewhere along hte way, i think that impression had been given. but no matter, the free stuff was good, and commensurate with the cost of the event. a nice medal too, and a technical long sleeve shirt.
after the race, we stopped at starbucks and five guys. it seemed rather appropriate.
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in Bloomington, IN.
