Drake Relays half marathon is held every year the last Saturday in April as part of the Drake Relays. The Lincoln half marathon is a companion half held in conjuntion with the Lincoln marathon the first Sunday in May. So for 2011, I was able to run the 2 events Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st and pick up states 44 and 45.
Race week brought me some weather related news regarding my online running log. After not being able to access Buckeye Outdoors website for a couple of days, the following message appeared in the website Thursday evening:
And I thought running in the rain was my biggest weather related issue!Buckeye Outdoors has suffered a major outage. A series of electrical storms first knocked out the backup servers that were located at the backup up location. Then the unthinkable happened 4 days later and a second electrical storm caused an extended power outage at the datacenter where the primary Buckeye Outdoors servers are hosted. The current situation is pretty grimm and I'm despritly trying to recover the data that has been lost. If I am un able to recover the data I will put the application back online but right now I am holding out hope and I even might send the Hard Disks to a data recovery place.
After starting out using nothing to record miles in my first marathon to using a stopwatch to click miles in my first few half marathons before getting a Timex watch with lap features to getting my first Garmin back in 2006, keeping mileage logs has become more and more important to me. So hearing the above news that the one place that had all my marathon and half marathon results plus other distance PR times had lost all data was somewhat troubling. However, Thursday evening was my normal start packing for a race weekend time so I did my normal post final training run laundry routine and started gathering items for my back to back running weekend. When running a single race while traveling, I don't pack my Garmin charger; for a double race weekend, I packed the charger to make sure I'd have enough battery for both races. With a wet Saturday forecast for Des Moines, I also packed 2 of everything (including running shoes) in case everything got soaked Saturday.
As 2 pairs of my size 13's could probably fill a carry on bag alone, I packed in a bigger bag and took advantage of my Continental One Pass elite access for the first time by checking a bag for free. After completing my packing for the most part, I headed to bed after 11 knowing that Friday would be a busy traveling day for me. I woke up early Friday with Waldo wanting his early morning breakfast as usual. After feeding him, I decided to get something out of the freezer for myself. I then discovered that my freezer was not nearly as cold as it should be; food was partially thawing out. After noticing frost in the back of my frost free unit, I got online and tried troubleshooting the problem. Around 4:00 in the morning, I was removing the back panel of my unit and cleaning stuff out with a brush and my vacuum cleaner attachment. I then replugged the unit and tried to get a little more sleep. After not much luck sleeping more and as much luck with the unit cooling down, I unplugged the unit and emptied out the freezer. I just left the kitchen with the refrigerator pulled out in pieces; this would become a Sunday evening project!
I dropped Waldo off at Cozy Paws on the way to the airport. Cozy Paws is really convenient and is a great alternative to more exclusive cage free dog boarding facilities that are further out in Conroe and don't do as well with problem pooches. You'd think with a picture with Caesar that they could handle dogs better. Just saying.....
I then made my way to IAH for a mid morning flight to Kansas City. A hassle free flight and a smooth car rental had me on my way for the 3 hour drive to Des Moines right around 1:00PM. I drove straight to packet pickup on Drake campus and then checked into the Hyatt Place downtown for my night in Des Moines. When I started unpacking, I discovered that my Garmin was nowhere to be found. Charger was there but turns out my Garmin was back in my dining room hundreds of miles away.
Saturday morning was cloudy and 56 with light rain having passed through the area earlier. With no Garmin to record my data (that may be eventually be lost with all my other data) I found myself without a watch for the first time since running the Great Alaskan Maritime Marathon cruise with the Bingham/Hadfield no need for speed gang. On that cruise, the running catch was to try and run your events at the same pace without using a watch in order to emphasize consistency versus speed (so I found out I'm neither fast nor consistent that week). Having run a half marathon in Juneau without a watch gave me some confidence heading into this event.
My one concern of going out too fast proved to be valid and would come back to kick me in the butt later in the race. One thing about the Drake field; well two things about the Drake field. Being held in conjuction with the Drake relays with high school,college, and open divisions competing at track and field events, there were true athletes all around the area and entered in the event. The other thing was with a 2 1/2 hour time limit, you only had serious race walkers and runners that could maintain an 11:30 pace.
The only clock I saw was at the finish line. Mile markers were painted on the ground so weren't easy to spot. Some miles had volunteers calling out times but many did not. I started a few seconds after the gun so the times called out were pretty close to accurate. I ran the first 5 miles at an 8 minute per mile pace. The warmer weather, hillier than anticipated conditions quickly did me in and I found myself walking up quite a few hills later in the race. The route was quite beautiful; things were starting to bloom and it was a pleasant although tough course. After mile 5, I got a timer that called out a 1:25 time at mile 10 which was about 8:30 pace for me. The last 3 miles were at a 10 minute pace to put me at 1:55 for the finish. I could have pushed through but was holding back for Sunday's race.
After finishing, I got my medal and some post race food and headed back to the hotel to clean up and make another 3 hour drive west to Lincoln for Sunday's race. The early morning rain brought in a front that had me driving into 30 mile hour headwinds the entire drive. I arrived around 4 in Lincoln; checked into the Cornhusker (sounded like the appropriate place to stay on my only night ever in Nebraska) and made my way to the expo. The expo, restaurants, the start and finish line were all within walking distance of the hotel which was convenient. It was very windy Saturday and felt cooler than Des Moines.
Sunday morning brought weather in the lower 40s and calmer winds. I walked to the race area, checked my bag and lined up right in front of the 9:00 pace sign. The Des Moines hills had me somewhat concerned about what hills Lincoln would throw at me. I had read that Lincoln would have narrowing barricades at the start to attempt to spread out the race before the course narrowed around mile 6. With that said, it took me over 10 minutes to start post gun and didn't help much with the course narrowing later in the event. While the narrowing barricades was a nice attempt, it failed mostly because people lined up in the wrong spots. When you pass walkers walking 3 abreast within the first 2 miles of the race you know that the honor system just doesn't work. If you're going to attempt to spread out the race, use a seeded corral system to accomplish the task. I've run the Chicago marathon with 4 times as many people that didn't feel nearly as crowded as Lincoln was the entire 13.1 miles.
I was surprised that much of Linclon was run on a sidewalk starting around mile 6. A field of 10,000 running on a sidewalk made for a very crowded event. I was feeling great Sunday and was passing lots of runners. My times/splits are below:
| Location | Race Time | Time of Day | Overall Place | Division Place | Sex Place |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time | 1:49:36 | 8:59:52 | 1040/7212 | 72/235 | 694/2410 |
| 15K Split | 1:18:10 | 8:28:26 | 1121/7190 | 75/235 | 732/2405 |
| 10K Split | 52:40 | 8:02:57 | 1240/7212 | 79/235 | 791/2410 |
| 5K SPLIT | 27:27 | 7:37:43 | 1697/7206 | 96/235 | 997/2408 |
| ChipStart | 11:48 | 7:10:17 | 2332/7212 | 117/235 | 1186/2410 |
| GunStart | 00:00 | 6:58:29 |
My pace by split was 8:51, 8:29, 8:24 and 8:21. I felt strong the entire race but did tire by having to weave through runners the entire race.
The finish on the 50 yard line of Memorial Stadium was nice. Having a bigger race field than Drake, Lincoln had more spectators along the route. The finish area in the stadium was congested with spectators as well. Post race was another quick clean up and then hit the road for another 3 hour drive back to Kansas City. I got home about an hour later than planned due to storm delays. Plugged in the refrigerator and its working fine.....so far. Still no verdict on the Buckeye data recovery. Garmin is ready to run again. My quads not so much....ready for a post race massage.
