Blood, Sweat and Beers: December 2013

Ever since running the Philadelphia Marathon, my knees have been letting me know that running two marathons in two weeks is not something they would like me to do again. To let them know that I understand, I have been giving them a break from running and looking to more cross-training activities to keep myself occupied. This has led me to working out indoors. On the dreaded elliptical trainer.

As someone how works in a fitness center, I see the use of the elliptical by all shapes and types of people: the overweight guy thinking sweating to the oldies for 60 minutes is going to help them "get back into college shape"; the middle-aged mom, working out with her hair down and barely breaking a sweat; the sorority girl, decked out in her AOII gear and her spandex, trying to sweat off the booze from last night; the "runner", who never actually runs but thinks that, because the elliptical is "running-like" they can call themselves a runner; the person just looking to "do a little cardio"; and the injured athlete, forced to work out on the elliptical because they were told by their doctor, physical therapist, athletic trainer, etc. that they aren't allowed to do whatever it is they were doing before because that's what made them injured.**

I will let you all figure out what category I fall into - and as a hint, my sorority letters were LAX.

As I am forced inside during the season that is my favorite to run in (perhaps I will one day write about why running in the winter is so much better than running in the summer), I am also forced to do a workout that I don't even really consider a "workout". Running on a treadmill is bad, but at least it's still running. Doing an indoor bike workout is torture, but at least it's on my own bike and it's a taxing, sweaty endeavor. However, the elliptical is just plain boring. Any piece of "cardio equipment" that you can feasibly read a book while using should not be considered a piece of workout equipment. I mean, I guess if you're going slow enough you could read on a treadmill, but one false step and you're going down - and it won't be pretty (just ask K-Ray). But on the elliptical, it's pretty much a standard. I have yet to really break a sweat on any of my workouts and sometimes I'm even wondering if I'm doing something wrong. Maybe my efforts would be better used elsewhere - like perhaps watching paint dry?

So, now you can all understand why the writing has come few and far between - there hasn't been much to write about in these four weeks since Philadelphia. I guess I could rehash all of my favorite elliptical workouts (hill climbs! random hill workout! speed!) but it just wouldn't be the same as writing about a training plan or workouts that actual matter. The good thing is that, come January, I'll be back at it because this girl is planning on a 70.3 in June, which means training starts early next year.

But, until then, you can find me on the elliptical. Can anyone recommend a good book?

**All opinions are those of the writer. However, in my defense, I dare anyone to go into their local gym and tell me that these categories don't exist or that I am wrong. I might be mean and I might sound callous, but you also know that I am right. Also, to any sorority girls out there - you totally know that I am right so don't go off about how "I don't know what I'm talking about". (Except Ei, because she was the rare breed of athlete-sorority combination.)

It's finally here - the much anticipated recap of the Philadelphia Marathon. Seeing as how this is coming roughly ten days after I actually ran the race, things may or not be taken out of perception. Things get fuzzy after a couple of days, but sorry I have a life and spent all of last week not doing anything other than be lazy. Which I guess translates into me actually having more than enough time to write a recap but chose to do other things like nap, eat and drink adult beverages in my spare time. Oh well - I do what I want! Anyway, here goes nothin'.

Race Weekend

Since we have amazing friends that live in Philly (what up Swizzos!) and they allowed us to sleep in their swank pad, SJ and I hit the road right in time for rush hour traffic on Friday afternoon. Things were going smoothly until we got stuck for literally twenty minutes going roughly 100 feet somewhere in Manhattan. (However, before you judge us for taking a route through the city, we checked the traffic and it really was the least awful of a truly awful situation.) Once out of the city, however, it was decently smooth sailing on down the Jersey Turnpike and into PA.

On arrival to Casa de Swiz, we were greeted by none other than Walter himself, aka: Wayne Swizzo, who was well-equipped with a box o' wine for he and SJ to nurse through the evening. Seeing as how I was down there to run a marathon on Sunday, I opted to go for a few IPAs of the Long Trail variety since I was, ya know, "taking it easy". Mrs. Swiz was out at a wine tasting for the evening, so the three of us kicked back and put our comfy clothes on and had a blast just chatting away. It was a great night and perfect to just relax and hang out.

Saturday morning, SJ and I woke up and got ourselves suited and booted to head into Philly to the expo and to see some sights. Mrs. Swiz came home that morning so we were able to see her for a few minutes before popping down the street to catch the next train into Center City.

Race Expo/Packet Pick-Up

Packet pick-up couldn't have been easier even if I was literally the only one running the race that weekend. Alright, that's probably a slight exaggeration since if I was, in fact, the only one running the race I would at least have requested that they mail me my race number and t-shirt instead of making me go get it at a race expo. However, it was amazingly simple.

The expo opened at eleven and we arrived at the expo around noonish, so I don't know if we were early or late, but we certainly missed a large chunk of the crowd. While not nearly as big as the NYC Marathon expo, the Philly Marathon also has roughly a quarter of the number of participants, so I wasn't expecting to be knocked off my bar stool with amazingness. The expo itself had your typical race-y type things: places to buy last minute items (that I sure hope people didn't run in the next day, although, in hindsight I did buy some arm warmers that day that I wore the next day, so do as I say, not as I do?), Philadelphia Marathon race gear at hugely overpriced prices, a Gore-Tex booth that was full of all kinds of cool waterproof goodies, info about other races in the area or not anywhere remotely close but would be fun to visit (ie: Bermuda), and then there always seems to be one random booth that seems to have mixed up their expo dates but decided to stick with it because maybe someone just might want to hear about Gutter-Guards and/or lawn sprinkler systems while at a marathon race expo!

Awkward public photo in front of the race sign.

After picking up my race number in an effortless manner, SJ and I strolled the expo for a bit, looking at odds and ends. We ended up running into two people that were on our original Ragnar Cape Cod team last year and who we see at various events across Long Island. We exchanged bib numbers and decided to meet at baggage check the next morning before we all went to our respective corrals. They also ran New York this year, so we were all running on tired legs (there's were decidedly more tired however, seeing as how two weeks before New York they also ran a 50k or something crazy like that. Weirdos.)

Seeing everything there was to see made us starving so we hopped upstairs to the Reading Terminal where we had an absolute mind-f*ck of food choices to pick from. Seeing as how we were both so hungry and totally overloaded on smells, we both opted for some kind of sandwich, which we then proceeded to eat outside standing up. I got Thanksgiving on a sandwich, complete with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce and SJ got a Reuben. Yep, going for the big carbo load the day before. Any Philadelphian will tell me that we didn't do Reading Terminal any justice, and they would be absolutely right. But I was hangry and SJ just wanted to get me fed before I went all Hulk on her, so I guess we'll just have to go back. Also, you try finding your way through this:


That's me when I'm not fed in a timely manner. We try to avoid this situation at all costs. And by "we", I mean SJ.

Lunch consumed, we headed on our way for a little tour of Philadelphia. We took in the sights in the historic district:

And then meandered our way through the Old City and back to the train. Unbeknownst to me, since I never really looked at a map of the race course all that much, we ended up walking somewhat of the same route that I would be running on the next day. Fancy that!

The Swizzos made reservations for us at an Italian restaurant in Manayunk for that night so that I could carbo load before the big day. The food was amazing, even if half of us didn't get the correct order, and I'm sure the Guinness that I never got was delicious. But we had great company and a lot of great laughs, so it was well worth a missed pint. After that is was off to bed for SJ and I so that I could get my ~~beauty~~ rest for the big day. But not before laying out my race person:

Race Day

Philadelphia and New York are like a tale of two races. I was up bright and early on Sunday morning so that I could get dropped off as close to the race starting point as I could. Walt had amazingly told SJ and I that he would get up to drive us in since there would be some road closures and he knew the back ways to get us close to the starting point, which was the Philadelphia Art Museum (think: Rocky):

They dropped me as close as they could to the museum, which ended up being not even a ten minute walk, around 6:20am, which meant I only had about thirty minutes to kill before needing to be in my corral. I wandered my way over to bag drop, which, once again couldn't have been any easier, and took off the clothes that I had worn down and made some last minute wardrobe decisions based on the early (7:00am) start time. I knew the weather was supposed to creep up into the 50s later that day, but since it was still relatively chilly out at 6:30, I opted for the arm warmers and kept my long sleeve shirt on, knowing that as I warmed up in the first mile I could ditch it somewhere. (Side note - remind me that I need to start saving my crappy long sleeve shirts, rather than giving them away. I'm running low after these last few races.) I met up with Steve and Katrina and we all said good luck before heading towards our respective corrals.

The one downside to race morning was the severe lack of porta-potties at the race start. I was waiting in one line for roughly ten minutes, having moved about ten feet forward, before deciding to try elsewhere. I overheard someone saying that a friend towards the front of the line had been waiting for close to 45 minutes. Seeing as how it was getting close to race time, I had a decision to make: wait in line and possibly go off in a later corral or just run until the first porta-potty stop. Lucky for me, I waited in line and ended up making it with about five minutes to spare before my corral went off. However, I'm sure there were quite a few people forced into some really problematic decisions.

There also wasn't anything offered to racers that morning. I didn't see water stations or any type of Gatorade or PowerBars, etc. anywhere in the athlete's area. While I know that we weren't required to wait around for roughly four hours like we had to for New York City, but considering they suggested to get to the race start between 5 and 5:30, you would think there would be something for people to eat or drink if they wanted it. Not everyone remembers to bring water and/or munchies with them.

The Race

The race starts and ends in the exact same spot, which is great. The first wave went off right at 7, and then each wave went off about two to three minutes after, so there wasn't a lot of waiting around. I have absolutely no idea if they lumped both half-marathoners and marathoners together in the same corals, but I am assuming they did because there were quite a lot of people that split at the halfway point. Even so, the corrals weren't super packed and the volunteers weren't exactly Nurse Hatchets about letting people in and out of the corrals. I managed to weave my way up through to the relative front of my corral, and by "weave" I mean walk in a straight line because it wasn't exactly full to the brim with people. No one was elbowing their way up to the starting line and being all crazy. It was all very relaxed considering we were just about to run either 13.1 or 26.2 miles.

The first few miles took us through Center City to the Historic District and Old City, before running us along the Delaware River and then back through Center City again. It was a similar route to the one SJ and I had navigated the day before. We passed Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and I raced a freighter full of, well, freight, making it's way down the Delaware. (It won, by the way. But I think it had an unfair advantage of having both a tugboat AND the current to help it.) I had to stop and use the porta potties around mile 3 - I guess I had enough liquids before the race began after all - but other than that it was an uneventful first five miles.

Mile 1: 8:22
Mile 2: 8:06
Mile 3: 8:00 (oops)
Mile 4: 8:21
Mile 5: 8:26

I really had no goals in mind as to what pace I wanted to run, but I figured keeping it somewhere in the 8:30 range would put me in about 3:45. Clearly I went out a little fast, but seeing as how I really had no "plan", I was really just running with it (pun intended).

We crossed over the Schuylkill River at mile 6ish and headed towards Drexel University. We must have run along their frat row because it was amazing - tons of drunk college kids were lining the streets along the hills in this part of the race, offering beers to runners going by. I considered stopping, but figured that starting to drink this early in the race probably wouldn't be such a great idea. If I ever go back to do the half marathon I am definitely taking them up on the offer though.

This part of the course was where the majority of the hills are. There are two pretty decent upswings of about 100 feet, so not particularly grueling, but not fun either. Doing most of my training on the north shore of Long Island has prepared me for worse though, so having pushed through those bad boys I knew it was pretty smooth sailing for the remainder of the run.

After passing Drexel we reached the entrance to the Zoo and then did a little run around in Fairmount Park. My Philadelphian tour guide, Walt, told me that it is the largest public park in America, which is pretty neat. We actually ran through a few different sections of the park, at different times along the course, so I can't say I'm surprised by this factoid. However, I will file it away for a future Jeopardy! answer. This part of the course was actually pretty boring because there weren't a whole lot of people along the route to cheer us on. Since we were in the middle of a park, few people took the time to hike out to points along the course, so there were really just clusters of people at the easiest accessible place. This happened in quite a few different areas throughout the course - small chunks of distance where there weren't any people cheering - but it was never for too long and it wasn't anything that would make or break the event.

Mile 6: 8:32
Mile 7: 8:19
Mile 8: 8:31
Mile 9: 8:15
Mile 10: 8:36

We ran along the water for quite a few miles before crossing back over the Schuylkill and reaching the split for the half marathon and marathon. The course is a figure eight, so the finish is literally the starting line and it gives people the option of cutting it short if they decide they can't/don't want to finish the full marathon distance (however, it doesn't work the other way around; half marathoners can't just decide that today would be the day they go for broke). I'm not gonna lie - my legs were tired and my knees were already giving me some problems by mile eight, so it was pretty tempting to just veer right and finish the half and be done with it. But SJ and my Philadelphians were waiting for me near mile 17, so I knew I had to keep going to see them. So thanks guys, you inadvertently made me do a full marathon.

Mile 11: 8:20
Mile 12: 8:41
Mile 13: 8:36
Mile 14: 8:35
Mile 15: 8:33

As you can see from above, I had quite the problem holding onto a steady pace. This is probably due to a couple different factors. I wasn't dead set on finishing in any time frame a la New York City. Now before you say, "But what about your race goals?", that's not to say that I didn't have them, it's just that I wasn't going to be disappointed if I didn't hit my A goal like I was for New York. Yes, I had goals and yes, of course I was trying to achieve those goals, but I had no plan, no strategy, going into the Philly Marathon, which made keeping a steady pace difficult. I also had to keep telling myself not to go out too hard, too fast, too soon, because I wasn't quite sure how my body was going to react. I knew I wasn't fully recovered from New York, and once my calves started to cramp up and my knees started to hurt I knew that it was going to be a hard pill to swallow.

After the split, it was a pretty straight forward out-and-back along Kelly Drive and the Schuylkill. We passed Boathouse Row between miles 13 and 14, and kept going out towards Manayunk. I saw SJ and the Philadelphian Crew around mile 17 and gave them a big wave before crossing the East Falls Bridge, and then saw them again coming back across about a mile later. Main Street in Manayunk was packed with people cheering and right before getting into the heart of it some gracious people had set up a beer stop for runners. I opted not to go for it on my first go around, but passing through after the turnaround I figured a beer was just what I needed so, down the hatch!

Mile 16: 8:36
Mile 17: 8:30
Mile 18: 9:18 (stopped to walk through a water stop and down a gel)
Mile 19: 8:50
Mile 20: 8:35

I caught up to SJ and the Crew again at mile 22, where this happened. For those of you that can't see the video, here it is captured in pictures:

Where's my beer?

Yes, I did achieve my C goal of drinking at least one full beer on the course. I believe I did it in a pretty decent time, too, all things considering. I still have the cup as well - it's a souvenir. So after that, it was pretty much all downhill to the finish. I mean, really, after that I didn't have much else to prove. However, it just so happened that the 3:45 pace group passed me while I was mid chug - you can just make out the balloons up ahead of me in the last picture - so I latched onto their group for the final four miles. I actually had no idea what corral they had started in so they could very well have been faster or slower, but checking Alastair I was on pace to come in just shy of 3:45 so this made it easy.

Mile 21: 8:42
Mile 22: 8:42 (with a stop to say hi to everyone, and drink a beer)
Mile 23: 8:33
Mile 24: 8:28
Mile 25: 8:24

Once we hit Boathouse Row, I knew there was a little under a mile to go so I kicked it up a notch and pushed on. At this point I really just wanted to finish and be done - my calves felt like two bricks had wedged themselves under my skin and my right knee was I'm pretty sure just hanging on by a few strands of ligaments. The quicker I got finished, the quicker I could stop running. I rounded the back of the Art Museum and could see the finish line up ahead and went for it.

Mile 26: 7:57
Mile 27: 7:11

Total time: 3:43:02 (unofficially)

I know that this time will be off the official time because I stopped twice to use the facilities and then once to see SJ and everyone, so I'm thinking it might be somewhere right around 3:45-3:46. However, this is the actual time I spent running so whatever. The fact that the race directors still don't have official race results posted online is a bit ridiculous, so I'm just going to use my time instead of theirs.

Post-Race

Like any race, they funnel you along in the finishing chute for a couple hundred yards: pick up your medal here, get your foil wrap there, now move ahead to baggage claim, now here's some food. At this point it was actually getting pretty hot out - mid-60s - so I was glad to be off the course and getting some liquids in me. If the race had started any later in the day it would have been brutally hot out by the second half of the course, so the early start was a key advantage.

Since everyone was hanging out elsewhere, I opted to cruise pass anything that was happening and make my way to the nearest train station to get out to see everyone. The trains only run once an hour out to the semi-burbs so I didn't want to miss my shot at getting on it and having to wait around or figure out another mode of transportation. I walked/shuffled my way to the train and ~~slowly~~ hopped aboard for the fifteen minute ride out.

I don't think I missed anything at the official race end, however. I've noticed that at these bigger events, especially ones that take place in larger cities (Philly, NY, DC, etc.) there isn't a whole lot of action going on post-race. I don't know if it's just the sheer volume of people participating or the fact that each city offers so much else to do that people tend to not hang around afterward, but the lack of any kind of celebration afterwards is kinda crappy. There was nothing on the race website about an post-race gathering or party, so I figured I wasn't missing anything by making plans elsewhere.

Wrap-Up

I think it's time I switch to small-town races, where the after-parties tend to be more fun and the feeling of celebration is pretty much everywhere you go, rather than big-city races where you just really get swallowed up in the numerous other things that are going on around the city. I mean, obviously the NYC Marathon was amazing and seeing Walt and Sween made the Philadelphia Marathon great, but when I finish something big I want nothing more than to kick back and hang out with friends and fellow participants. And if we are being completely honest - which we are - then I gotta admit that the big races just don't do it for me; there's just too many people to logistically have a great post-race event.

However, I did have a fabulous time in Philly, where I proceeded to continue the in-marathon consumption of adult beverages post-race. I even cheered for the Eagles, so maybe that beer did go to my head!

I would probably not run in Philly again, or at least not the marathon. I've been there and done that and think there are other options out there before running it for a second time. I would like to look for a smaller race in a smaller town where I am the center of attwntion. Gosh, is that so hard to ask for?! No, but really, I have found over the past couple years that with bigger races - half IM distance, half marathon, etc - that a smaller venue, city, race makes it much more participant friendly. So here's to going small in 2014!

Blood, Sweat and Beers

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Ovals and Ellipticals

Friday, December 6, 2013

Quiet Times

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Race Recap: The Philadelphia Marathon