Cleveland 1/2 Marathon Race Report

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably saw the following status on my page this past Tuesday.

It is going to be a little weird to not be running an event at the CLE marathon on Sunday. I have run either the 1/2 or full marathon every year since 2009...

See the reason I didn't sign up for the race this year is because Kaelynn was competing in a figure skating competition in Michigan so we would be out of town.  Unfortunately the schedule of events isn't posted until about one week out from the competition.  I didn't want to pay the money to enter on the off chance that she would be skating on Sunday.  As it turned out, both of her events were on Saturday and we would be home Saturday evening.  One of my running buddies, Missi, didn't sign up for the race either so we made a plan to meet at the Metroparks and run our own 13.1 on Sunday morning.  Fast forward to Friday afternoon and I receive a fowarded email from Missi indicating that Team VW had free entries for Sunday's CLE marathon.  The only thing Missi typed in the body of the email was...interested???  I immediately texted Joe and asked him if it would be okay if I took the entry and used it as a training run.  He was okay with that so I emailed my release form and photo ID to my friend Patty so she could pick up my packet at the expo on Friday since I was headed out of town and just like that I was running the 2013 CLE half.  After taking care of the details, Kaelynn and I made our way to Michigan where we enjoyed a lovely dinner with my awesome cousin, Tiffany.  While we were at dinner, I received a text from Patty verifying that I was in fact going to be running on Sunday morning.

Thanks for getting us the free entry Patty

Kaelynn's first event was to start at 8am on Saturday which required us to be at the rink by 7:00am.  It was very early and neither of us had slept well.  It was not one of her best skates but she got out there and did it and learned from her mistakes.  Apparently, she took it to heart because she had an awesome practice ice session for her 4:11pm event.  She was determined to retire her Can Can music on the podium.  She skated her heart out and did everything her coach asked her to.

2nd place out of 10 girls.  Kaelynn by far was the youngest in her group!

After everything was said and done, it was time for the 2+ hour drive home.  We planned to stop on the way home to grab dinner.  As luck would have it, the rest stop we chose had pasta available and I was able to get some good carb loading in.  It took a little longer to get our food than we would have liked but it was worth the wait.  We finished up our dinner and then headed back to the car for the rest of our trip.  Kaelynn was promptly sound asleep within 2 minutes of me leaving the rest stop!  It was a long day for both of us!  I ended up pulling into my garage close to 10pm.  By the time we unloaded the car and I got everything out and ready for the morning, it was after 10:30pm.  I called it a night and hoped I would sleep well since my alarm was going off at 4:00am.  I managed to sleep pretty well and only hit the snooze button one time.  I got dressed and made my way downstairs to get my coffee and peanut butter toast to eat in the car on my way to Missi's house.  I arrived at Missi's house right on time at 5:30am and then we car pooled with our friend Bick to the race start.  In the car there was discussion of goal times and running plans.  I made it clear that Joe had told me to run it at my training pace for the first 11-12 miles and then I was welcome to see what I had left for the last mile or so.  Missi and I run very similar training run paces so we planned to stay together for as long as we both felt good.  We arrived at the stadium, used the restrooms, and then stopped for some pictures.

Becky, Bick, Seth, Missi, me, and Kim inside Brown's stadium

With our photo session complete we headed to the start line and wished each other well.  We crossed the start line about 5 minutes after the clock started.  Not too bad.  Missi and I, as well as Kim, stayed right together and tried to navigate our way through the masses.  It was incredibly crowded at the beginning.  We did the best we could and hit mile 1 with a 9:27.  This was definitely slower than our training pace.  We continued to do our best within the crowd of people.  It thinned out some and we did really well during miles 2-6 with splits of 8:40, 8:46, 8:56, 9:02, and 9:09.  The funniest part of these miles was seeing a picture of Missi and I on Facebook later in the afternoon.  I guess I was concentrating on sticking to the plan.

Missi is all happy while I am running  next to her and not even noticing the camera! HA!

Shortly after this photo, I unintentionally lost Missi in the crowd.  I just focused on my plan and went with it.  I continued to run by feel while not pushing the pace too much.  I was quite pleased with miles 7-12 with splits of 9:05, 8:52, 8:56, 8:52, 8:53, and 8:45.  Once I saw mile 12, I hit the gas pedal and gave it my all with a 7:47 for mile 13.  I was still feeling great.  Dare I say the pace almost felt easy?  I gave it one final push and clocked a 7:12 pace for the final tenth and crossed the line in 1:57:17.  The best part was I felt like I could have kept running so that has to be a good sign!  A few minutes later Missi came through the shoot with a smile on her face.  She had also run a sub 2.  I am very pleased that I was able to run the race according to the plan and not try and go for a PR.  The end goal of this training cycle will come to light on September 15, 2013 in Erie, PA!  While this wasn't a 1/2 marathon PR it was a huge course PR.  I have never finished the CLE 1/2 in under 2 hours!

Great day for a tour of Cleveland on foot!

I am so thankful that I had the chance to run CLE again this year.  Thanks again to Patty and Team VW for hooking us up with the free entry.

Keep running, you're simply the best, and you inspire me!!