Saturday, May 16, 2015

Panic at the Start of the 15th Ogden Marathon

WHAT a day! Wet, windy at times and cold, but in spite of the miserable weather it was awesome to hear about so many people getting PRs and Qualifying for Boston at the 15th Odgen Marathon this morning! Too many people to try to list.
I arrived at the bus loading area around 4:50, saw Eric Nelson, then Ryan Delany. I was supposed to meet up with Marisa but was having doubts about finding her amoungst the 5000+ people attempting to get on the buses. After giving the bus driver a little assistance so he could get out of the bus so we could get in the bus. We piled on, Ryan and I settled down into comfortable seats (compared to the school bus seats) and lo and behold who sits in front of us, but Marisa, Heather and Mandy, Marisa's neighbor. What are the odds they'd be on the same bus as us?
THE skies looked promising at first and I thought we may luck out. While waiting for the start it tried snowing a little, then the sun shone
and it felt so warm, but quickly disappeared again. It was difficult to decide what to wear for the race. Marisa was torn not knowing if she should wear shorts or capris. She was lucky to choose the capris. I took off the plastic bags inside my shoes as I thought I shouldn't need them. I had short smart wool socks and I had noticed the upper part of the bag was irritating my ankles below the compression sleeves. I also put away the big garbage bag with the hole for my head, as I had a rain jacket I thought would work just as well. Marisa and Heather decided they needed to make one more trip to the porta-potties, then the announcements for drop bags were being made warning us we were running out of time. Ryan took all of our drop bags, but we
still had Marisa's drop bag and her hydration belt but no Marisa. With a 2 minute warning we decided to put her bag in the truck. Then we heard over the loud speaker something about Mandy, so we rushed over to the announcers truck and there was Marisa panicing that she didn't have her hydration belt, including her MP3 player and she couldn't find us, plus still had things she didn't want to carry in the race. Items
dropped at aid stations in the race were going to be donated so that wasn't an option. We decided to throw her extra stuff into a black garbage bag and hope for the best that she could retrieve it at
the end even though it didn't have a tag or number on it. We got it into the truck just as they were closing the door. Panic over.
THE rain was still holding off when the gun went to start the race, but that was soon to change. I would guess not more than a half a mile it started drizzling. I had a cap that kept the rain out of my eyes, but I could feel the rain cooling the rest of my body. Marisa and I kept a pretty consistent pace to start, we were running slightly ahead of the 4:30 pacer but she eventually passed us. We met up with Julianna and Andrea and I was able to get their picture.
OUR hands were feeling the cold. Marisa had given me some hand warmers which I was carrying in my hydration belt so we pulled them out, opened them and stuck them inside our soaked gloves.
I think I've felt more heat from day old used tea bags! If anything it was tepid, they may have even been sucking the heat that remained in our fingers to heat themselves up. Marisa's wasn't working either and I figured they must have gone past their expiry date if they have one. My feet stayed cool, but comfortable even though they got very wet, thanks to the smart socks. And no blisters at the end of the race either.
BOTH of us were wanting to use the porta-potties but at each aid station there were lines of people so we held off until the Half start where we figured there'd be tons of units with no lines.
We were so wrong. There were hardly any there and there as a long line of people. I'm sure we wasted 5 minutes or more before we crossed the 13.1 timing pads. We also met up with Ruthie and Royce at this point. The race had timing pads at numerous points of the race and at each one I wondered if anyone was watching our time. Turned out Katie was stalking us! So cool to hear about later.
AFTER this point is the part of the race I really don't like. The hills on the west side of the lake. But for some reason they didn't seem so bad in
this years race and were over in no time. Mile 14 at the top of a hill, the aid station had one volunteer who was totally wound up. She had more excitement than all the runners put together. She was pretty cool.
BY mile 17 I was struggling to keep up with Marisa. She's a strong little runner! The effects of very little training, excess weight, plus 2 hours of sleep the night before were taking its toll. Picture taking had come to a halt as I couldn't use my fingers to operate the camera and by this point I pretty much had finished off my skittles and bagel, plus had some bananas at the aid stations.
MARISA was a little ahead of me around mile 18 and the 5:00 pacer passed me then passed her. I pointed this out to her and that gave her the incentive she needed! She steamed ahead. I was able to keep her in my sights for a few miles but soon she was gone.
MILE 20 I was done. 6 miles to go and I knew they were going to be slow. A girl passed me and complained she was so cold. All she had on was shorts and what looked like a bathing suit top with a cheap .99 cent clear rain coat. I was freezing, I couldn't imagine how she felt. At the next aid station I saw a chair with a bunch of emergency blankets so asked if I could take one for that girl.
I did, ran up to her and asked if she wanted it, she seemed appreciative, but just wouldn't walk or slow down so I could get it to her in a way she could use it. But I finally did and off I went, leaving her to sort it ut. Soon after though she caught up to me and passed and she kind of had it over one arm like she was going to get rid of it. I figured if she did, I would grab it and use it myself. When we left the road to get onto the paved trail, there it was strung over the bridge railing. It was mine and I wore that thing to the finish! Not sure if it helped much but who knows, without it I could have taken even longer to finish.
A number of times in the race we saw the guy who had a bathing suit on, no shirt, with a towel over his neck and snorkle and mask. He ran the whole marathon dressed like that! I'm not sure how he didn't get hypothermia in that cold!
JOSHUA Hansen was waiting at the home stretch and it was so nice to see a familiar face! He had run the half marathon that morning. I finally crossed the finish line, clicked off my garmin and had no idea what the finish time was. I knew it wasn't good though. I grabbed a tiny can of coke and started looking for Marisa, then saw Heather crossing the finish line. What a trooper, she had cut her finish time by a huge amount from her previous marathons, but I cringed when she showed me her chaffing on the inside of her upper thighs. It looked so painful! When I got home it turned out I had the same chaffing, but nothing like she had.
HEATHER suggested we get our drop bags which I had totally forgotten about. That gave me a chance to put some warm pants on until I got to the car. We made our ways to our cars and it turned out Marisa was in Heathers waiting. She DID find her black bag in the lost and found! They drove over to my car after a bit and we talked a little about the race, Marisa saying she was so happy she went with the capris. I told her next time I'll have to wear capris! That will be a sight!