Another Wonderful Trip to Athens, OH!

This time the trip was being made for a half marathon.  Athens, OH holds the longest running marathon in the state of Ohio at 25 years.  It is also probably the most boring marathon in the state of Ohio.  Why did I decide to run this race then?  Two reasons:

1.      I went to Ohio University and try to find any reason to go back and visit my hOUme away from home.  Athens has such a weird mixture of beautiful scenery and crazy college kids getting really drunk.

2.      Athens Marathon is net downhill and a very simple out and back course.  The course starts uptown, goes down a medium grade for a quarter mile, turns onto a bike path and that is the level of complexity.  12 of the 13.1 miles are on the bike path or on a track.  Nice and simple but very boring.

The wonderful wife decided to tag along this time because her family decided to get a cabin in the area.  Most of Saturday was spent driving to the cabin (6.5 hr drive from Asheville).  Once we got there, the M.I.L (mother-in-law) had brats and mac&cheese ready for my consumption.  Yummm!!! Dinner got even better with lamb roast/ gyro combination.  I definitely ate waaayyy too much the day before the race.  Luckily it didn’t cause me any indigestion problems during the race.

Race Day

The gun was scheduled to go off at 0800 and I had a 35 minute drive from the cabin.  I got up at 0530 to eat my typical pre-race meal (beON Cacao powder, Earth Balance Coconut Peanut Butter, Bob’s Red Mill Rolled Oats, and a cup of coffee).  I was worried about the parking situation in Athens because the previous day had a couple fests in the town.  There were a lot of out of town visitors.  I was lucky though and got prime parking pretty close to the finish line.  I jogged up to the starting line where I met with my friend to go through some minor mobility drills.  I wanted to get warmed up but not waste any energy. 

I was pretty happy with my routine and decided to line up 5 minutes until the start.  The front line was looking pretty thin which was good for overall placing but bad for any pacing help or protection from the wind.

Gun went off and the games began.  The first 400m were on slightly uneven bricks so it was crucial to watch your step.  After the first 400m the eventual overall winner passed me and immediately started to get a gap.  Turns out he was a pretty elite marathoner who already qualified for Olympic trials.  His gap continually got larger and larger.  Most of the race I could not see him.  The guy behind me was also 3-4 minutes behind so I ended up doing the whole race by myself.  This was crappy because at times there were some serious winds that I had to battle.  It would have been nice to have someone to work with and block the wind. 

I hit the turnaround just past 38 minutes. This was a little bit slower than I anticipated which meant I needed to turn it up for the next 6 miles.  There was some confusion on mile marker locations and they didn’t end up jiving with the GPS watch.  After the race I heard this same complaint from multiple people.  I think the mile markers were placed short by a half mile.  This was only a problem on the second half of the race.  At about mile 8 my body started to feel the effort.  I started to see the pace drop off and negative thoughts entering my head.  The only way I could fend them off was by lying to myself about how much distance was left.  Breaking up the race into smaller chunks makes it easier for the mind to stay motivated.

I ended up crossing the line 90 seconds slower than goal time of 1:15 but was still very happy with the performance.  My coach and I did not get the ideal training situation because of a couple early season races and some occasional minor injury problems.  Next year I will try to find a half a little bit earlier in spring.  I think March will be a good time to attempt another half marathon.

I want to say thanks for all the support from my family.  It truly amazing how much a support system can do to one’s performance.  I also want to say thank you to my amazing and beautiful wife for putting up with all the hours of training and traveling.  Training on top of a 40 hour work week does not leave a whole lot of time for spending time with the wife.  I finally want to say thank you to my awesome coach Scott Proscia of IREP athletics.  Without his dedication and knowledge I would never be able to race at the level I currently do.  I am pretty sure he has an opening for one or two more athletes if anybody wants an amazing deal on one of the up and coming coaches in the multisport world.