5K Race Takeaway: Helping a friend reach a PR is so much fun!
Half Marathon Takeaway: Sometimes it’s just about finishing.
IL Marathon weekend started like usual with picking up our packets and running the 5K the night before.
- Rob and I would be completing the Half I-Challenge by running the 5K Friday night and the Half Marathon Saturday morning.
- Drew would be doing the Full I-Challenge by running the same 5K and then completing the Full Marathon Saturday.
- This would be our friend Katie’s second 5K and she was looking to improve her time from her first race. We decided to run together since we were taking it easy and we could help Katie get her PR.
Let’s just say this is the closest we have ever done a packet pickup and I was stressed. 🙂 I normally like to be at race events super early, but this was cutting it WAY too close, we were there just 15 minutes before the expo ended. Whew!
This year the 5K started on time and we eased our way into the start as the crowd got moving. I talked to Katie when she seemed to need encouragement and I tried to stay quiet when she looked like she was pushing hard and was focused. Rob and Drew ran with us and were enjoying joking around along the way. It was such a fun time running together as a posse.
Katie was able to push herself and take 2 minutes off of her time and finished in 36 minutes. Go Katie!
BTW….notice that Rob wore the wrong bib number to the 5K? 🙂 A good lesson learned! Anyone else done that before?
Afterward we headed home to get some rest.
The next morning we were up at 3am and on the road by 4:20am. We were way ahead of the 7:00am start and so I was much more relaxed about things than the night before. 🙂 We killed time doing the normal runner routine: put on bib (the correct one Rob!), get fuel into Spibelts, go to the bathroom a 100 times, ask Drew if he is ready about a 100 times. 🙂
The weather was gorgeous, 50s, sunny, and it was going to get quite warm. Beautiful if you are running the half, potentially miserable if you were running the full. Yet we stayed optomistic that it would be a good day for everyone.
Finally it was time to line up and say bye to Katie. Katie hung out at a nearby Starbucks to see us off. In the past the course has come back on the same road so I thought it would be a good opportunity for Katie to see us again around mile 10. Apparently the course had been updated and that was not the case. Whoops! Katie was able to find the course and see Drew one more time around the halfway point and he was looking good!
My race wasn’t going so well. It wasn’t going well from the beginning, which is always a bad sign. The first mile my legs felt dead. Rob was encouraging and said “maybe they will shake out in a couple of miles”. Unfortuantely that never happened. It was just one of those days where I felt like I was dragging my tree trunk legs around. I got to the 10K at 57 minutes. From there things just worse, I was just out of gas and ready to be done. I was off pace and missed my opportunity to be on live TV at mile 10 (info at the bottom of the post). I gave the crew high 5s and trudged on. Around mile 11 Rob was trying to keep me in good spirits and reminding me we were just out to have fun and that we hadn’t been training. I then said “true, and at least I’m not injured, I just have no gas today”. Well those words came back to haunt me at mile 12. I missed seeing a small bump in the road and tripped. One of those slow motion trips and I tried to catch my steps, but after three awkward stumbles I hit the ground on my right hip, scraped both hands and twisted my right ankle. I was flipped over now facing backward, seeing other runners coming up to me asking if I were okay. I laid there saying “go, go, go” and motioning them to keep on running. Rob was said “I’m not leaving you!” and I was like “no, not you, them!”. 🙂 A cop came up and help Rob get me to my feet. I haven’t been injured like this since a training run in 2010.
I think hobbled for what felt like a quarter of a mile. I started to cry from the pain, but mostly because my hands were so bruised I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pick up Chase. I just wanted the race to be over. At least I fell with only a mile to go, but it was hard to be near all the spectators and feel the energy of the finish and be so wounded. I told Rob I wanted to “run” in and so I ran/hobbled as best as I could to the finish. It’s probably worth mentioning that I didn’t care for the half marathon finish that wrapped around the side of the stadium. The surface was different and there were stumps from lights in the ground that would be a tripping hazard for people like me. In the end I finished: 2:12:54
With my injury I plopped down on a couple of bags of ice. I didn’t get our typical finishing pictures.
Afterward we grabbed some food and Rob went out to meet Drew around mile 23. I found Katie and we waited for the guys to get back. Drew was having an excellent run and was set for a huge PR, but after mile 20 he ran out of gas. The temps got up to 80, I’m sure that didn’t help. That’s part of marathoning though, sometimes it just doesn’t come together. Drew was able to tough it out and finish it: 5:25:17
Stats:
5K 36:16
11:39 Pace
Half Marathon 2:12:54
10:08 Pace
The medals – 5K, Half Marathon, and Half I-Challenge:
Previous IL Marathon Posts:
2013 – IL Marathon – 10K – 8.5 Months Pregnant
2013 – IL Marathon – 5K – 8.5 Months Pregnant
2012 – IL Marathon – 5K – 23:32
2009 – IL Half Marathon – 1:57:19
The Interviews:
For those that know me or have followed my blog for awhile, you may remember last year that the local news of Champaign, IL, Channel 3, covered my story of running while pregnant. Here’s the interview from last year.
They were back to do a follow up story on us now that we have Chase. Here is this year’s interview.
Chase:Every:Second 
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