Thursday, May 8, 2014

Race Recap: Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon 2014

Stars can and do align for races!  

I have been trying to do everything right for this race.  I followed a solid training plan, stayed injury free, ate right, hydrated properly and even got a good night of sleep before race day. 

So here's a quick breakdown of the day
Pre-race prep: all done the day before, number on my favorite Oiselle tank, gels in my spibelt, etc.

Alarm set for 3 pm: Wake up at 3:11 am good thing since I had the alarm on pm. That would have just sucked to oversleep your race.

On the road at 4:15am:  to met up with my chicas as we were carpooling down to Cincinnati from Dayton

Traveling:  oops forgot directions for parking, call hubby and have him send a picture of the directions since the website was being difficult.

Parking: right next to Paul Brown stadium

Bag check:  first school bus we walk by is the right bus for my bib number. 

Waiting time:  Inside the stadium, woman's bathroom without a line?  What?! 

Walk to the start line:  hardly 100 m away, no problems

The race:

1: trying to find my happy place and pace of 8:30
2: Yikes 7:57 pace, slow down chica.
3-5: keeping close to my pace, Best days of My life comes on as I run down mile 5 with tons of people, it was surreal.
6-8: Hills, knew about those, slowed my pace, looked for my friend from HS who is about half way up the "big one".  Found her, jolt of energy. 
8-9:  Always forget about this section of the course after the beautiful vista of the Ohio River. 
10-13: zoned out, the half had split and I found myself on my own a bit. My mile splits were off enough that I always missed them by the time I saw the mile clock on the course.  Running by feel I guess.
13.1: 1:50 feeling good.
13-15: hung out with the 3:40 pace group (mostly men). This was my BQ time so tried to stay there. Until we turned a corner and found a little but steep hill.  My quads were not having it.  Slowed down, then said F it and walked the last 15 feet or so.
16: was a turnaround, so I could see runners ahead of me.  This was the longest run I did in training so every after this was untested.
17-20: zoned out, there was a portion on the bike path which had HOPE written out, honestly don't know what I was thinking here. 
21-25:  These hurt, I was hot, the sun was out, no one really around me too much, I was timing my gel intake because I knew I was needing the energy.  I could see the Great American building further down the river but it looked so far away yet, that's were the finish line was.  Mile 21 the 3:45 pace group passed me.  There goes my training pace...
26:  who put that hill there, it's not much but I wanted to cry when i saw the rise in the road, then my music shuffled and I got the Olympic theme song going, the streets are lined with people and I just gave it what I could.  Anyone else use the Olympic theme in their race mix?  It never fails to give me a lift when I need it.

Finish: 3:48:19.  PR by 28 minutes.  I'm super happy with my time and my place top 8% of all woman in the race. 

Post race:  No Gatorade what was up with that?  I didn't drink it on the course because my gels have electrolytes in them so I only drank water but I was so sick of water! I ended drinking the syrup out of the free fruit cups they gave out.  There was plenty of junk food after but I didn't have the stomach for it and I was amazed to see how many people were just piling up the food to take with them.  Finally got out of the finisher's area and found my boys and hubby. 
my cheering crew, a bit tired after being in the sun and getting up early!


Overall:  it was a great race for me.  I'm proud of
my time considering the hills on this course.  The volunteers (Grunts) were amazing and all the crowd support was fabulous.  I will do this race again but I'm not sure when...

P.S. Love, love, love the finishing medals this year!




Stats: 



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