Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon

The Red Felts descended upon Fredericksburg, VA, this weekend for the Marine Corps Historic Half.  As I've learned, the Marines put on the best races. Well organized and awesome course support!!  And when you need a push, there's something about a Marine yelling at you to "keep going" "you've got this"!!  

Pre-Race:  About 40 Felters met up for dinner the night before the race!!  A bit overwhelming at first, but completely awesome to meet up with friends who I usually only get to chat with online! 

Race Day:  A 5am wake up call is never fun.  I always question my sanity about racing on race mornings :)  We unfortunately didn't make the large RFRC meetup due to the road closures, but we had a small mini-meet up at the hotel.  The hotel location was perfection!  Walking distance to the Start/Finish/Expo!  It was nice staying inside until it was go time!

Course:  Holy Hills Batman!!   I was warned about "Hospital Hill", but I had no idea about the others that were thrown in for fun.  Gotta love the Marines sense of humor !!   I found a really great pace for the first 3 miles, then hit the 1st hill and completely lost steam (and started feeling the affects of the humidity).  After mile 5, I just couldn't get my groove back and then luckily met up with a couple friends along course!  Always a pick me up!  Running is such a mental game for me.  At mile 10, I can usually "suck it up" and say "only a 5K to go"!  Mile 10 for the Historic Half is where Hospital Hill started, so the last 5K was primarily all uphill!  OUCH!   Luckily Will.I.Am came blasting through my headphones with #thatPOWER right then.  Miles 11-12 were really, really hard.  I wanted to stop, I wanted to quit.  Then I found Ed on course again - gotta love the RFRC shirts!  I finished strong for the last mile in and my time was 2:18:07 for the Half.  Not my best, not my worst, but definitely my most challenging race to date, both physically and mentally.  And being presented your medal (which are HUGE) by a Marine is humbling! 

Running has shown me that you CAN do it, not to ever give up, and running with friends is the best gift ever!  This weekend was wonderful even though I sit here the following morning nursing sore muscles!  

If you've never run a Marine Corps race, put one on your to-do list!  They are the most organized and well supported races I've ever had the pleasure of doing!   Looking forward to October where I can see all these wonderful people again and to run with the Marines!

Marine Corps Marathon - Part 3 - The FINISH!!

Part 3 .... Yes, we FINISHED!!!.......

Miles 21-25: Crystal City.....pain in the quad.....OMG I have to walk again.....But the spectators were blasting the music and dancing and that kept my mind off it for the most part!! Really bad when you look at your watch and go "we can still beat 5 hours if we can do 2 more miles in 30 minutes" LOL

Miles 26-26.2 (.5 per Garmin): Very hard, uphill to Iwo, spectator ran into the runners to video his friend. Hope he got it on tape us yelling at him to "move out of the way". Then we heard our RMR ladies cheering for us, we held hands and finished together. As I almost decked the guy next to me for trying to block me LOL

After crossing that finish line, Crystal and I gave each other a huge hug and that's when the tears started.  Walking up to get our medals, the road was lined with Marines giving high fives and congratulating the runners.  It was awesome, just awesome!!!    And we BEAT Hurricane Sandy!!  Thank goodness!!

Then we headed into the area where the Marines were presenting the medals :)  No words...lots of emotion!!  WE DID IT!!

Saluted by a Marine presenting my medal.  Seriously in awe of these guys.  They're awesome!!

Unfortunately, after we got our medals, it went downhill from there.  We waited a bit to get our Finisher Photo done, but it gave us time to touch base with our friends and families!  I reported in to my husband that we were alive and well, and I got a big congratulations call from him and Michael.

FINISHER!!!

Now to wait to get all the photos from along the course :)

We headed to the Finish Area to get our drop bags and meet up with our friends.  It seemed like MILES to get there!  Didn't we do enough already ??   We found "Miles" along the way for a picture since we missed him at the Expo!!  

Me, Miles, and Crystal

Looking good for 26.2 in our recovery jackets.  These were actually toasty warm!

Run Mama Run ladies!! 

We finally got our stuff, found our friends, and decided to head on home.   OMG, the line to get into the Metro and/or shuttle buses were insane!!  I mean, it would have been over an hour to get IN to the Metro station.  So we walked (another MILE) to the next stop UPHILL to the next Station.  Best move though.  We got right on the train and headed home!  Walked back to the hotel, grabbed a Starbucks for the road, and got the car from the Valet!  Traffic was easy out of DC, so we were home quickly!! 

What an adventure this was.  I was lucky to have awesome friends along the way to take this on with!

Will I ever do another marathon.....???  Right now, I can't say "never" because the Marine Corps Marathon was so wonderful!  But I am really looking forward to going back to running Half Marathons and having some down time!

OOOOORAH!!!

Marine Corps Marathon 2012 - Part 1 - The Start

I really don't even know where to start with Marine Corps Weekend!  All the emotions, the highs, the lows, the friends, the Marines, the spectators, the Mile 20 group, etc.!  So I'm going to do this post in sections.  This will be Part 1.......

We were monitoring the weather constantly.  Hurricane Sandy was looking to make this a very difficult race, but what's a little rain and wind, right ??  :/ 

The morning of the MCM started with a 4:15am wake-up call at the hotel.  Although, it didn't matter, I saw the clock almost every hour with race anxiety/excitement!!  Grabbed some breakfast, then got dressed and ready.  My friends and I headed down and put the bags in the car (that valet took FOREVER)!!  Once we finally had that dealt with, we headed to the Metro!  At least that was uneventful, except for seeing a prostitute broker a deal, and then have a black cat cross our paths LOL!!  Washington D.C. at 5:30am !!

Our view walking to Runners Village!

Met up with a lot of other MCM runners along the Metro and headed to the Runners Village at the start.  Probably about a mile walk to get there.  Found the UPS bag drop, and we were all set!!  We made it there by 6:30 to meet up with the awesome RFRC group.  The RFRC group was created to support first-time Marathoners, and I was so happy to have found them during my months of training! We met, we huddled, we prayed, and we cheered!!   OOOOORAH!!!  


UPS Bag Drop!

RFRC Huddle!

RFRC!

Off to the Start line now!  Had to head up that way to use our special "VIP Potty" priviledges.  This was a perk to spending too much money at the Brooks store during the Expo.  I had to have my MCM Finisher jackets, so my credit card melted that day ;)   These were "porta potties on trucks", but they had running water and flushed!  And I can't forget the VIP Potty Butler handing out mints!!   So this was a much better potty experience for race !  Definitely worth it! 

VIP Potty !

VIP Potty Butler - this guy was great!

Now we're moving to the START line!

I had to stop and get a picture with the Marines!!

We headed into our corral.  We chose the 4:30 projected finish, just hoping we'd get settled into a nice pace right from the start (eventhough our goal was to #1 - FINISH, #2 - Rock it under 5 hours)!  

Almost ready to go!!

 

Once the National Anthem was played and the Osprey military choppers flew over, I really got a big punch of nerves in the gut!  I had to completely just take a deep breath and tell myself "you've trained for this, you've got it"!!  Not sure I believed myself though LOL

The race began with the National Anthem, and then two Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 22 MV-22B Ospreys flying from the Pentagon over the starting line!!

They fired the Howitzer and we were off!!   It took us 10 minutes to get to the actual start line from our corral !!

And we're OFF................

 Stay tuned for Part 2 !!

Women's Distance Festival 5K

Well, I will say this was a great race in terms of organization and support.  But not so much a great race for me, personally.

My head was NOT in this race this year.  I'm in the midst of MCM training; its been a hot and humid Summer, and I did not wake up feeling great!  Honestly, I wanted to shut off the alarm and roll back over in bed, but when friends are expecting me to show up..... I show up!!

I met up with all the RMR ladies for the obligatory pre-race picture !!   This is why I got out of bed!  Good friends to suffer  run with!

Run, Mama, Run ladies! 

After the pic, we moved up to the Start line.  Still not feeling this race.....but we're off, and then my music wouldn't start.  Ummmm, I feel like hell, it's hot and humid, I NEED motivation!  While I made my way through the bottleneck of runners in the first 1/2 mile, I managed to get my music working and find my pace.  It wasn't great, it wasn't horrible!  Then Mile 2 - the great side stitch that would stay with me for almost a mile!  Then Mile 3 - "oh thank God this is almost over"!!   As I sprinted into the finish, I felt as if I was going to die, throw up, pass out, etc.  And my thought was ..... oh, I get to go run 15 miles tomorrow .....this sucks!

Me (far left - see, armband in hand - had to stop fixing music for photographer LOL)

Well, I don't look tooooo miserable yet!

So again, my head was NOT in the game here!!

The organizers and volunteers did a fantastic job, and I'm sorry my mood couldn't go along with the great race they put together!  Next year, I don't plan on any marathons, so maybe I can go back to enjoying 5K's again :)

Rebel Race 2012

Well, I can finally say I did a "mud" race!  I definitely overcame a whole lot of not wanting to get dirty issues today.  The first obstacle was just running through a water/mud pit, but it got me wet, dirty, and over it!  LOL

Today was all about just having fun with friends.  In the 100+ degree heat, you really just didn't want to do anything more than that anyway!  Kind of scary when you show up and see people being taken out by ambulance!  A lot of heat exhaustion issues!

I was quite happy that I managed all the obstacles (minus 1).  Out of 22, that wasn't bad.  The 1 I wouldn't do was a repeat of one I had just fallen down from that was much higher.  I had already whacked my knee, so I decided not to break anything and skip it!  I really need to work on that upper body strength!! 

Most disgusting obstacle - the pond......blech!  Never wanted to throw up over a stinky pond before LOL  But it was horrible!!  I'd go through the super deep mud pit again over that pond!!  The photographer got some good pictures of us going through the mud pit.  We were laughing hysterically the whole time!

Take a look at that gross pond!  The smell was 100 times worse!!

Over/Under obstacle!  Pure MUD!!

So a really fun day in extreme temperatures, we made it all the way through, and had a lot of mud to show for it!  The only real complaint I have is that the generator to the water truck broke, or the truck ran out of water and standing around for another hour in direct sunlight waiting to get hosed off wasn't an option!  So we used whatever water we had left and baby wipes to get as cleaned up as we could to head home :)

Rebel Race conquered!!

Before

After

Frederick Running Festival - May 5-6, 2012

Awesome, inspiring, exhausting, joyful, strength, perseverance, healing, determination, and best of all friendship, love, and pride are all the words I can think of for how I feel about this weekend with the Run Mama Run Ladies!

I've been looking forward to the Frederick Running Festival for a year now.  I volunteered as a Course Marshal last year, and I had so much fun cheering for all the runners, and my friends that were running it!  I thought to myself "you can do that"!  I had only run 5 miles by that point in May 2011.  Well, a full year later, and 3 other Half Marathons under my belt, Frederick would be my 4th.  Frederick is home turf and I knew the course, as I had probably run every inch of it over the year!  I was so excited for this weekend.  Well, then a few months back, my running buddy convinced me to join her for the "Nut Job".  This is where you run the Twilight 5K the night before the Half Marathon.  As I don't like to run back-to-back days, I hesitated, but figured "why not?"!!   My game plan - run the 5K very, very easy.  I was joking to the ladies as we started out for the 5K that I was shooting for a PW (personal worst) on the 5K because I refused to get hurt before the Half.  Even running my super easy pace, I still came in 7 seconds under my very first 5K time.  It just made me realize my training has really paid off over a year's time!   And the best part of the Run Mama Run ladies sticking together for the 5K was we helped push a friend into a PR (personal record) for her 5K. 

RMR Ladies that ran the Twilight 5K (I'm 2nd on the right)

After heading home, a hot shower, and some major stretching, I headed to bed early as my alarm was set for 4:45am.   But I didn't need the alarm.  My excitement for race day had me up and rolling at 4:30am.  Funny, I wasn't sore, I wasn't tired.  I wasn't even really that nervous because I was so excited to see the HUGE group of RMR Ladies that were running the Half that morning, with probably 1/2 of the ladies running their first Half Marathon.  I was excited to be apart of a group that trained with them, encouraged them, and hopefully inspired them!!  It was going to be a very emotional day as we had shared stories of why we run, what it means to us, and who we run for over the days prior to the race.  I'm an emotional person to begin with (tearing up as I type this), so I knew race day would be the same!

We met up, took fun pictures of the group, and were interviewed by the Frederick News Post (click here for the article) because our shirts tweaked their curiosity of what our group was all about.  Our shirts have "Run Mama Run" on the front and our slogan on the back of "Run when you can, Walk if you have to, Crawl if you must, Just don't give up"!   Then that time came.  It was time to line up at the Start.  A few of us started in the same pace corral, and we all hugged and wished each other luck as we started the 13.1 mile journey through Frederick!

Seriously the most awesome, strong, inspiring women you could ever meet!!

 The weather actually was overcast and drizzly for the first 4-5 miles.  Wish it had kept raining.  It was better than the yuck humidity that replaced it!  

This Half for me was almost split perfect....meaning I hit almost every mile at or just under a 10 min/mile pace.  I was happy with how it was going.  I didn't go out fast, and I saved my energy for what I knew was a tough back half of the course.  Glad I did as the back half was tough after you've already gone 7+ miles.  Once I hit East Street for the last time, I knew it was almost over.  I just had to push it and leave it all on the road.  But I knew what was coming.....Highland Hill at mile 12.5.  Crap.....I was cruising in at a dangerous 9:10-9:30 pace coming to the hill, but just told myself that Highland was my ^@#$! (fill in bad words here), and that I WOULD NOT WALK.  It was the end.  I was almost done.  No freaking way was that hill getting me.  Then there was this lady on the hill.  I seriously thought it was my own Mom from the distance (it wasn't but looked so much like her), but she was jumping up and down, screaming "You can do this - You're halfway up this hill, Go Go Go"!  I thanked her for being the cheerleader I needed just at that moment!  I hit the top of the hill, turned into the Fairgrounds, saw another friend cheering for me. Awesome!!!  Gave a high five and gave the last of my energy to the track (praying I wouldn't twist my ankle).  As I took the last corner, 3 Run Mama run ladies were there cheering me on!  What an awesome feeling to have your friends there !  I crossed the finish line proud and knew I had met my goal for this race!!

RMR Ladies cheering me in the last stretch!

New PR  2:10:35 - My goal was a 2:10 Half Marathon :)

 

I'm a Nut Job :) Conquered the 5K & Half Marathon!

But the story doesn't end here!  The most important part of this day for me was approaching!  I made it back to the track (hobbling) where the other ladies were in time to cheer in the majority of our 1st time Half Marathoners!!   It was so awesome and emotional to see everyone of them come in.  Even more emotional to see a couple of our ladies go back out and run our RMRs to the finish, over and over, after running their own race.  I hope they all know that I would have loved to have been able to do that, but I could barely walk down to the track when I was done.  Hope my big ole loud cheering mouth was sufficient to help carry them in to the Finish!  I think I cried more hugging my dear friend after her race, than I did after my own 1st Half Marathon.  Just as proud as a mother can be of her children, I beamed with pride for every single lady that ran !! 

Photo courtesy of Bill Green (FNP) - Two awesome friend show the true spirit of RMR!!

 And speaking of my own children, Michael has been wanting to run with me for awhile now.  So I signed him up for the Kids Fun Run (1/4 mile).  He did awesome, sprinting at a pace that made me struggle to keep up, and finished in 1:51 (which is an 8:39 min/mile avg pace).  So proud of my little boy :)

Michael and I coming into the Finish for the Kids Run ;)

Frederick Rescue Mission 10 Miler - Why I love Hometown Races

Frederick Rescue Mission 10 Miler - Race for Recovery

This was a really great race.  From registration to packet pickup to timing chip pickup to the start, this race went off without a hitch!  For an Inaugural race, they had every detail worked out.  The volunteers at the water stops were wonderful (and stops were well placed).  The police support along the course was awesome, and they were out there cheering for us with a smile instead of a grumble (which I've unfortunately experienced before).  The spectators coming out to a small race is always nice.

The course - NOT flat LOL   But when I saw the course map posted, I knew the roads and knew what to expect, so I wasn't too worried about it, but hills at mile 8.5-9.5 are never welcome.  I approached this race as "just another training" run, since I was still feeling the Half I ran last weekend.  I should approach all my races like that because I ended up with a new PR for the 10 Miler (1:36:49).  

And why do I love hometown races ???   Because I thoroughly enjoyed running and chatting with people I knew, and meeting some new runners along the way, just enjoying the conversation and the beautiful afternoon hitting the pavement.  For me, I think I smiled most of this race.  It was so relaxed and enjoyable for me.  I loved high-fiving all my friends on the way back since this was an "out and back" course.  Made my day to see their smiling faces, especially since this was a "first" 10 mile race for most of them!  So proud to be apart of them reaching new goals and being there to cheer them into the finish!!  

And it's the support of this group where we don't leave when we finish, we wait for each other, we go and run group members back in if we think they might need a little more encouragement or motivation to take on that last hill or mile!  Those types of stories are what make running so enjoyable and inspirational to me!   It also made me a little late that afternoon (LOL), but I wouldn't have it any other way ;)

Here are the wonderful Run Mama Run Ladies!  So proud of every one of us :)

Love these ladies! :)

Crystal helping Jen bring in the last mile :)

LOVE the Finisher Medal.  I have a thing for lighthouses ;)

SunTrust Rock N Roll USA Half Marathon - Anxiety, anyone?

Only 2 more days to the Half Marathon!

Not sure why this one has me so ramped up with anxiety.  I've run 2 Halfs prior to this one and have covered the mileage and training all Winter!  Maybe it's the crowd size (20K) ??  Maybe it's the fiasco of the Hot Chocolate Race ingrained in my brain??  Maybe it's the sore calves ??

Well, whatever it is has 2 days to take a hike!  Because, here we come D.C.!!

Welcome to March (6th) !!! Random Ramblings!

Wow, can't believe it's March, and this Winter took it easy on us (knock on wood)!!!

MCM - In 1 1/2 more days, I'll be sitting at the computer trying to get a registration for the Marine Corps Marathon.  That just makes my stomach tighten in a huge knot!  26.2 miles is a LONG way!  That's what cars are for, right??   But I already can get Half way, so what's another 13.1.....LOL  I'm trying to talk myself into believing I can do this!  But hopefully, I get in and have 2 friends by my side as well!  Running buddies are the best thing ever, even the ones who talk you into a marathon ;)

Break Away 5K - my 1st 5K race of the year is this Saturday.  It's a 5K in support of a great local charity, Heartly House.  Unfortunately, my love for the 5K race has dwindled as I've taken on distance running.  The thought of trying to even get close to my 5K personal record (PR) scares me.  I'm not sure I have that speed in me for this, so it may just be a "speed work" run in prep for the Half the following weekend!

Hard to believe that I signed up for the Suntrust Rock N Roll Half Marathon to keep me motivated to run all Winter, and now, we only have 12 days left !!!!!   Awesome and frightening!!  LOL

So I have a time goal for the RNR Half, and though I've practically maintained the mileage all Winter, I have slacked in the strength training area this time around.  Hope that doesn't bite me later.  But if it does, I'll make sure I don't repeat that mistake for the Frederick Half in May.!

Then I signed up for the Mission 10 Miler the weekend following the Half!   What was I thinking ???