Today I ran the first race of the Appalachian Series. Today’s marathon was in Bluefield, WV. Bluefield is a community that spans the
Virginia – West Virginia border. The
course was 12 out-and-backs along a paved road that goes through Lotito
Park. The park is only about four miles
from my hotel, but driving there takes you across the state line four times.
We were running through both Virginia and West
Virginia. The start and finish lines
were located far enough apart that we started and finished on different sides
of the state line. That way, members of
the 50 States Marathon Club could count today’s race as either a Virginia race
or a West Virginia race.
My only goal for this race was to break four hours. To do that, I had to average 20 minutes for
each out-and-back. Normally, I could do
that pretty easily, but I was feeling unusually tired today. I didn’t sleep well last night. By itself, that wouldn’t slow me down, but I
also didn’t get much sleep Thursday night. The cumulative lack of sleep had me dragging.
When I left the hotel, it was 64 degrees. That’s warmer than I expected, but it wasn’t
going to get any warmer. There was a 50
percent chance of rain throughout the morning.
I wore shorts and a singlet, but I had a rain poncho in the car, just in
case.
Bib numbers for this series are apparently assigned
according to the number of marathons you’ve run. Numbers 1 and 2 went to Larry Macon and Jim Simpson,
who have each run well over 1,000 marathons.
I came into this series with 236 marathons, but I had number 17. Yeah, there were a lot of frequent
marathoners here.
About 15 minutes before the race, it started to
drizzle. That didn’t concern me too
much. Then it started raining hard. I missed some of the pre-race announcements as
I dashed to the car to get my rain poncho. If I was going to ne drenched for
four hours, I needed an extra layer.
For the first lap, the RD led us on a bicycle. There were two or three runners who took off
fast. I followed, but didn’t try to keep
up with them. We went through a parking
lot that was full of large puddles. We
were running diagonally across the puddles, making it hard to run between them.
Next we got onto a road through the park that we were told
had a few small hills. There were
actually seven or eight hills, but only four that were steep enough to make you
slow down. They were all short, but the
constant slowing down and speeding up made it tough to get into a consistent
rhythm.
After turning around, we did all the hills in the opposite
direction. Make that eight hills steep
enough to make you slow down. We would
run 12 laps. Do the math. This was a hilly course.
I checked my watch at each turnaround. In the first few laps, I was averaging 18
minutes per lap. That was a little
fast. By the end of my third lap, the
rain stopped, so I took off the rain poncho and brought it to my car. That took a couple minutes. After that, I settled into a slower
pace. I was still running 19 to 20
minutes per lap, which was fine.
Once the rain stopped, it was easier to enjoy the
views. The park was surrounded by hills,
and the leaves were a variety of colors.
My legs were getting heavy in the last few laps, but I was
able to maintain my pace. I finished in
3:51:57. Today should have been easy,
but I worked pretty hard to run that time.
Tomorrow we run the same course again, but I’ll be starting with sore
stiff legs. Breaking four hours tomorrow
will not be easy.
The medals for these races consist of one large medal for
the series, with additional medals each day in the shape of the state. Today, we had our choice of Virginia or West Virginia. I chose West Virginia. The medals chain together. Here’s what it looks like so far.
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