On July 19, I ran the first race of the Mainly Marathons Summer Camp Series. Summer Camp is a five-day series of marathons. All of the race venues are within 15 miles of St. Cloud, MN, so I’m able to stay in the same hotel for the whole series.
Yesterday, I ran the last
race of the Heartland Series. That race
was also in St. Cloud. Including
yesterday’s race, today was my second of six consecutive marathons.
Today’s race venue was
Bend in the River Regional Park, which is near Rice. Our course was 14 out-and-back laps on a
gravel trail.
At one end of the trail,
we ran by a historic farmstead.
At the other end of the
trail, we ran by three overlooks with views of the Mississippi River.
When I’ve run on this
course before, the aid station was set up in a parking lot. This year, it was in a pavilion that was
built a year ago.
This playground was also
a new feature of the park.
The temperature at the
start was in the mid-60s. The humidity
was so high that I drove to the race in fog.
I expected it to warm up during the race, but it didn’t seem like the
temperature changed that much.
I ran most of the race
with two friends who are both named Karen.
One lives in Minnesota. The other
is from Nevada.
I ran the first lap with
Karen from Minnesota. We ran at a nice
easy pace. After the first lap, Karen
needed to make a bathroom stop, so I went ahead on my own.
Running on my own, I continued
to run at a leisurely pace. My mile
times were between 11 and 12 minutes. At
this pace, I could have comfortably run the whole race without any walking
breaks.
During my third lap, I
caught up to Karen from Nevada, who was walking the 10K race. I walked with Karen for about two laps.
We were in our fifth lap
when Karen from Minnesota caught up to us.
She was running with her friend Cathi now. Karen and Cathi had also done a bunch of
walking, so they were also on their fifth lap.
They were now doing a run-walk mix.
They did one minute of walking for every three minutes of running.
I needed to resume
running at some point, so I started running with Karen and Cathi. When they were running, their pace felt a
little bit fast to me, but the walking breaks made it feel easier. I ran/walked with them for the rest of the
race.
My only time goal was to keep my time under six hours. At the halfway point, we were slower than that. Before starting lap eight, I needed to make a bathroom stop. Karen and Cathi started the next lap without me. I had to wait in line to use the bathroom. Now I was even farther behind schedule. I ran until I caught up to Karen and Cathi.
At least half of the course was through the woods, but there were also a few clearings. In the second half of the race, we started to notice a strong breeze whenever we came out into one of the clearings. That breeze ensured that we would never get hot.
For the rest of the race,
I was continually computing how fast our lap times needed to be to finish in
six hours. It seemed like we were consistently
running lap times that were a little bit too slow, and I wondered if I would
need to go ahead on my own at some point.
We typically spent about a minute at the aid station after each lap. If not for that, our pace would’ve been fast enough. In the last few laps, we made an adjustment to our pacing strategy. If we were close to the end of a lap when it was time to walk, we would keep running until we got to the aid station. Our time at the aid station was a sufficient rest break that we could resume running as soon as we left the aid station.
With that adjustment, our
lap times were now fast enough. With two
laps to go, we needed to average 24:30 per lap.
We ran lap 13 in 24 minutes, so we now had 25 minutes for the last lap.
We started running an
extra minute before taking our walking break.
When we reached the turnaround, we had plenty of time to finish the lap.
Karen and Cathi wanted to
stop and take pictures at two of the overlooks.
I suggested they consider those stops to take the place of walking
breaks. While they took pictures, I
walked until they caught up to me.
With half a mile to go, I
looked at my watch and saw that our total elapsed time was 5:53. That gave us seven minutes to finish. That was more than enough time. We could have continued to take walking
breaks, but we ran the rest of the way.
We finished together in 5:58:27.\
This was a new PR for
Cathi, who was originally expecting to take eight hours to finish. What made her PR even more impressive is that
the course was actually long.
Mainly Marathons doesn’t
have certified courses. To ensure
they courses are long enough, they measure them to be at least one percent longer than
the advertised distance. When you run one
of their marathons, you can expect it to be 26.5 miles.
My watch measured 26.94
miles, and Karen had a similar measurement.
GPS measurements always need to be taken with a grain of salt, but
there’s no question Cathi set her PR on a long course.
The finisher medal had
pieces that form a chain. The top piece
went to anyone who ran at least one race of the Summer Camp Series. The next piece was the medal for today’s race. Each of the medals for individual races is an
icon associated with Minnesota. Today’s
medal was a timber wolf. Over the next
four days, I’ll get additional medals to add to this chain.
As I was starting to
drive back to St. Cloud, I realized I had forgotten my drop bag. I had only driven half a mile, so I turned
around and went back to get it. I’ve
forgotten my drop bag before. I’ve also
forgotten my water bottle on at least two occasions.
I had my usual post-race
“meal” of chocolate milk and mini donuts.
I’ll have a real meal later.
Two down, four to go.
Did you feel your injury? It sounds like your are recovered.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't bother me during the race. I noticed it when I got in the car to drive back to my hotel.
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