I guess I have to write about this one now to make it complete. Oh well, here goes.
I picked this one because Tommy had spent some time up in Grand Rapids a few years ago on business and he was always going on and on about what a nice town it is. So it seemed like a nice little weekend getaway and by doing the race it would give me an excuse to plan the trip. I can't remember if I found this one first and then scheduled backwards for the others or if I was just looking for some "nearby" races to do in a short span of time and I found this one.
Recovery went well after Prairie Fire and I was psyched for the last race. We drove up on Saturday morning and headed straight for the expo when we hit town.
On the way up in the car, I read the Race Director's book "And the Adventure Continues." It's about his quest to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by completing a marathon on all seven continents in the shortest span of time. But mostly it's about how he became a runner and then a marathoner and then a Maniac. Note: this book will really make you feel like a slacker.
I was hoping to get Don to sign my book at the expo but when we got there he did not seem to be nearby and we didn't feel like asking around.
Not sure what I was expected but the race and the expo overall were larger than the previous two (Mill Race and Prairie Fire), although smaller than Air Force. The expo was at the downtown YMCA, which is very nice and new and spacious. Would be a great place to belong if you lived in Grand Rapids. Start and finish of the race is at the same location.
At the expo, in addition to picking up my packet, I bought a shirt that said something about running for beer, a pint glass, a hat, and a pair of thong underwear (guess whose idea that was).
Post-expo, we headed for our lodgings, at a bed and breakfast. The Leonard at Logan is where Tommy always used to stay when he was there on business. It is a big old house in a neighborhood of other big old houses. We had the Princess Cecile room, which is spacious and full of light, and which has a bathroom with a heated floor and a jetted tub (nice for after the race!). There is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed place across the street that we were able to walk through the next afternoon after the race.
For dinner, we had pasta at a sports bar downtown named Peppinos. It's a noisy place but they had a pasta special for the runners and it was pretty good. It was choose your own pasta and sauce, and the servings were generous. I actually couldn't finish it. They also have good craft beer on tap (I guess this is maybe required by law in Grand Rapids?) and the price was right. So, although this is not a place I ordinarily would have picked for dinner, it worked out just fine.
Race morning, I got up early and had a bite to eat and some coffee. I was the only one down in the breakfast nook at that hour, so no one was there to help me figure out what to do when my coffee mug started leaking all over the place. Was a bit disappointed in the breakfast offerings. They did not have any real yogurt, just soy crap. The English muffins were not Thomas's. Anyway, I had a cinnamon raisin English muffin and a hard boiled egg and some orange juice and coffee.
We left for the race around 7 am. Even though we were only staying a couple of miles away, it was good we left early. We took the highway to avoid the street closures, and it took a bit of time to get off the exit. Tommy dropped me at the Y and headed back to the B&B to enjoy the full breakfast experience.
It was a bit chilly in the morning so I headed into the Y. The lines to the bathrooms were pretty long so I decided I would just risk it, and hope to find a convenient portapotty out on the course if need be. I found a chair to sit on in a conference room they had open to runners, and I just closed my eyes and meditated for a bit.
I was wearing CW-X capri tights, and my pink Maniac Diva shirt with my old longsleeved-tech top from the Disney half under it. On top I had a thin, old blue nylon jacket (not the shredded anorak but another oldie). I had a pair of gloves that I could pitch if I wanted (ended up keeping them) and an old cotton longsleeved shirt from the 14k race (the year that they made it just a 10k before it took a hiatus). On my head, I had the black cap from Delaware because it it fairly waterproof and I was afraid we might have cold and rain. When it was time to walk to the start, I threw the cotton shirt in the trash. I ditched the jacket at the first aid station.
The weather, BTW, turned out great. It was in the upper 50s or so and sunny most of the race. Really nice.
Outside, I lined up behind the 4:58 pace team. A few words about the pace teams: instead of normal pace teams, with times in 15 minute increments (2:30, 2:45, and so on up to about 5:00), at Grand Rapids they have "Celebrity Pace Teams." That is, the teams shoot for times achieved by various celebrities who have finished marathons. And the pace team signs had pics of the celebrities on them. The Sub-Three Lancers, for example, had a pic of Lance when he was with Sheryl Crow. The Oprah team had a picture of fat Oprah on one side and skinny Oprah on the other. There was a team for P-Diddy and George W. And then there was my 4:58 team, the "Inconvenient Pace" team, in honor of Al Gore.
I lined up just behind the Al Gores. There were a lot of half-marathoners back there with me and they all knew each other. It was irritating. I was hoping to run faster than the Al Gores but I wanted to start off real conservatively.
It took us four minutes to cross the start line. That part was pretty amazing. I had not expected this race to be so large. That was more time than it took to cross any of the other marathon start lines in my "series." Lots of half-marathoners.
I don't remember when I passed the Al Gores, but once I did pass them I wanted to stay ahead of them. Still, I had learned from the previous three excursions that I had to keep the pace very comfortable. Here are my splits from the first few miles
:
1) 10:50
2&3) 21:49
4&5) 22:25
6) 11:06
The first five miles take you around the downtown, most of which was not that interesting to me, and then you head into a park-like area and out to a really nice stretch along some lakes on a shaded bike rail and some small roads.
Mentally, the way I have really settled into thinking about these races is that I have a ten mile warmup, followed by a 16 mile long run. Since I pretty much don't go over 16 miles in training, or at least I haven't since last fall, this works really well for my mental state. The other thing I think about is the percentage of the race completed, which requires a little bit of math and is sometimes a good distraction, and even a little bit cheery as you reflect on the percentage completed and how quickly it changes. Well, anyway, that's how I look at it. I don't hit the wall like a normal person. After mile 15, I just feel better and better. It's getting through that first half of the race that is the challenge. But this ten mile warmup idea is really working for me.
Ok, so here are the splits up to the first half:
7&8) 21:51
9) 11:24
10) 10:50 (and remember, this is the end of the warmup and now the real race begins for me)
11) 11:05
12) 10:57
13) 12:18
The reason that mile 13 is a minute slower is because I found a portapotty with no line, and I thought that it would feel really good to have a pee, even if it cost me a minute. There were some people who passed me while I was in there whom I still managed to pass back again in the next couple of miles. I came out of there feeling really good. One of the best parts was I asked a volunteer if I was still ahead of the Al Gores and he told me I was. That was very energizing!
Mile 14 was a 10:55. I was very happy to be keeping it under 12s.
There is a little bridge crossing just before mile 15 at the start of an out-and-back along a bike trail where you can see the faster runners coming back. I guess it was the three hour runners on the way back when I was going over the bridge. The turnaround is at mile 18.5 or so.
Here's some splits on the out-and-back:
15) 11:00
16) 10:50
17) 11:08
18) 11:12
Just past the mile 15 marker there was an aid station where they had pickle juice, which I have never tried before. Wow, that's salty. I don't know if it helped or not. I think I would have preferred some alcohol. I did hit the pickle juice again on the way back but that time I diluted it with water and that was better.
On the back half of this section, I ran a little with a woman who told me that she would be joining the Maniacs after she finished the race. She had run Wine Country in NY a couple of weeks before. But, she said, she was really a triathlete and this was her training run for Ironman Wisconsin. Well, la-dee-dah. That certainly puts me in my place. I'm nothing compared to a triathlete. She seemed to have more left in the tank than I did and I figured she would be taking off ahead of me, and she did for a little bit. But then just before we crossed back over the bridge it seems like I pulled away from her.
I thought I was going to be under five hours but I wasn't doing the math to figure out how much. I wasn't going to catch the Oprahs but I was staying ahead of the Al Gores.
And here's the next set of splits:
19) 10:37
20) 10:52
21) 11:04
22) 11:31
23) 11:02
24) 11:03
I was passing people and that is always a great feeling.
25) 10:41
26) 10:24 (was that my fastest mile of the day? I think it was!)
and I am not sure what I got for the last .2 because I forgot to stop my watch, but it was probably less than two minutes because I kicking.
So the finish line clock read 4:52 but because it took me so long to get across the start line, my chip time was 4:48:39. It was not great in the age group or even midpack in the race but it was my fastest of the four in my personal series, and I was happy. Was 29 of 36 in the age group, 485 of 563 women and 1282 of 1413 runners.
After the race, I had some chocolate ice cream from Culver's, then met up with Tommy and we went over to the beer tent where they were serving New Holland. We had some of the Mad Hatter IPA which is good but didn't go too well with the Culver's, and I was more in the mood for ice cream. So ended up dumping most of the beer.
Tommy had parked in a garage that was quite a hike from the finish line, but at least it was flat. And frankly, I was moving better than he was. Because 26.2 is nothing for me anymore.
Back at the B&B, I had a couple of hardboiled eggs which they keep in the fridge 24/7, and a chocolate chip cookie. They keep those out in the dining room, also a nice touch. After I got cleaned up, we headed out across the street for a tour of the Meyer May house.
Here's some pics of it. It is an authentically restored and very well-preserved FLW house in the Prairie style. There was some kind of FLW conference of afficionados going on in Grand Rapids that weekend, and the people who volunteer at the Meyer May house had been told that many people considered it to be the best preserved FLW house they had viewed. For sure it is in better shape than Fallingdown Water, if you catch my drift.
We liked it. One of the things I liked is that it was built for someone my height, since Mr. May was just 5' 3" tall.
Story of the house: Meyer May was the heir to a department store fortune. Well, maybe it was not a fortune but he made it into a fortune. He commissioned FLW to build him this house out in what was then the suburbs of Grand Rapids, for his wife and the two children they adopted. Sadly, his wife died not long after. He remarried and had an addition built on to the house (not approved by FLW!) for his new wife and her two kids, but that marriage didn't take. He did live the rest of his life there but after he died the house went through years of neglect.
That period between the 1930s through the 1970s were rough times for grand old midwestern houses. But in the 1980s, some people interested in restoration and FLW took over the enormous job of fixing the Meyer May house up. They were supported in this, and continue to be supported, by the Steelcase corporation. That is one of the reasons they have been so successful. Steelcase or someone at Steelcase loves this place and sees it as an asset to the corporation, so they have put in the cash to keep it in pristine condition.
One of the things they use it for is for corporate executive functions. They host dinner parties in the dining room. Pretty cool.
Oh yeah, they tore that addition off and were able to use some of the bricks in the restoration. Mr.Wright is probably not satisfied but at least he stopped spinning in his grave.
So, the little tour of the FLW house was the major part of my touristing in Grand Rapids. It is just a couple of houses down on the other side of the street from The Leonard and you can even see it from the window of the Princess Cecile room.
We also drove around East Grand Rapids, past all the little shops and restaurants and the high school. Tommy thinks, and he is right, that if we lived in Grand Rapids this is the neighborhood where we would live. I told him that it reminded me some of the actual race course at Prairie Fire, with all the nice shade trees and pretty houses. But in Grand Rapids they have that large bike trail/park area, and so they can design the course around that instead and avoid road closings.
After our tour was over, we headed to Founders brewery. The plan was to have some brews and maybe dinner. It meant we didn't make it to The Green Well, one of Tommy's favorite restaurants there, but I think we will have to make another trip! Also need to hit Hop Cat, which is supposedly one of the best craft beer pubs in the country.
We also did hit the local Costco on our way out of town the next morning, which seems a little weird but its a good place to buy beer. Oh yeah, and we stopped at a little bakery that Tommy was fond of and I had a scone.
Anyway, we did have a great time. It would be a good race to run if you were trained for a fast one. They have a pretty high percentage of runners qualify for Boston each year. I think it could even be a fast course for me if I ever get fast again.
