State #31
Philadelphia Marathon Dietz & Watson Half Marathon
TLDR
Generally, I wait until the race photos come before I post. Many times the race photos take a few days to a couple weeks to show up on a web site somewhere. Then I have to find some time to write (type) something and paste those pictures into the body. The last half in St. Louis was two weeks ago and still no pictures. Of course, the truth about that race, it was a bit of a low budget race and it was all rainy anyway, so I doubt there will be any pictures to post... and I did not take very many pictures myself. I posted the blog anyway with whatever pictures I did have... and the truth of the matter is that there are just a select few of you that actually read my blogs in the first place... so, I am going to post my blog now, without the pictures. It takes time, and I currently have the time... and you and I and possibly my mom will be the only ones who read this anyway. Even my children don't read it... which brings me to explain the TLDR in the title. I learned a couple months ago of a "word" that has made it into the dictionary. That "word" is TLDR. It is actually an acronym for the phrase Too Long, Didn't Read. If TLDR is mentioned in the post, the point is to provide a summary of the lengthy text so that someone can skip to the TLDR section and get a quick overview of what the story talks about without having to read the whole thing.
I have come to understand that in this Insta-Snap, FaceChat, and YouTwit generation, 140 characters may still be too much. In the spirit of connecting with the youth, I will offer the Twit-a-gram version of this race in the next paragraph and then elaborate for the somewhat more "mature" of you who are interested. (For the record, I recognize that there are an even larger subgroup who did not even make it this far.) BTW... I had to look it up to remember, but did you know that if only part of a sentence is parenthetical, then the punctuation is placed outside the parenthesis, but if the entire sentence is parenthetical, then the punctuation is placed inside the parenthesis? Who knew? Who remembers?
The Snap-o-Gram version:
Philly. Cold and crowded. Funny thing happened at the start, but didn't matter. Old buildings and streets, historic. Got a PR 1:36:38. Carry on.
For the rest of you with a slightly longer attention span:
Of course, by now you know that I have a goal for most everything. My goal for this race was to run steady and treat it like a training run. I travelled alone. Valerie drove me to the airport. I snuck out of work about 30 minutes early just in case there was a lot of traffic. Made it to the airport in no time and was easily an hour early for my flight. I flew SouthWest and it was an easy, uneventful flight. I was wearing shorts and flip-flops which was not appropriate attire for the 40º Philly weather. It was super crowded at the airport. I attempted an Uber, but they cancelled on me. I attempted a Lyft, but the driver cancelled. This happened another 3 times. I cancelled the last one myself because I had already been standing out there for 27 minutes waiting for a ride share, and the app let me know the driver would be there in 17 min. So, I walked over to the cab station and picked up a taxi. It cost $15 more than the ride share, but at that point I did not care. I had the cab take me to the Expo, which was 0.7 miles from my hotel.
The Expo was at the Philadelphia Convention Center and it was a fairly big one. There were lots of people there too. Lots of vendors. I would have browsed the vendors, but I was tired and hungry and I still had not run for the day... so, I just got my race packet and left... on to the hotel. The hotel was a Sheraton, which is a Marriott and it was called Hotel 201. It was a fairly inexpensive, 3-star hotel, but the accommodations were nice and clean. I waited in line to check in behind 15 or so other people, and they were ALL part of the "marathon weekend." (Periods and commas are placed inside the quotation marks in the US, BTW.) I was starting to get a sense that this was going to be a large and crowded race. Good thing I was not intending to race it, but simply "go out for a little jog", that is use it as a training run.
I needed food and I needed to run. It was cold out, so I decided to go run, in my jeans, to the restaurant. Two birds, one run. I found a TGIFriday's and decided some french fries sounded like a good pre-race dinner. As you can see, my Garmin had a hard time finding and keeping my location during my run, which also proved to be a "bit of an issue" during the race. I sat at the bar at Friday's and ordered the Salmon with steamed veggies and rice, a water and a side of fries. It was really pretty good. Three ladies sat across from me and were eying my food when it came, pointing, nodding and smiling. One of them turned to me and asked if I was running the marathon. I don't bother trying to explain the half or the full anymore, I just nodded and smiled and said, yes ma'am. She said, "We are too. That is why we ordered the same thing. We are carb-loading." I said, "Well, have a great run tomorrow." She said, "Oh... No... we are running Sunday, the full. Are you just running the half?" -- Ugh... Yes, I am just half a man... only running the half. After talking with them, I only wish I had ordered the sweet potato fries that they ordered. Enough conversation, back to the room. I watched a movie and went to bed.
I woke at 4:30 and got some food, then watched another movie. The starting line was about .5 miles from the hotel. It was dark out still and the police had already blocked off the roads. I could see the flashing blue lights from my room. I left the room about 6:50am. As I was walking to the start, I noticed two very long lines of people. At first I assumed this was the line for bag drop, but I noticed many of them were not even carrying anything, so I started to get nervous that I was gonna have to go stand in one of those lines. As it turned out, it was a security line. There was a metal detector and security guards checking for something... a bomb maybe. I just used the old trick that if you act like you know what you are doing, people will assume that you know what you are doing and leave you alone. I walked right in and one of the guards asked me if I could unzip my jacket, which I did and he said, "OK", and waved me on. I am not sure how some of those people made it to the start on time. It was a very long couple of lines.
The starting corrals were delineated by flags. The flags were different colors and corresponded to the corral color on the bibs. The corral assignments were as follows:
There was the elite athletes, then the maroon group, etc. I was in the maroon group. Interestingly I saw several with a black bib and there was even a few that had White. Not sure what that meant, but they situated themselves in front of the maroon group. Oh well, I am just out for a little jog anyway.
The starting line was just in front of a roundabout. So, there were two starting lines. One on the left side of the street and one on the right side of the street. After the official start, the runners could go around the roundabout on either side. It was the same starting line, just broken up by what I would call a median... it was a median created for this event, created by barricades so that the runners could not be in the middle and create a "bottleneck". There was a celebrity runner who was in charge of the starting horn, Mebrahtom "Meb" Keflezighi . He is a retired professional runner, very well liked and respected, but is not so good at the starting horn. The short story is, Meb had a little premature announciation of the horn which apparently confused the left side runners, the side I was on. The right side started the race, the left side did not begin for another 27 seconds. As I stated previously, I was just out for a little jog, so it did not bother me, plus it was a chip timed race, so your chip time did not start until you crossed the start line, but I am certain that it was a bother to some of the runners as they were pushing and yelling. This also created a bit of a traffic jam at the start, so it was a bit slower start for many as we had to navigate around all of the runners who had incorrectly self seeded as well as those who were on the other side once we all came together after the roundabout... which went directly into a right-hand turn, BTW.
I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. My Lulu lemon yoga pants, a running jacket and gloves. I wore them all the entire race. It was in the 30's. Maybe it hit 40º in the sun towards the middle of the race... maybe. I had to lower the zipper on my jacket at one point, then I zipped it back up. For the most part I was comfortable. My Garmin proved to have some issues as we ran through the Philadelphia streets. The same thing happened in NYC and the night before in town in Philly. I looked down to check my pace and my watch showed that I was running a 5:15 per mile pace. I was certain that was inaccurate. So, I could not count on my Garmin. Also, this race had a clock at every mile. After a couple miles, I realized that we were behind the official clock by 27 seconds because of the start SNAFU, and my Garmin was calculating my mile splits about 0.25 prior to the mile. It became consistent after mile 3, so I just had to do a little minor math to understand where I was at each mile, which wasn't so bad. I realized at about mile 7 that I was on pace for a PR. So, I still felt good and decided to keep this pace until the last 3 miles and then pick up the pace a bit and try to shave a minute off my previous best time. All went great, according to plan. I got to mile 10 and started to try and increase my pace, but it was uphill at that point, so I decided to wait. I was not able to find the energy to up my pace until I hit mile 12. Then I realized that I could still PR, but it was gonna be tight. I picked it up a bit, running mile 12 at 7:09 and mile 13 at 7:11, and the last .1 at 6:45, finishing 18 seconds under the PR set two weeks earlier. Official time 1:36:38. That is a 7:22 per mile avg. pace. I am happy with that, especially considering I was not really shooting for a fast race.
The fan support at this race was the best that I have experienced so far. There were spectators everywhere and they were playing loud and inspirational music and they were yelling and encouraging. Water/hydration stations were about every three miles, but they were very well manned and efficient. There were bands playing, drummers, cheerleaders, all sorts of "entertainment" out on the course. I was impressed. As I mentioned, there was a clock at every mile marker and the finish line was large and elaborate and full of cheering spectators. The medal is very nice. A working liberty bell replica. Other than the start problems this was a great race. The only disappointing part for me was the post-race food. There was water, fruit cups, bananas and pretzels. That was it. Nothing else. Every other aspect of this race was big and well-done, but no food (to speak of). I was really hoping for something more. I went out and got myself a burger and fries... and a chocolate milkshake.
I intended to walk around the city a bit after my post-race meal and take some pictures. I set out to do just that, but it was cold and windy, so I quickly abandoned that idea and got an Uber to the airport. I did capture this picture from my hotel room so you could see what I could see. Otherwise, I guess you will either have to go there yourself or you could browse the internet and see other peoples photos... maybe google maps. BTW. If you zoom into this picture you can see the two long lines to get to the security check point, or you can simply take my word for it.
In all it was a fun race and a nice course. I enjoyed my time and am happy with my performance. Although I am not yet to my goal, I have made some baby steps toward it. Maybe I will get there. Next race is in Memphis. Noble and I are going together. Should be a good time. I have not been back to Memphis since dental school. I am betting it has changed a little. Thanks for reading to the end... or at least skipping to the end. lol.
I have come to understand that in this Insta-Snap, FaceChat, and YouTwit generation, 140 characters may still be too much. In the spirit of connecting with the youth, I will offer the Twit-a-gram version of this race in the next paragraph and then elaborate for the somewhat more "mature" of you who are interested. (For the record, I recognize that there are an even larger subgroup who did not even make it this far.) BTW... I had to look it up to remember, but did you know that if only part of a sentence is parenthetical, then the punctuation is placed outside the parenthesis, but if the entire sentence is parenthetical, then the punctuation is placed inside the parenthesis? Who knew? Who remembers?
The Snap-o-Gram version:
Philly. Cold and crowded. Funny thing happened at the start, but didn't matter. Old buildings and streets, historic. Got a PR 1:36:38. Carry on.
For the rest of you with a slightly longer attention span:
Of course, by now you know that I have a goal for most everything. My goal for this race was to run steady and treat it like a training run. I travelled alone. Valerie drove me to the airport. I snuck out of work about 30 minutes early just in case there was a lot of traffic. Made it to the airport in no time and was easily an hour early for my flight. I flew SouthWest and it was an easy, uneventful flight. I was wearing shorts and flip-flops which was not appropriate attire for the 40º Philly weather. It was super crowded at the airport. I attempted an Uber, but they cancelled on me. I attempted a Lyft, but the driver cancelled. This happened another 3 times. I cancelled the last one myself because I had already been standing out there for 27 minutes waiting for a ride share, and the app let me know the driver would be there in 17 min. So, I walked over to the cab station and picked up a taxi. It cost $15 more than the ride share, but at that point I did not care. I had the cab take me to the Expo, which was 0.7 miles from my hotel.The Expo was at the Philadelphia Convention Center and it was a fairly big one. There were lots of people there too. Lots of vendors. I would have browsed the vendors, but I was tired and hungry and I still had not run for the day... so, I just got my race packet and left... on to the hotel. The hotel was a Sheraton, which is a Marriott and it was called Hotel 201. It was a fairly inexpensive, 3-star hotel, but the accommodations were nice and clean. I waited in line to check in behind 15 or so other people, and they were ALL part of the "marathon weekend." (Periods and commas are placed inside the quotation marks in the US, BTW.) I was starting to get a sense that this was going to be a large and crowded race. Good thing I was not intending to race it, but simply "go out for a little jog", that is use it as a training run.
I needed food and I needed to run. It was cold out, so I decided to go run, in my jeans, to the restaurant. Two birds, one run. I found a TGIFriday's and decided some french fries sounded like a good pre-race dinner. As you can see, my Garmin had a hard time finding and keeping my location during my run, which also proved to be a "bit of an issue" during the race. I sat at the bar at Friday's and ordered the Salmon with steamed veggies and rice, a water and a side of fries. It was really pretty good. Three ladies sat across from me and were eying my food when it came, pointing, nodding and smiling. One of them turned to me and asked if I was running the marathon. I don't bother trying to explain the half or the full anymore, I just nodded and smiled and said, yes ma'am. She said, "We are too. That is why we ordered the same thing. We are carb-loading." I said, "Well, have a great run tomorrow." She said, "Oh... No... we are running Sunday, the full. Are you just running the half?" -- Ugh... Yes, I am just half a man... only running the half. After talking with them, I only wish I had ordered the sweet potato fries that they ordered. Enough conversation, back to the room. I watched a movie and went to bed.I woke at 4:30 and got some food, then watched another movie. The starting line was about .5 miles from the hotel. It was dark out still and the police had already blocked off the roads. I could see the flashing blue lights from my room. I left the room about 6:50am. As I was walking to the start, I noticed two very long lines of people. At first I assumed this was the line for bag drop, but I noticed many of them were not even carrying anything, so I started to get nervous that I was gonna have to go stand in one of those lines. As it turned out, it was a security line. There was a metal detector and security guards checking for something... a bomb maybe. I just used the old trick that if you act like you know what you are doing, people will assume that you know what you are doing and leave you alone. I walked right in and one of the guards asked me if I could unzip my jacket, which I did and he said, "OK", and waved me on. I am not sure how some of those people made it to the start on time. It was a very long couple of lines.
The starting corrals were delineated by flags. The flags were different colors and corresponded to the corral color on the bibs. The corral assignments were as follows:
There was the elite athletes, then the maroon group, etc. I was in the maroon group. Interestingly I saw several with a black bib and there was even a few that had White. Not sure what that meant, but they situated themselves in front of the maroon group. Oh well, I am just out for a little jog anyway.
The starting line was just in front of a roundabout. So, there were two starting lines. One on the left side of the street and one on the right side of the street. After the official start, the runners could go around the roundabout on either side. It was the same starting line, just broken up by what I would call a median... it was a median created for this event, created by barricades so that the runners could not be in the middle and create a "bottleneck". There was a celebrity runner who was in charge of the starting horn, Mebrahtom "Meb" Keflezighi . He is a retired professional runner, very well liked and respected, but is not so good at the starting horn. The short story is, Meb had a little premature announciation of the horn which apparently confused the left side runners, the side I was on. The right side started the race, the left side did not begin for another 27 seconds. As I stated previously, I was just out for a little jog, so it did not bother me, plus it was a chip timed race, so your chip time did not start until you crossed the start line, but I am certain that it was a bother to some of the runners as they were pushing and yelling. This also created a bit of a traffic jam at the start, so it was a bit slower start for many as we had to navigate around all of the runners who had incorrectly self seeded as well as those who were on the other side once we all came together after the roundabout... which went directly into a right-hand turn, BTW.I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. My Lulu lemon yoga pants, a running jacket and gloves. I wore them all the entire race. It was in the 30's. Maybe it hit 40º in the sun towards the middle of the race... maybe. I had to lower the zipper on my jacket at one point, then I zipped it back up. For the most part I was comfortable. My Garmin proved to have some issues as we ran through the Philadelphia streets. The same thing happened in NYC and the night before in town in Philly. I looked down to check my pace and my watch showed that I was running a 5:15 per mile pace. I was certain that was inaccurate. So, I could not count on my Garmin. Also, this race had a clock at every mile. After a couple miles, I realized that we were behind the official clock by 27 seconds because of the start SNAFU, and my Garmin was calculating my mile splits about 0.25 prior to the mile. It became consistent after mile 3, so I just had to do a little minor math to understand where I was at each mile, which wasn't so bad. I realized at about mile 7 that I was on pace for a PR. So, I still felt good and decided to keep this pace until the last 3 miles and then pick up the pace a bit and try to shave a minute off my previous best time. All went great, according to plan. I got to mile 10 and started to try and increase my pace, but it was uphill at that point, so I decided to wait. I was not able to find the energy to up my pace until I hit mile 12. Then I realized that I could still PR, but it was gonna be tight. I picked it up a bit, running mile 12 at 7:09 and mile 13 at 7:11, and the last .1 at 6:45, finishing 18 seconds under the PR set two weeks earlier. Official time 1:36:38. That is a 7:22 per mile avg. pace. I am happy with that, especially considering I was not really shooting for a fast race.
The fan support at this race was the best that I have experienced so far. There were spectators everywhere and they were playing loud and inspirational music and they were yelling and encouraging. Water/hydration stations were about every three miles, but they were very well manned and efficient. There were bands playing, drummers, cheerleaders, all sorts of "entertainment" out on the course. I was impressed. As I mentioned, there was a clock at every mile marker and the finish line was large and elaborate and full of cheering spectators. The medal is very nice. A working liberty bell replica. Other than the start problems this was a great race. The only disappointing part for me was the post-race food. There was water, fruit cups, bananas and pretzels. That was it. Nothing else. Every other aspect of this race was big and well-done, but no food (to speak of). I was really hoping for something more. I went out and got myself a burger and fries... and a chocolate milkshake.
I intended to walk around the city a bit after my post-race meal and take some pictures. I set out to do just that, but it was cold and windy, so I quickly abandoned that idea and got an Uber to the airport. I did capture this picture from my hotel room so you could see what I could see. Otherwise, I guess you will either have to go there yourself or you could browse the internet and see other peoples photos... maybe google maps. BTW. If you zoom into this picture you can see the two long lines to get to the security check point, or you can simply take my word for it.
In all it was a fun race and a nice course. I enjoyed my time and am happy with my performance. Although I am not yet to my goal, I have made some baby steps toward it. Maybe I will get there. Next race is in Memphis. Noble and I are going together. Should be a good time. I have not been back to Memphis since dental school. I am betting it has changed a little. Thanks for reading to the end... or at least skipping to the end. lol.
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