Browsing CategoryMarathon

IRONMAN Weekend

There’s a lot of hype surrounding an IRONMAN race. It’s a lot to live up to. And I think they did a pretty good job. IRONMANs are a little different than most triathlons in that you are forced to make a weekend out of the event, rather than just grabbing a packet one day (or on race morning) and then showing up a few hours early to setup transition on race day. Packet Pickup I was a little surprised by the amount of waiting required for packet pickup on Friday. It seems like all of the 2600 or so participants decided to show up at the same time to pick up their race packets. In them you get a bag for everything. Morning clothes. Bike gear. Run Gear. Bike special needs. Run special needs. And of course the “free” IRONMAN backpack to hold it all. It’s definitely an interesting way to run a race.…

And I Bonked – or how I nearly DNF’d the Chicago Marathon

The Chicago Marathon was off to a great start. I had spent the morning hanging out with my brother, whom was also running, the weather was cool, but not cold, my body felt energetic and I was injury-free. For the race I decided to wear some of my ultra sexy running shorts. As these were designed for runners, they had two small gel pockets, one on each hip. To help fuel me through my 26.2, I had stashed four Rocktanes in these pockets, hoping to take them every 30-45 minutes. Almost immediately I noticed something was wrong. The bit of extra weight at my hips was gone. Not more than five miles in I had managed to lose all four gels. At the time I was just annoyed, but I didn’t think it’d come back to haunt me. Through 13.1 I was doing great. I was on pace to PR by…

My first marathon

My brother’s been into running for much longer than I. Back in 2013 he suggested I do the half marathon while he did the full Twin Cities Marathon. Not to be outdone, I figured I’d shoot for the full distance and signed on up.  Given that my longest (and only) race to this point had been a 5k, I had a lot of work ahead of me. Looking back, I don’t think I prepared nearly enough, with only a few long runs and a max run of 20 miles and a max week of 60 miles run. Based on the training I was doing a few weeks ago, before I went full idiot and broke my shoulder, the two months running up to the marathon look relaxing. Click the calendars if you’d like to see my totals. Nevertheless, the race went well. I held a relatively constant pace, only dropping about one…