Cowboy Hazel

I managed to finish 12th overall in a marathon for the second day in a row (yesterday's Mississippi Blues Marathon was the first). Today's race in Mobile, Alabama was much slower; but it was a much smaller race and without the prize money. My final time was 3:16:40. Normally, I could hit that time without an all-out effort, but today was brutal. I'm thrilled with the result and think it was just about the best performance I could have put together.

We started with a prayer again today and then were off through the streets of Mobile. I wasn't sure what to expect from my legs so I decided to just find out what was comfortable. The excitement of the start sent me out with two 7:10 miles, but I quickly realized that wasn't sustainable and slowed down to about 7:35/mile. I had to stop and pee at mile 5 and started up right around 7:30's again.

Shortly after, a local high school girl running the half asked if she could run next to me, that I was holding her pace. "Sure." After the solitary nature of yesterday's run, it was nice to be around other people. In the end, we both sped up a bit, running 7:25's until her course turned off after mile 8.

After that, I was behind a big clump of runners and tried to catch them so that I wouldn't have to run by myself, but by the time I did catch them, they had slowed down so I had to move on. We started getting into some serious hills around mile 10 – bigger than anything we'd seen yesterday. The hills only lasted until mile 17.5, though, and then the course was back to being flat as a pancake. We toured through some beautiful neighborhoods and a park as the sun kept rising higher and making it warmer. My singlet and shorts were swampy with sweat and it looked like everyone else's was too. Turns out, this has been an unusually warm winter down here too.

Somewhere around 14 or so, I passed a guy in his 40's who was breathing super hard. I gave him a quick pep talk (runners on the course were super friendly and it was infectious) and he ended up hanging on my heels until almost the end. We chatted a fair amount even though he was behind me and I couldn't see him. Again, having someone with me sped me up. I kept telling him he seemed strong and should pass me, but he'd say no, that he was struggling to keep up and so I ran faster, trying not to slow him down. Finally, at around mile 25, I convinced him to run ahead and chase his time as I was fading pretty bad. He finished 11th, about twenty seconds in front of me.

Still, I had run a negative split, which seemed especially impressive with how warm it was; I hit the half at 1:39:something. My legs were super sore from the starting line and got worse as we went. By the end, I was seriously questioning why I had signed up for back-to-back marathons. They hurt even more an hour or two after finishing. Yikes.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, but enjoyable. I went over to the YMCA to shower since our hotel vigorously enforced a ridiculously early checkout time. Then we hung out at the post-race for an hour or so, listening to the band and enjoying some free ice cream and beer. We found an barbecue restaurant on the way to the airport and I got to fill up on delicious pulled pork. I'm still at the airport now waiting for a flight to Atlanta, then home.

It has been a whirlwind of a weekend, but I'm glad I took the adventure, even if my legs are trashed as a result. I doubt I'll be signing up for two marathons in two days again anytime soon, but I'm glad I was able to experience it once. Even more, I'm glad I got to experience both of these races and their cities' southern hospitality.

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This morning's marathon went as well as I could have hoped for. I managed to run a 2:59:37 and ended up 12th place out of 756 overall. I wasn't sure what kind of shape I was in going into this thing as I haven't been doing any quality training lately, and was pleasantly surprised by how things turned out. In my mind, the race neatly fit into a few neat little chapters:

0 - 3.1, Starting with the Halfers - The race was giving out $30,000 in prize money, so there were some super fast East Africans lined up in the front of the corral. Next to them, guys like me and Antonio; the field wasn't very deep other than those few elites. After the national anthem and a prayer from the reverend (this is the Bible Belt, after all), we were off. Quite a few people started out at 6:50/mile pace with me because the half and marathon ran together for the first three miles. I wasn't feeling great, but the energy of the race start was fun.

3.1 - 12.5, All Alone - I passed one marathoner at about 3.3 miles in and didn't pass or get passed after that until after mile 12. The field got spread out really quickly. I saw a couple runners up ahead, but made sure to focus on my watch and hitting the appropriate splits instead of trying to reel them in. The heavy fog began to lift, but temperatures were still cool, and I enjoyed touring through some of the nice, quiet neighborhoods. Folks were out on their lawns and would cheer just for me as I'd run past. Volunteers kept saying, "Thank you for running." Why?

12.5 - 15, Top of the World - I started speeding up a little and the runners in front of me started slowing down. I passed four or five of them within a couple miles, which was very exciting after being alone for so long. One of the volunteers bicycling alongside the second place woman (who I passed during this point) told me I was in 10th place overall. "No shit!?" It turned out later he was wrong, but still it was nice to imagine that I was in the top ten. (As a side note, I'm clearly failing on my new year's resolution to swear less.) I hit the half at 1:29:00 exactly and felt like a million bucks. I worried about the fact that it was getting warmer, but even so figured that I'd easily be able to run a negative split.

15 - 20.5, Getting Lost and Angry - As a whole, this marathon was one of the best organized races I've ever run and they did an fantastic job making it an enjoyable event, not just another run (think concert at the expo, harmonica and blues CD in our race bags, bands along the route, etc.) But, the course had a ton of turns and they were not always very clearly marked. I got to an unmanned intersection somewhere around mile 15 and the cones led straight so I went straight. Two guys I had just passed followed me too. Soon (luckily) we realized that we had dead-ended in a parking lot and had to flip around and run back to the road. I apologized to the guy behind me for getting us off course and he said, "No, I looked like 10 times too and it looked like we were going the right way." Nothing is more demoralizing than realizing that you've run extra miles in the middle of a race. It wasn't very far, but it was still super tough to get out of my head. And then, somewhere in the 20th mile, I was running along and a volunteer waved his stop sign paddle out to the right, indicating that I should turn. I turned. He started yelling, "No! Straight, straight!" But, I was 20 miles into a marathon, not exactly clear headed, and there was a delay before I realized they were yelling at me. I turned around to see that a runner had passed me while I was detouring – the only time I got passed all day after mile 3. I immediately felt bad about this, but in the heat of the moment, I yelled at the volunteer, "Why'd you wave at me to turn?" He apologized, but I should have just been more aware of my surroundings. And, I shouldn't have yelled at him when he was nice enough to wake up early and help direct traffic for us.

20.5 - 26.2, Embrace the Pain - We merged back with the half-marathoners around mile 20 and from then on out, there were plenty of people around so I knew I wouldn't get lost any more. That was a relief, and I was actually happy to be dodging the 3-hour-half folks for a change (it helped that almost all of them were super friendly and made an effort to move out of my way so I could run the shortest tangents). From about mile 17 on, I had really started to struggle. I ran out of energy early, had to take my PowerBar Gel before I planned to, and then grabbed another Gu from an aid station. I was drinking Gatorade every mile, but the sun was shining full force and I was sweating a lot. Plus, the twenty-plus miles of rolling hills had taken their toll on my legs. I saw my pace slipping again and again, but I told myself to embrace the pain, just like Marshall Ulrich did in the book that I'm currently reading. It sounds cheesy, but it really worked. I thought of how upset at myself I'd be if I didn't hit sub-3 and knew that anything I was suffering through would be better than the long term disappointment of not hitting a goal. So, I pushed harder. At mile 25, I did the math and realized that I had it. Big smile.

Finish - When I crossed the line, they said, "Robert Reese from E-mouse, Pennsylvania, a Runner's World guy." "How'd they know I work for Runner's World," I wondered. I still haven't figured it out.

After the race, we headed down to Biloxi, where I jumped in the ocean very briefly (it was cold) and then drove over to Mobile, Alabama. My next marathon starts here tomorrow morning at 7:30. I had originally had dreams of running two sub-3's in two days, but there's no way… Today's run took a lot more out of me than I expected. I'll be happy with simply finishing tomorrow.



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I ran my fourth consecutive Philadelphia Marathon yesterday morning. It was the fastest of the four, a 2:53:42, which was good for 154th place out of 10,082 overall. It was also a fifteen second P.R. and the third sub-3 for me on that course. So, was I happy with it? To be honest, not really… I was shooting for sub-2:50 and was on pace until about mile 15 when the wheels came off. It was eerily similar to what happened to me in Boston earlier this year, in fact, except that I didn't slow quite so badly.

On the bright side, the weekend as a whole was a great time. Philly was the race for the Runner's World Challenge this fall, so a large chunk of our staff traveled down and set up camp at the Four Seasons. It makes me laugh to think how the people working there must be baffled by all us runners on marathon weekend. I, as an example, checked in for my room with a foam roller tucked under my arm. Not a sight you'd normally expect at a fancy hotel.

I had booth duty at the expo Friday evening for a few hours, which actually was pretty fun. It was basically just hanging out with a couple of my RW friends and then chatting with random runners who stopped by about running. That hardly seems like work to me. Helen arrived from New York and stopped by the expo to say hi too, and I took a little break to go pick up my bib.

They didn't give me any booth time on Saturday because they knew I was taking the race seriously and were trying to let me stay off my feet. All that was on my schedule was the Puma shakeout run in the morning and a Q&A panel in the afternoon. A ton of people, maybe a hundred or so, showed up for the run and we all did an easy 3 miles together. I napped a bit after that, then went over to the expo and gave a little speech about the course and answered questions with a couple other panelists for almost an hour. Lots of people stopped by to listen and ask questions, which was really cool. It's so fun to be able to talk about running with folks and be able to share the tips that I've picked up along the way.

Back in the hotel, I was laying in bed reading when I got a text at 4:03 asking if I could make it to the 4:00 strategy session – the race was supposed to send a course expert but didn't, so they wanted me as I had run the race the last three years. I threw on my clothes as quick as I could and headed back to the expo. This one was quite a bit more intimidating than the first, though… We were in the a room set up for our Challengers and there were over a hundred of them in there listening to the presentation. Bart Yasso was the MC, Peter Segal and David Willey had just finished speaking, and then I was supposed to say a few impromptu words as a "course expert"? Slightly nerve wracking. I think I managed to say something fairly intelligible, though. No one booed, at least.

Helen and I ordered Papa John's the night before the race and just ate in our room. Having the pizza delivered in was nice and low key, something I will definitely keep in mind for future marathons. I scheduled room service for 4:40 in the morning, and then we were off to sleep.

That room service was a $17 pot of coffee. Worth every penny. Any other day, that would simply be ridiculous, but on race morning, having something that helps you "get your business" done is critical, as I'm sure you all know. This did the trick.

I was down in the ballroom by five o'clock and chatting with other staff and our Challengers as they came in for the pre-race banquet.

Jeff, Helen, and I all jogged over to the start and lined up in the corral together. Jeff and I were both looking for sub-2:50 and, almost as importantly, were looking to run faster than the other. There had been quite a bit of smack talk going on in various meetings around the office lately. And, as always, Helen and I had our AG% competition going on.

Jeff and I ran the first three miles together, but I was feeling really good and decided to try to put some distance between us early, knowing that he is faster than me and could outrun me at the end if he was still around. It wasn't a crazy move, but I probably was running a little quicker than I should have. I ended up hitting the half at 1:24:24, which was 36 seconds faster than I meant to. I still felt really good at that point, though, and thought sub-2:50 was definitely a possibility.

Shorter thereafter, on the road out to Manayunk, the wheels came off. There was no specific issue that I could point to, but I just slowed about thirty seconds per mile and couldn't pick it back up. I was sure that I'd see Jeff closing the gap when we did the little out-and-back detour on mile 17, but he wasn't back there. "Weird, maybe I missed him." But then, I didn't see him at the next turnaround either and I figured he had probably dropped out.

Those last six miles were really tough. My legs felt dead, we were running into the wind, and I could barely keep my pace under 7:00/mile.

Finally, I reached the finish line.

I was very upset with myself at that moment, but my coworker Warren found me in the chute shortly after I finished and had a lot of very encouraging words that helped a lot. We walked over to where Jeff and Brian were standing and I learned that Jeff had indeed dropped down to the half because of a calf issue. Helen came through the chute not too long after and looked completely spent, but happy. I could easily tell that she'd given the course everything she had and was pleased with the result.

Eventually, we wandered back to the hotel, showered, and then back down to the ballroom. It was a lot of fun seeing both Challengers and coworkers come back in and tell their war stories from the course. We were there until almost two o'clock, then began the trek back home.


Notes: Here are the race reports from the previous years: 2008, 2009, 2010.

Helen won our age graded competition 72.39% to 71.92%. I don't like losing, but she deserves this one. She ran a gutsy race.

I went back and looked at my weekly mileage leading up to the race and I think it was too light for marathon training, especially considering that the training period was so abbreviated.

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This year's NYC Marathon was quite a bit different than 2010 for me… a lot less running and a lot more photo taking.

The cool thing about working for a running magazine was that I had a very legitimate reason to head into the city for marathon weekend. So, I caught a bus Wednesday after work and stayed with Helen through Monday morning.

I spent Thursday and Friday at Rodale's NYC offices, but snuck in a couple fun field trips. We stopped by the expo on Thursday, when Lauren Fleshman was at our booth, and got her to autograph a copy of the magazine. Super cool. Friday morning, I headed over to the press tent at Tavern on the Green and saw RW's Amby Burfoot receiving the George Hirsch Journalism Award.

Saturday was another busy day. We had the Puma shakeout run in the morning down at the Javits Center, so Helen ran with me down there. After that, I hustled it back uptown. My plan called for 5 miles at 6:05/mile, but I couldn't quite hit that. Blame the wind, blame the bulky jacket I was wearing, blame my legs. I did get in four-and-a-half at around 6:20/mile in the midst of 15 total, though, so it wasn't a total fail. Back to midtown for a meeting about the Shoe Finder and then to the Javits Center again where a few coworkers and I (the "experts" panel) answered questions for a hundred or so runners. I'm not a huge fan of public speaking, generally, but that went as well as I could have hoped. I wasn't as lively as some of the other speakers, but I'm hoping practice will make perfect there.

On the day of the race, Helen and I headed out to 119th & 1st and met up with Antonio, his parents, and his sister. Jeff had let me borrow his fancy camera and I was shooting photos for an RW online slideshow. Unfortunately, simply having a fancy camera on hand isn't enough to get great photos, but I managed to get a few decent ones out of the 500 or so that I shot. As soon as the elite men raced by, we hurried over to 5th Avenue to catch them again. And, not too long after that, all the friends we were watching for started to run by. It was fun getting photos of them. The rest of the day was unglamorously spent making slideshows, converting live coverage, etc. from Helen's kitchen table. Not nearly as exciting as being out on the course, but all part of it…

There is so much energy in New York during marathon weekend that it's almost impossible not to want to go run a marathon yourself. Lucky for me, I have Philadelphia coming up in just a week and a half.

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Fairly recently, I decided to add running a marathon in each of the fifty states to my list of goals. I don't want to become compulsive about it, flying to places I don't want to be, running races that I don't want to run, and missing out on those that I do because they're in the wrong state. Instead, I want to use this goal as an opportunity to visit new places that I wouldn't otherwise ever have occasion to see. I really don't mind if this takes me ten, twenty, even thirty years. I'm in no rush. I only have nine states now (ten if you count ultras), so there's plenty of territory to cover still.

With that goal in mind, I started looking online for a marathon that I could use as a long training run before Philadelphia. Atlanta happened to be hosting one three weeks before Philly – the perfect amount of time for the last long run before the gradual taper starts – and I had never run a marathon in Georgia before. I checked flights and found nonstops from Allentown, my new local airport. Helen was easily convinced to tag along on the adventure, and flew down from New York.

She was able to meet in the terminal as I walked out of the gate, just like in the old pre-insane-security days, since she had just flown in too. That was a very cool moment; it's a shame that future generations will never have that. It was late, I was fighting off a cold, and so we went straight to the hotel and to sleep (after a detour to a to the end of the metro line caused by not reading directions properly).

Saturday was awesome. We slept in, then headed over to the expo to pick up our bibs, went for a short run through Piedmont Park, got some lunch, and then napped and read all afternoon. Helen found us a fancy restaurant for dinner and I had a great pre-race meal. But then… we got back to the hotel early and the bar looked fun so we sat down for a drink. They had a fancy list of cocktails, so I decided to order a gin martini even though I hardly ever drink hard alcohol. Bad decision, but not as bad as the decision to order a couple more after that first one.

I woke up on Sunday morning with a pounding headache and accompanying nausea. We went and got bagels and coffee, but I was still feeling pretty awful by the time we got to the start. Two miles into the race, I pulled off to the side of the road and puked onto the grass. Helen overheard someone chuckling, "A little early in the race for that…" A couple miles later, there was a porta-potty stop that was not pretty. Three or four miles more, and another. I tried to drink Powerade at the aid stations, but it just wouldn't sit on my stomach. So, I gave up and just decided to hope I somehow had enough calories to not bonk.

The course was great, but definitely not one that you'd want to be running fast on. I can't recall a single stretch that was flat for more than a couple hundred yards. It was just an endless cycle of uphill, followed by downhill, and we ended up with something like 1,700 feet of gross elevation gain throughout the race – more than double that of the San Francisco Marathon. We ran through a bunch of really pretty neighborhoods, underneath the Olympic arch from 1996, and did a big loop around the city back to the start.

Helen and I were running side-by-side the whole time. She later complimented me on not whining too much even thought I was feeling miserable. But truth is, after about ten miles or so, I actually started to feel pretty good. The bad stuff was out of my system and I was just running easy with my girlfriend through a town I'd never been to before, enjoying the sights, and having a good time. They gave out Gu around mile twenty and I was able to stomach one of those, although I still couldn't do any Powerade.

I was getting pretty tired as we moved up our last big hill, just before the mile 25 marker. Helen was concerned about getting in under 3:30, and I was trying to remind her that the time wasn't important, that we weren't racing. It was the first disagreement on pace that we'd had all day. But, at the top of the hill, I caught a second wind, and we ran that last mile and change into the finish at sub-7 pace, finishing with strides even. It felt good. Our final time was 3:28:41 and we finished 80th and 81st out of 1,126.

The finisher's medals they gave us were obscenely large. If this trend continues, I'm convinced they'll start giving out manhole covers on a ribbon within a few years… But, we also got a bunch of really cool post-race loot. A pint glass, tons of snacks, and a slice of delicious local pizza.

They were also giving out beers, but I passed on that. I decided somewhere during the early miles that I'd be completely alcohol free until after Philadelphia. It was easy to make a commitment like that when feeling so miserable, but my hope is that publishing it here will keep me honest. I think it will be a really good way to maybe shed a couple pounds and be in the best shape possible for my real marathon in three weeks.

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