I am gonna try to go through that experience here while I have some time waiting for my flight in the airport here in Dayton. I was originally going to write as soon as I got back to the hotel yesterday, but that just wasn't gonna happen.
So here goes. Dad and I got up here on Thursday night and it just so happens that after training in the hottest summer on record in central Texas, that I had flown into what was a degree off for setting a record low here in Ohio. It was somewhere in the low 40s Thursday night, I want to say 43-44. We did the runners expo which was held at Wright State University and then went and walked around the University of Dayton campus. Side note, if you are ever up here, do yourself a favor and check that place out. It's gorgeous.
Shunned the spaghetti dinner Friday night at the expo center and opted for Cincinnati's famous Skyline Chili. They serve it on top of spaghetti and it's more meat sauce than chili the way us Texans consider it, but I found it to be quite good and filling. Good? Yes. Great? No. But the service was great as it was everywhere else we went up here. Very friendly people the southwestern Ohioan.
Got to bed early as I was set to get up at 3:45 Saturday morning for the 7:25 B-1B fighter jet flyover and race start. After a pretty tumultuous evening of sleep, I got up and started my pre-run routine which is as follows(in no particular order): Shower, Eat a banana and Clif bar as well as drink a liter of Zico coconut water, take 2 aspirin(took Bayer Advanced this time, most of the time it's Aleve), Vaseline up(you other runners get it), tape my Achilles tendon on my left leg with KT Tape, work the knots out with "The Stick" in my thighs and calves, put my watch on, grab my HR monitor and knee straps, sunglasses, hat and my favorite running tool, the Sweat Gutr. For yesterday I also added a windbreaker and sweatpants since we were getting there well before sunup.
We set off around 5 to make the 30 minute drive in to the base and there were virtually no cars out and about which is strange considering an estimated 13,000 runners were participating in total between the 10K, Half, and Full Marathons. There was about a mile and a half walk from parking to start gate and that may be the only detracting thing I would say about this race.
I was finally a little nervous. Not because of the distance or anything like that, but I had just put five months into training for an event that I was only sure in my mind that I could complete. I hadn't at any time during training come close to 26.2 miles. Hell, I had only gone as long as 18 once so I was a little nervous about breaking down before we even started.
So, with a little nervous energy coursing it's way through me and an hour and a half to burn before the run and the temperatures in the mid 50s, I did something I rarely do before running, stretch. You see, when you train for something when it's 85 degrees before the sun comes up, your muscles generally are pretty warm to start. When it's 50, not so much.
I did some light groin stretches, hamstrings, calves, hip and back stretches. Gotta be getting close, right?
Nope! Still had about 30 minutes to kill so what to do. Ah, yes, the bathroom, just in case. Went to the bathroom and then stripped out of my sweatpants and Rangers windbreaker, strapped on my HR monitor and knee straps and then checked my bag into the race tent.
Now I needed to find my race group. Meaning the people who expected to run around the same pace or have an expected finish time around when I was hoping to finish. With my training, we had learned to not set time goals for this race, that finishing was the only objective and I was fine with that, but my competitive spirit wanted me to finish in less than 5 hours so I chose to run with the 4:45 expected finishers.
I figured that was modest and attainable and would be another nice challenge.
There were pre race festivities, the national anthem, notation of honored guests and runners including the Governor of Ohio's wife who Dad said finished about 20 minutes before me.
The wheelchair guys got to start, then there was a large boom which noted we got to start. About that time a jet came out of the rising sun and flew right over the start line. It was vey, very cool to say the least.
We started herding towards the start gate, I prepared my iPod and got it running and I'll be a monkey's uncle if Kid Cudi's Pursuit of Happiness wasn't the first song that came on. I found it quite fitting considering that's what I was trying to accomplish tangibly with this race. Ever since I got in trouble the last time and have changed my mindset on so many things in my life, i have been on the pursuit of happiness myself so I found it fitting. First of many near emotional breakdowns on the day.
I had gotten my watch prepared to start as I crossed the start line so I would be able to better monitor my pace...too bad I hit the wrong button crossing the line and didn't start pacing myself until about two tenths of a mile in, which actually works alright when you think about it since the race is 26.2 miles.
Right about the time I noticed that, I almost had a big big problem and tripped over some uneven ground and came close to eating it big time about a quarter of a mile in. But i caught my balance and didn't actually tackle anyone while stumbling forward towards the concrete and so we were good.
Most of the elevation change in this race, or so I was led to believe, was in the first 2 miles and coming from training in Austin, I didn't find it to be too terribly challenging. It was a gradual climb from about half a mile in to the two mile marker and then leveled off and started coming down a little.
Now, in many of my training runs, I was generally good for about the first 3-5 miles and then desperately needed to stop to walk, catch my breath, stretch, or something else but that wasn't the case yesterday. Around the end of mile one and heading into mile two, I started moving a little faster. It wasn't a breakneck pace by any stretch, but faster than my 10:55/mile pace time for the group looking for a 4:45 finish.
I found myself running with the pace group set to finish in 4:20, or 9:55/mile. I kept moving with them until around mile five and then started pulling away from them too. I had stopped at the water stations and walked through them, making sure to take water and Gatorade whenever they had it but it was around the fourth aid station around mile four that I got a few slices of orange and started to pull away from pace team 4:20.
I was feeling great! Not moving too fast as I had been warned about. Not out of breath or struggling in any aspect. I was feeling really confident. Took my first pull of GU gel right as I finished my first hour, about six and a half miles in and wouldn't you know it, they were handing it out on the next station too.
I picked up 4 more and proceeded forward towards the seven mile marker and I was flying. Clocking in at about 9:30 a mile and feeling great but needing to pee. Saw a guy duck behind a building and followed him over. There was a porta-potty there and I popped in and had at it. I really thought that was gonna slow me down but it didn't, hopped back on the course and picked my pace right back up.
Kept moving right along and was done with mile 8 around 1:10 which was 15 minutes faster than I had ever done 8 miles. We came off base and into a small town called Fairborn which runs right along the side of the base and it's downtown is very worn down but still functional and the people there were great.
I high fived about 15 pee-wee cheerleaders standing in front of the closed down movie theater and moved down around the corner. We came into the town square and there were people everywhere cheering and encouraging us. There were three old guys playing Air Force songs with a polka style and there was a radio station or something trying to call out the names of the runners as they passed.
As I ran past, he said, "...And here comes Jeffrey Farr followed by Janine something or other" and I hear her say, "Hey, That's me!" I told her that he called me right before her and we had a nice little half a mile chat for the next few blocks. I normally hate talking when I run, but I welcomed it this time.
She was in from Indiana, did undergrad at Ball State and graduate work at Miami(OH) and had been to Texas one time to visit her sister when she was at North Texas. We turned down a street and she patted me on my back and told me to enjoy my run and I never saw her again.
I finished the block and back out onto the main street still chugging along at about 9:30 a mile. Passed 10 miles right at an hour and a half and was feeling great. Started to believe that I could keep this up for the entire race. It was so pleasant outside, maybe 60-65 with the cloud cover burning off and i could see that we were about to continue to descend a little more back onto the base and on top of that, the halfway mark was in sight. I pounded some more GU and kept plugging along. At this point I could see the need to walk a bit was on the horizon but wanted to make it to the halfway mark strong, and that's exactly what happened.
I started nearing the marker for halfway and about that time the 4:20 pace group caught up with me just as we passed it, but I had passed the 13.1 mark in right at two hours, a good 30 minutes faster than I had done it in any area of training and it felt damn good. I decided at that point to take a little break and asses where I was physically. I also needed to check my ankle monitor and make sure it hadn't dug a hole into my leg and made me bleed yet.
Was good across the board so i decided to walk a mile. Made it about four tenths before the next aid station, grabbed some water, gatorade and oranges and decided that I came to run and not walk so I started trotting again, aimed my orange peel at a container with a behind the back toss, missed and while I was admiring my poor performance on that shot, I ran up the back of this guy. I grabbed him to make sure he didn't fall. I apologized but he did not look happy by any stretch of the imagination.
Oh, well, was time to run again. Made it to mile marker 16 before needing to stop and walk again. Took some more GU and walked the entire length of the runway we were on. When we came off the runway, I started up again, made it about half a mile, walked half a mile and then plugged along for about 2 more. As I passed mile 18, I realized I was still 30 minutes ahead of pace so I hadn't lost any time on my training pace in the last hour.
18 miles in three hours and I had never gotten there faster than three and a half.
It started getting a little harder to fire back up after walking but i kept moving pretty well through mile 20 when I realized that I only had a 10K left and if I could do that in the same pace as my way out, I would clock in between 4:20 and 4:30. Right about that time, the 4:30 pace team passed me by. At least my brain was still working, right?
I passed mile 21 and saw it. This giant hill of highway coming out of the base and up towards Wright State. I remember coming down this thing around mile five or six feeling great. Going up it after 21 looked like death. I could see the apex of this hill and determined that I would walk up this hill until the sign posted at it's apex and then I would get my momentum back coming down it. Right about the time I got moving down this hill, the Lupe Fiasco song The Show Goes On started playing and a wave of euphoria swept over me.
I started moving a lot like the initial pace that I had started on and that carried me through mile 23. More oranges, more water and gatorade. Off the 4:30 pace but hadn't seen the 4:45 crew pass me yet and that was my initial hope, remember?
So, I turned the corner to go up this small rolling set of hills, three miles to go. We had come down this road on the way out and were doing it on the way in. Pass the 24 marker, try to get moving again. Was virtually impossible. Was starting to struggle a ton. Ran about 100 yards, then had to start walking again. It was starting to get painful but I was so close. Time to dig in. Time to find the competitive spirit inside.
It had been a long time since I have had to channel energy in that manner but just as I needed it, the 4:45 pace team passed me. We were 24 miles into a race and I had been outrunning people this whole time and I'd be damned if they were gonna take that from me. We were exactly a mile and a half away. Remember, my watch was two tenths behind so my round numbers were the numbers plus two tenths. I had these guys.
Luckily there was a hill to go down so that helped. I could barely swing my legs forward because my groin/hip flexor area hurt so badly on both legs. We came through the entrance to the base and there were people out there pulling for us, telling us we only had a bit to go and I could see the finish line. I knew Dad was there. I knew I was about to get to see him and I couldn't wait. I actually had a thing of GU left so I pounded it as we entered the base.
So we run in, I'm behind a blind runner and his guide that I had been following and I saw them slow down so I blew past them. By the way, blowing past someone in the last mile of a marathon is like watching 8 year olds play basketball, it's a very slow motion action.
I look at my watch and we hadn't even entered the final stretch but my watch read 26.00 which meant we were at 26.2 according to the markers and whatnot along the way, but my watch went 26 at the same time I passed the marker for it.
Came into the fenced in homestretch lined with about 8-10 antique Air Force planes and could see the finish line. Kept looking for Dad and finally saw him. I think I shocked him because he wasn't ready for me to be there yet. About 100 more yards a guy on the side yelled out, "Come on Jeffrey, DIG!!!" and that added with seeing Dad there was all i needed to finish as hard as I could. Passed about 3 or 4 more people in the last tenth and then as I crossed the line I heard the DJ say, "Jeffrey Farr, all the way from Austin, TX finishes in under five hours! Good job."
I followed the line a bit, sweat dripping from my hat and got my medal placed on me and then got my silver blanket and moved on to grab some Gatorade and a banana or two. They were giving pizza away but waiting in line was not in the cards for me. I went and picked up my stuff, found Dad and that was that, except for the aforementioned mile and a half walk back to the car.
Long and short, I finished my 26.4 mile marathon in four hours and 46 minutes and can't wait for my next one, even though I can hardly feel my legs right now and it has been a little tough moving over the last 24 hours.
The experience was moving, almost flooring me at points as I thought about Randy and what he would have said or how much I wished everyone could be there beside me. Some of you may know this about me, but being alone can be scary at times so running by yourself for that long can really let you free your mind. I thought about my dear friends Aaron and Courtney and how they got engaged on Friday night. I Thought about Robby King and his wife Reiko who are expecting their first kiddo and how much he cares for me and how much he cared for Randy. I thought about Reid and Kendall and Mom and Dad and so much more. I could feel all of you out there running with me, encouraging me.
Shoot, even thinking about it now makes me emotional. It was an experience that I got to have with God. There was something very spiritual in running this race for me and something I will look back on if I ever feel like I can't complete the task at hand.
I am gonna keep writing as I continue to progress and I am so flattered that many of you have taken time to read what I have written.
I will leave you all with this. One of the guys I was running with had it on his back.
From 2 Timothy, 4:7- Fight the Good Fight, Finish the Race, Keep the Faith.
I have done those things and couldn't be happier.
