Flying Pig Half Marathon

When I made the decision to go for the Flying Pig, I didn’t know that we were going to be moving. Even when I found out that we would be moving several states away right as I needed to begin training for the full, I was confident in the fact that nothing was going to keep me from getting my training runs in.

Bwahahahaha…I was WRONG! Absolutely anything and everything that could possibly arise and keep me from running jumped out of the woodwork at me and threw themselves right at me again and again. I decided to skip the full and go for the Half instead.

Even a few days before leaving, I was debating on if I should even go because really, I knew that I had not put in the miles I truly needed to have been running in order to run the Half the way I know I could have ran it. Still, I decided to go for it, slow down, not worry about time and just have fun.

The Expo was great and I had fun wandering around it after picking up my packet. Some members of a Forum I belong to were going to be meeting at 2 pm for a course tour but I had no idea where so I called Luis, the coordinator, who was somewhere in the Expo. He told me where he was so I wandered that way to meet him. Since more of us were on the tour than he had expected, we went in two groups…Full and Half. Boy, let me tell you, taking to tour of the course certainly helped. It was nice knowing what to expect the next day.

After we went on the tour, we headed over to the house to meet up with others and head off to dinner. Dinner was totally insane. There was a lot of food, talking and a lot of noise. After dinner we all went our respective ways.

Sunday morning, Luis came by the hotel at 5:10 am to pick me up and off we went to Meters and Miles, the running store. I handed off my bag to Luis and caught a ride to start line Tanya. The amount of people was staggering. Mary and I hit the surprisingly well organized lines at the portapotties for one last stop before the start. We never saw any pace groups, other than 3:15, so we just kinda milled at the back of the pack. There were a lot of spectators still mingling among us when the gun went off and we had to weave around them to approach the start. I think we were about 6-8 minutes behind the gun when we finally made it to the start. The crowd support was really great.

I knew I had not really prepared like I should have (bad me!) so I was determined to take it easy. Take it easy, I did. I had allergies kicking up, giving me a pseudo chest cold, not fun but running helped. I saw Karen at Mile 3 and said hello to her. Just past mile 5, the lead runner of the Half passed by to many cheers. About 10 minutes later, the lead female whizzed past us on her way to the finish. Mary and I were close together until about mile 6, the climb up to Eden Park. That was the last time I saw Mary since I slowed on the hills and she just kept on going.

It was at this point in the race that I took some water from the water station and nearly hurled. Apparently, the water had been taken from the hose and it was foul and nasty. No kidding, my lips were numb and tingling and it smelled and tasted horribly of chlorine. I dumped it out, ate some Clif Blocks to get the nasty taste out of my mouth and continued up, up, up.

Now, I am not a fast runner to begin with and hills will make me even slower. I am putting out the effort but my pace suffers. Walkers pass me by going up hills, no kidding. One asked in a tone of disbelief why I didn’t just walk. I smiled and kept going. Later, two women walking behind me decided to discuss my running and go on to state that I should walk rather than just run slow because it is so much better for my body. Hellllooo! I have ears, I can hear you.

Things continued along well, I took some Gatorade over water because even though I don’t like it, it was better than the nasty water. About mile 11, my left calf started to cramp. I tried stretching it but it was bound and determined to cramp so I just ran through it. About Mile 12, I saw Karen yet again and knew we were almost done. You could hear the crowd revving up and that certainly spurred me on. When I could see the Finish Swine, I made my tired legs give everything they could to sprint past the line. My final chip time was 3:06:26 Since I didn’t have any grand expectations, I wanted to finish at around 3 hours so I was pretty pleased with my time.

I got my medal and then had to find where to get my chip removed (missed it twice before I found it) and then walk a pretty good distance to find some water and food. I knew my bag was somewhere and eventually asked a runner wearing a store shirt where the tent was. I found the tent but my bag was not there. I had to wait almost 2 hours before Luis came in and I got my bag. I looked for others but there were so many people that it was impossible. We should have coordinated that a little better.

Over all, this was a fun race for me. It was slow but I ran it slow. I felt good, I was not stressed as much about the time like I was in my last Half and I had fun. I saw the photographers on the course and posed for them, chatted with people around me occasionally, thanked the volunteers and police on the course.

While at dinner, Tanya said she had spoken to the one of the winners of one of the Flying Pigs, a marathoner who won several marathons. He had asked her what she was running and what she expected her time to be. She told him she hoped for under 6 hours but it could go to 7 hours. He told her, in all sincerity, that he envied runners like her! What? She questioned him on this and his reply, I thought, was pretty interesting. He was envious because he said he CAN'T run for that long, he could only run for about 2 and a half hours. Hmmm, I never thought of it that way. Still, given a choice, I would go for faster speed over longer time :grin: