Marathon #50 race report aka the good, the bad and the ugly...

So, marathon #50 has come and gone this past Sunday...I have four more before the end of 2014, so I don't have much time to linger on this one. Here are a few highlights, though: Chasing the Unicorn, Washington Crossing, PA - Sunday, August 17 7:15am start Set in the beautiful Washington Crossing Historic Park north of Philadelphia, PA, this race was a double-out-and-back on a canal path (about 1 car-length wide) that runs parallel to the Delaware River. About 300 brave souls ran the race and they seemed to be all Type A Boston qualifiers. Despite only 300 runners, there was a 'wave' start to spread out the field on the fairly narrow canal path. I should have taken the hint when I saw that I was in Wave 6 and there wasn't anyone behind me in the starting corral. I took off with the Wave 5 people so I wasn't standing there alone with a sheepish grin on my mug. I knew there was rain forecasted, but I didn't want to mention that to my wife or she would have stayed in bed. She bravely brought her bike and patiently trekked around for the 4+ hours, including the last 10 miles of feet shuffling with me. She really knows her birds and wildlife, of which there were plenty to see along the canal (swans, turtles by the caseload, egrets (I'm in way over my head mentioning egrets), etc. As the eventual winner cruised by me on his final leg while I was heading out for my second half loop, I was struck by the level of talent at all of these races. The same person doesn't win every marathon, so the depth of the fields is always staggering. These are folks who put in 50-150 miles per week plus speed work to reach these levels (while probably working full-time and having families, etc). Amazing! My 30-40 miles per week is paltry in comparison. I eventually made it over and under several bridges on the pancake-flat course to the turn-around and clicked off the last 6.5 miles to the finish. The crowd support was rated a B+ where folks had taken up positions on the bridges. Other exercise enthusiasts were running and biking along the canal at the same time, so it was not a closed course (which was completely fine). Things that went right: 1. I finished. 2. I didn't hurt myself (at least I don't think) or anyone else. 3. I spent some quality time with my wife. 4. I realized how lucky I am to be able to do these crazy events. Things that didn't help: 1. Had a sports massage a couple of days before the race. I wouldn't normally do this, so the added muscle tweaking might have tightened me up rather than loosened me up. 2. Swam laps in a pool the day before the race...not just casual laps, but crazy man, all-out, trying-to-win laps...dumb... 3. Believe it or not, I wore a brand new pair of Mizuno Precision 13s for this race. The tread on my previous two pairs of MP 13s was trashed, so I called a last minute audible. This seemed to lead to some foot pain (metatarsal?) for the duration of the run which kept me running on the grassy part next to the trail. It doesn't hurt today, so we'll see. Rookie mistake #99... 4. I started the race too fast. I was running 1 min/mile faster than what I usually do trying to keep up with the Joneses..rookie mistake #12... 5. My patented (um, not exactly) method of walking through the aid stations (which were about 1.5 miles apart and had water (always) and Gatorade (sometimes)) didn't seem to help my running. I think this technique works really well if you start slow and shoot for a negative split in the race. 6. I didn't see anything resembling food on the course. There was a person handing out Honey Stinger gel packets (which were delicious), but no bananas, cookies, etc. I like a little snack somewhere in the proceedings, so this was a bummer. 7. I have a new Garmin 220 which displays the distance, time and was set for current pace. This was great to see my current pace, but I really want to know my average pace. I had to do a bunch of math during the run to figure out how I was tracking. Math and running long distances don't really mix. All in all, I would recommend this race as a bare-bones, no thrills, good time. The medal was top-notch and the shirt was a white singlet (which is unusual and was welcomed as a change-of-pace). A final top tip is to wear your short gaiters to keep the dirt and stones from invading your shoes.