white noise

This year Mark and I started the running year again with the Bockfest 5k. D had to sit out, a rariety, due to a chest cold that was hanging on too tough. The weather was crisp, around 38, but the expected scattered showers never showed, so we were happy. And I was happy with my result. The annual training for the Pig must be paying off as I took 23 seconds off my Bockfest time from 2 years prior – and amazingly exactly matched my PR from the Flying Pig 5k last May.

Last Flying Pig weekend I ran two races: the 1-mile on Fri and a leg of the Relay on Sunday. This year I decided to add third event and run the 5k on Saturday.

Little Kings 1-mile

The Little Kings one mile is a fun start to the weekend, and an interesting challenge after you’ve been training for longer distances. This year 5 of us took on the mile, Mark, Justin, Becca, and D and I. Last year’s course was a downhill blast, but this year they completely rerouted things to a flat course. Still, by pushing hard I managed to nab a time only six seconds slower than last year’s sub-8.

5k (new PR!)

After Friday’s mile and a couple post-race beers, and even witnessing a post-race marriage, all five of us were back Saturday morning for the 5k. I think I meant for the 5k to be a relatively easy run before Sunday’s relay, but somewhere in the excitment I think I forgot that and set my best time since college.

Marathon Relay

For the finale of the Pig weekend we returned with our relay team, this year welcoming Brian in place of Matt. We switched up the legs, and I took the first leg, handing off to Justin for the second, with Mark running third, and Brian taking the glory of the last stretch. The last mile or so of the first leg is mostly uphill, and a lot of that is staggeringly steep. I eventually broke down and walked some of that hill, but I survived the worst part of the course, and still maintained an average pace under 10 minutes.

The Bockfest is a cool event in Cinci which sort of ushers in Springtime. The fest’s 5k last year was an interesting, flat course where I set my current PR. And following the race there’s great beer, live music, free skyline, and other oddities like pretzels dangling from beaded necklaces.

As lack of luck would have it, a violent stomach flu hit me just a couple days before this race, and lasted a couple days after. Up until the morning of I was doubtful to even make it downtown, let alone run, but I pulled it together long enough to give it a go.

After two days with very little to eat or drink I knew it wouldn’t be a good one. Adding insult to illness, they made the course tougher this year, with more elevation changes, and it wiped out the energy I mustered pretty quickly. There was some walking, up a hill, around 2 miles in, but I survived. I even managed a post-race beer and a half. Later that night the puking resumed.

For this year’s Flying Pig I decided it was time to move up from the 10k to the 4-person marathon relay. The 10k is still very much a challenge, but I really wanted a taste of Sunday’s main events. So with Mark, and Justin and his friend Matt, we assembled a relay team.

Each leg of the relay is a different length – ranging from around 6 miles to over 7.5 – but they also vary a lot in topology. I decided to take the longest leg, but in return it’s also the flatest. Justin took the first leg and had to contend with the bridges and downtown streets. Matt took the second leg and the hills of Eden Park. Then after me, Mark took the last leg back into the city for the finish.

The logistics of running the relay kinda suck. Everyone gets downtown prior to the very early 6:30 start and (everyone but the first runner) hops on a shuttle bus corresponding to their leg. You’re then bussed several miles out, and dropped off where you wait, outside in the chilly morning, until your teammate comes running up. It ends up being a lot of waiting around, but it is really awesome running (part of) the marathon course lined with all the spectators. The run went great. It was the longest I’d run in a race, but I was really happy I kept close to a 9:30 pace. I also ran out in the last quarter mile and joined Mark for the very end. And while our total team time wasn’t amazing, it was very cool we covered the full 26.2 between the four of us.

The Flying Pig weekend kicked off Friday night with the second race of the Christian Moerlein Beer Series, the Little King’s Mile. It’s a short straight line shot from the north edge of downtown to the stadium area on the river. There’s a rise or two along the way, but for the most part it’s decidedly downhill. All in all, it’s a fun and super easy dash before the more serious events of the weekend.

I never run just a mile, so I didn’t really have any expectations for my time. Generally a fast mile for me at any distance is around 9 minutes, so I thought if I beat that for a single mile I’d be doing well. With my longer training runs lately I’ve found I’m fairly tired for the first mile or two and I get into a better rhythm into mile 3 or 4. So I knew I’d have to start loose and really push myself out of my normal comfort zone. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go too overboard and end up hurting for the long relay on Sunday.

Being such a short distance, the race was setup in heats, with each corral setting off 10 minutes after the previous. The run went really, really well. A mile is a funny distance – too much to sprint, but short enough to definitely push faster than normal race pace. Instead of breaking my goal of 9 minutes, I was shocked to see I beat the 8 minute mark. Yeah that’s still pretty slow by any standard measure, but it has set a seriously challenging 1-mile PR for myself going forward.

This year D and I jumped into the three race Christian Moerlein Beer Series, which spans from March to September. The series kicked off this weekend with the Bockfest 5K. The downtown course winds through the Over The Rhine district, which is a nice shift from the usual riverfront routes. The course was pretty flat with a couple rises, but also ample grades downhill. Between the course and the great weather I ran my best 5k in at least 20 years – even blowing away the great run I had at the very flat iSpace 5k a few months ago. It seems my winter training has been fruitful indeed.

Post-race there was a huge party at the Moerlein Brewery which led into the downtown-wide Bockfest beer festival all weekend. There were lots of Bocks and other craft beers on hand, live bands, and big ol German pretzels to eat from beaded necklaces. We didn’t partake in the activities for too long, but this was a fantastic start to the racing season and is definitely a race to repeat next year.

Yup, the race metal is a bottle opener! In fact, all the metals of the beer series will be.

D and I decided to get in one final run of the year, and one last one on the last day in her age division. The Eggnog Jog 5k winds through Mt Adams and Eden Park and is a scenic, but really hilly course. For four days before Christmas the temperature was awesome, reaching 60, but there was a steady rain all day. Given the rain, the hills, and an IT band that isn’t well stretched this season, it wasn’t a great pace, but a fun run anyway. Plus, the post race party was at a Mt Adams bar with free beer and eggnog!

As part of a early birthday weekend, D and I headed over to Indy for some Hoo Hoo Hoo’s and Ho Ho Ho’s. Saturday was a double header between IU versus ND and then Butler versus Purdue. Unfortunately, as is typical when I buy tickets, the Hoosiers lost pretty badly. But at least we tried to wash the loss down with lots of sushi and martinis.

On Sunday we ran the Santa Hustle 5k. It’s a crazy winter race where everyone’s race tee looks like a Santa coat and everyone gets a beard and Santa hat. It was bitter cold, maybe 20 by the thermometer, but the course runs beside a canal that was frozen and the winds coming across that were rough. It was also a really packed race since the course was actually wide sidewalks and not streets. And worse, we ended up in a coral further back, and probably passed 500 people along the way. There were definitely moments of light jogging while weaving for a passing lane. In conditions like that, D and I couldn’t expect to lay down a great pace, but the sight was really awesome, over 1600 Santas on the run. Plus they had candy and cookie stations in addition to water!

Last weekend we participated in the iSpace 5K for our first time. It’s a very small race at this point, and it’s not the most scenic, but it benefits iSpace who I do a lot of volunteer work for. It’s a very flat course, which leads to great times, and even without running much in the couple weeks leading up to Halloween, I smashed my recent times. Since I starting running again in 2010, my best competition mile pace has been 9:57, and for a variety of reasons my best 5k has been 30:50. It was great to have a good healthy run and set a mark for me to strive to beat in the future.

Another Flying Pig Marathon weekend was upon us and D, Justin, and I gave it our best (Mark was sidelined by injury this year). D decided to return to some bit of sanity after last year’s Full and instead do the half marathon on Sunday. Justin and I choose to stick with a repeat of the 10k on Saturday. For whatever reason my training was lagging behind last year’s schedule. I only logged about 6 miles each in Jan and Feb, and 11 in March. I think I finally got worried enough to put in a healthy April, but I was still light on longer runs (with not one over 8.5k). But having run the distance once, I wasn’t nearly as anxious about it as last year.

We always get pretty pumped as the race weekend approaches, but this year had a deeper motivation as it followed just two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing. That event was really felt in the running community. Runners find a meditative escape in the miles they toil away on the road. Even at its most adversarial, running is just your body versus your mind in an internal struggle. On the road the outside falls away – no job, no bills, no government, and certainly no terrorism. Then suddenly we’re all reminded that bubble of calm can be intruded upon in horrific ways. So to support the victims, the city of Boston, and to reclaim their peaceful sport, runners signed up in record numbers for the Pig.

The race went pretty well. Since my prep was a little off, my goal was just to be as close to last year’s result as possible. My start felt better this year (not too fast), and I handled the hills and bridges a bit better maybe, but it was still really tough. At one point downtown around mile 3 or 4 the headwind was ridiculous. Into the last mile I had just a little IT pain starting to flare up, but gladly it wasn’t bad. I ended up finishing just over 2 minutes over last year’s time. Not bad at all.

We stopped in The Holy Grail for a beer following the race and it was AMAZING. I think we have a new tradition!

D had a good run for the Half on the next day. She and her running buddies had fairly cool temps and pushed their way through a final leg in the rain to a time of 2:27:24. I don’t see myself getting up to that distance any time soon, but hopefully next year I’ll move into the Sunday races with the relay (a slight distance increase over the 10k).