Run

14 January

Run: PF Changs Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon
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Overall--My sister finished her first half marathon!!!!!!! Also, NEVER EVER RUN THIS RACE!!! I've run a lot of races, including both huge and small marathons. I have never experienced any race more disorganized in my life. Let's start from the beginning...

Pre-race--I ate a baked potato and my sister had a bagel. We brought Sport Beans and some Gatorade with us too. We were feeling pretty good!

Traffic--We expected a TON of traffic, and since my sister graduated from AZ State (only 2 weeks ago!), she knew a shortcut, which we took. There was a TON of traffic everywhere. I guess 36,000 runners is a lot.

Shuttle--This is when things started going downhill. Quickly. The temperature was ~26 degrees F. We walked from the parking garage to the nearest shuttle line. We assumed the shuttle line would go fairly quickly, since the start was 13.1 miles away, so we wear shorts, beanies, gloves and long-sleeve shirts. The time was 7:00. Then we wait. And wait. And then wait some more. The line doesn't move! We don't even see any buses going by! We are FREEZING! My poor sister looks like she's going to pass out from being so cold. Finally a shuttle picks us up at 8:15. It might have warmed up to a balmy 30 degress by this point, not sure. All those skin nerves are now dead.

Start--We arrive at the race start at 8:45 (and there were more shuttles behind us). The race started at 8:30. We still had to peel off some clothes, check our stuff, and use the portapotties. We were supposed to start in corral 9, but corral 18 was at the start by the time we got there. We wormed our way up to corral 20 (out of 26). We finally start "running" at around 9:00. By "running" I mean we fight our way through TONS of walkers everywhere. I am trying to find the most straight path so my sister can follow me and conserve some energy.

Game--To keep our minds busy, we decided to rate all the bands on a scale from 1-5 (1=super suck, 5=fantastic) and give them an adjective to describe their performance. Right after the first band (a pretty good country band, score of 3, adjective homely), we saw a bunch of these crazy Christian people with HUGE signs ("Love JESUS," "Save Yourself," etc). Their timing was really bad. At this point, fire and brimstone looked pretty darn good (still ~30 degrees)!!!

Running--My sister did GREAT! In her training she learned how much water she needs and at what point she needs a little calorie boost, and she didn't stray. She was scarily consistent in her pacing. And she ran the ENTIRE RACE!! I showed her how to crimp the top of the cup to run while drinking (and not choking), and she did it. I showed her how to pin a gel to her shorts so it doesn't rub and how to tear it off while running. She ran exactly how she trained, and she was AMAZING!!! Oh, and she totally killed me in the last 0.1mi. Seriously. Our chip times are EXACTLY the same, which is scary.

Finish--After the finish (at 11:30), I take off our chips (the line was waaaay too long), grab a space blanket and make the guy put the finisher medal on my sister. Then we are forced to go through this ridiculously long food line, even though neither of us wanted any food. Then we exit the food area at 12:00. Then we try to find our bags that we checked. There's a HUGE sign pointing to the left, but there are SO many people we don't know up from down. We were like salmon trying to spawn. We finally found our bags (12:30) and start walking back over to the parking garage. Well that's the marathon finish, so we spend another hour and a half trying to just figure out how to get to the car! There are no signs or anything pointing back to the parking. Again, luckily my sister graduated from the great AZ State so she at least recognized the area. We get to the garage (2:00) and wait in line to exit (remember, marathon going on). We didn't get back to my grandparents' house until about 3:00, which is usually only a 30 min drive. It was a LONG day.

Improvement--I'm not going to say anything about the course; it was fine with me. To quote my sister, "Well, what do you expect? It's McDowell" (the name of the road). My Spanish is impeccable now! The parking and shuttles are a huge problem. The race finish is also ridiculous. I am definitely going to fill out the survey and offer some solutions. But all of that is secondary to my sister finishing her FIRST HALF MARATHON!!! I am SO proud of her!

The obligatory splits
10:50
11:19
11:06
10:45
22:02 (oops)
11:10
11:17
11:01
11:09
12:25
12:02
11:17
0:50
Total time 2:27:17, Pace 11:14