What better way to keep running during the winter months than to sign up for a winter 1/2 marathon? I wanted to run the Lake Effect 1/2 Marathon (Liverpool, NY) last year and my wife was not going to have anything to do with that. She isn’t a fan of running in the snow and cold. Some days I don’t blame her one bit. So this year comes along and one of her friends signs up for it and pow... “hey honey, let’s run the Lake Effect 1/2”. Seriously... what was I last year, chopped liver?! Lol. So we signed up, I nagged at her (like any good husband would) and dragged her outside to prepare. Some days she would mutter some inaudible words about me when we started... but she was always glad she ran by the time we got back. How many runs in inclement weather are like that? I think we can all relate!
We ran one long run each week as we responsibly built-up mileage; most of the time with a small posse of other brave souls who were tackling this same winter race. Some of those runs were bitterly cold with wind trying to smack some sense into us. I ran a lot on other days. My wife; not so much. When race day closed in I was ready to clobber the course and my wife was still having some knee and IT band issues. So we tweaked our expectations for race day. (When we run these events, we run together instead of each of us racing independently. As such, I don’t take off and run ahead if she is having an off day.)
We decided to get a hotel for this race since it was out of town. We could have drove down very early on race day, but we decided to pamper ourselves a bit and be able to sleep in on race morning. And possibly square off with a good pillow fight. We stayed at the Liverpool Knight’s Inn. It’s a small hotel and had everything we wanted; location close to the race, inexpensive, refrigerator and microwave in the room, and a quiet atmosphere. And there was a Wegmans nearby and my wife has some cult-like following for that place. Weird. :) Packet pick-up went smooth at Fleet Feet. The shirts were awesome! We ate Moe’s for dinner and rushed back to the hotel room for the Syracuse - Duke game. Syracuse lost 60-66 (boo) with some weird antics by Boeheim that in essence ended the game with 2 technical fouls (ugh). Anyway...
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| Packet pick-up... the posse. |
Race day morning went off without a hitch. The alarm caught me in a sound sleep and was as loud as a smoke alarm. So my heart-rate went from zone 1 to zone 5 in a fraction of a second. Shower, breakfast, double check weather to dress properly, and out the door to get there early and get a good parking spot. The weather was awesome for this time of year. It was mostly sunny and 36 F when we started. I’d rather have 50 but hey, this was the best running weather of the year! Now, porta-potties in 36 F weather is another thing. But steamy poo helps warm... never-mind. We lined up with about 500 other runners and before we knew it we were off and running. The course was on a paved park trail that went out about 3 miles, head back the way we came, a squiggly loop thing, then back out the same 3 miles, had back once again, squiggly loop, and veer of to the finish arch. My wife hates these kind of courses with multiple out and backs. I could care less, but I can see her point also. The course was flat and had 2 water stations. One water station was passed twice and the other four times. We ran the first half of the race and then used our run/walk method the second half. It worked well. We didn’t break any records by any means, but that wasn’t our objective for this early season race. The medal was wicked cool. So “cool” it had snowflakes on it. (lame pun) The after race food was in a heated tent and consisted of chocolate milk, chicken noodle soup, pringles (that’s a first), hot chocolate, oranges, lara bars, apple juice, water, gatorade, etc. Not bad at all.
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| Final mile. |
Overall, I thought the race was very nice. My wife has no plans of doing it again next year because of the season and the fact she doesn’t enjoy these out-back course. I think the course could be used to put down a smoking hot PR if a person wanted to. Despite being winter, the course was maintained well with no ice or snow to slip on. It meandered under two bridges, had enough twists and turns in it to keep thing interesting, ran along the lake (which was iced over this time of year), and had some straightaways with oncoming runner traffic. So pretend you are a race car, make put-put sounds, and smoke the course.
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| Victory! |
And how can I forget; this event was a fund-raiser for Ophelia’s Place. This is a nonprofit agency with the mission “redefining beauty and health by empowering individuals, families and communities impacted by eating disorders, disordered eating, and body dissatisfaction”. Seriously, with three daughters I can empathize with the subconscious emphasis society / marketing places on body image and the measures that some people do to try to meet these “standards”. So I’m glad that the revenues are going to a worthy project such as Ophelia’s Place. They announced that this race raised funds equivalent to 10% of their annual budget. How awesome is that? Throughout the course there were signs with various statistics about eating disorders. Nice.
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| Race shirt, bibs, and bling! |
Will I be back next year? I don’t know. I typically don’t do races without my wife. She is my running buddy and we mostly do races together. I’m a big-boy and can race on my own of course, but running is something that we really enjoy doing together. So who knows? Maybe one of her friends will sign up again next year.
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