Wednesday, June 10, 2009

4/25/09 Greer Earth Day Half Marathon


Well now that this running bug has officially bit and infected me, I had searched the internet for another marathon to run and could not find anything real close until I found Terri's website.  I have been knowing Irene Backer (Byron's wife) for 15 years or more as she is my attorney's paralegal and after my experience with my toes at the ING I was talking to her she said she loved doing ultra's more than road marathons and said I should look into them.  So I signed up for the Buncombe Trails 34 miler.  Well knowing that I had just over a month to get ready I signed up for the Greer Earth Day half marathon.  I had already signed up Brandi and Parker for the 5k so I was going to be at the race anyway.  So I figured may as well run that half.  Its only a half marathon right?
Now I can say anytime you get off the couch and out the door to do a run do not think "it is only".  You have to respect the run you are doing at that moment, take account for weather, how you are feeling, what you have ate etc...  Race morning in Greer was beautiful only the temp was a little to warm for me.  It was supposed to be in the high 80's, so I thought bring some extra liquid and I will be fine.  I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Upstate of SC weather in the spring but our days in April can go from 20's and snowing to 90's easy.  Well this makes it tough on race organizers, also they had some glitch and we ended up starting a little late.  
We got running the half and I told Aly (she ran the 5k with the kids) my goal was to break 2 hours.  We started out relatively fast, brother Nate ran with me at first, I had decided to run without watching my heartrate to much just push it as hard as I could.  After five miles I had average 8:35 and was feeling really good.  I noticed the  heat was getting pretty bad but had filled my 4 bottles on my belt so I thought it would be no problem to continue at that pace.  Well I was very wrong as the heat kept wearing me down and my four bottles ran out and I had no more liquid it became an endurance situation to the next aid station, for the rest of the race.  I talked to a man who had ran the half at the ING in Atlanta and he told me that this course was actually much tougher on him every year and he always broke 2 hours in Atlanta and never did here.  This surprised me as the half course at the ING as I remembered it seemed like it had more hills.   The difference was the heat, the amount of aid stations and in Greer their is no shade for most of the course. The ING had water and gatorade every mile  for the last six and this I tell you is very awesome.  In Greer they had 3 water stops in the last six.  So when you run out of water you just keep running in the sun.  At mile 11 people were starting to cramp up and someone actually fell over from the heat, there was 2 people helping him already so I gave him some S'caps and kept going.  I caught my nephew Josiah at 12 as the heat had gotten to him.  I kept running and finally came to the final aid station I actually stopped and filled up my water bottles there as I was so scared of running out again on the last mile.  Well I finally finished and my time was just at 2 hours so I was really happy.
Aly and the kids had a good 5k and they were waiting for me when I got in.  We waited for some others to finish and for the awards which didn't happen until later so we checked online and Parker had finished 2nd in his age group.  We picked up his award a couple days later at Fleet Feet.  All in all it was a great race in our hometown.


Brandi, Me and Parker after we finished.

Aly, Brandi, Me, Parker and Gramma who just came down to watch but ended up running the 5k great job Gramma!

Enjoying a cool water after suffering some 90 degree heat in April.

Parker at the finishing chute great job and congratulations on your 2nd place finish!

2 comments:

  1. This race surprised me as well. I was using it as a cut back week in preperation for the Buncombe run. I thought it would just be a nice easy stroll through Greer. Wrong! I finished around 2:20 and actually did some walking on the course. Nice report. Are you running the Lansford Canal on 7/18?

    By the way - Spartanburg is hosting it's first 1/2 marathon on October 10th (shameless plug since I live there!) and a lot of it will run through Duncan park which is a nice area.
    http://www.urrc.net/irecycle/pages/race.html

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  2. Jason, I just heard about the Lansford Canal run I am wondering if you know anything about that run there is not much on the web. I am looking for a July race so I will probably be there. That Greer race was tough.

    Thanks Josh

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