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Race Thoughts

Oct

2015

I ran a few different races this year – a 5k, a 10k, and a couple half marathons. Here are various thoughts from those events.

1. After running a few races, you get to see similar signs. By “signs” I’m referring to the notes of encouragement written by spectators and held by them during the race for the runners to view. A number of the signs are meant to be humorous, but the same jokes gets old quickly. This year’s notable entries (i.e. they made me laugh or at least smile, as opposed to the familiar signs that elicit no reaction anymore) were
You’re running better than the government.
and
Run like you just fumbled a punt!

For those of you who are wondering about the last sign – the run was the day after the Michigan-Michigan State football game, a significant rivalry which Michigan lost this year in the last 10 seconds by fumbling a punt.

2. When the Detroit Marathon website and email suggest you get there early (before 6:00AM) to avoid traffic problems – take them seriously. I took the route I normally take for major sporting events, but I was late because traffic for the marathon is much, much worse than it is for a Lions or Tigers game.

The race started at 7:00, and I couldn’t get to a parking spot until 7:15. Then I had to walk about 5 blocks to the starting line. When I was about a block away, I could see people crossing the starting line and I heard the announcer over the loudspaker start counting down “30 seconds”. The material they had sent out before the race informed everyone that once the last group has started, they close the starting line and no one else is allowed to start.

So I heard the countdown “30 seconds … 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1” and I’m a block away so I figured there’s no way I’m going to make it. But the mass of people continued to go through the starting line. I got closer and saw a ton of people (actually many tons of people) still in line. And then I heard the announcer start counting again.

It turned out he counted down to the start of each wave. I was supposed to be wave C, but I ended up in wave M. And there were more waves after that. It took about a half hour just to get everyone through the starting line. I suppose it is an interesting logistics problem – how to most efficiently get 27,000 people through a gate that is about 3 lanes wide on the road.

3. Don’t be late for a major city marathon or half marathon if you care about your time. If you don’t start with your group of people with similar paces, you will be stuck in the group of people with slower paces. This is a problem in big city races because there are tens of thousand of people in the race and if you are stuck in a slow pack, you are stuck. The people are packed curb-to-curb and there is no picking your way through the people like there is in smaller races.

The slower group was a relatively happy, festive group. And I witnessed something I never would have seen if I were in the faster group – the in-race selfie. People were stopping and taking photos of themselves at various landmarks. The most popular one was the Ambassador Bridge to cross into Canada. At first I thought it was amusing. But then some people in front of me stopped for that and I had to dodge them. A word of advice: if you have to (or want to) stop during a race, move off the side of the course first, so you don’t block the people behind you. And in this race, there were literally thousands of people behind them.

4. My time was slower than expected for the Detroit race. Much of that was due to the fact that I was stuck in a slow pack for a while, but some of it is because I ran a longer route than necessary. When there were breaks in the pack, I ran faster, but I had to weave around clumps of people. On the Ambassador Bridge, in particular, I probably did as much running side to side to find a break in the wall of people as I did running forward. The extra distance adds up.

and a large crowd was following Him and pressing in on Him.

Mark 5:24b