55th Annual JFK 50 Mile

I pulled out of the driveway Thursday at 3:26 AM so I could get through Chicago easily.  I pulled in my brother Bryan's driveway early afternoon with 552 miles under the belt.  My Mom was also there to greet me as she was down for her chemo treatments.  We all had a nice visit that day and capped it off by watching the Steelers beat the Titans.  With only about 220 miles to go the next day, my brother and I sauntered over to the packet pick-up and to join the rest of the crew.  Dean and Andrea flew over from Wisconsin and her nephews came in from Connecticut and Baltimore respectively.  I also had my niece (Bryan's daughter) come up from Arlington.  All in all we had four running and three crewing, but better yet it was a nice house full of people to relax and chat with.  After a big dinner of spaghetti and meatballs for me, I hit the sheets around 10 something and was up by 4:00.

The race start stages at Boonsboro high school and after the race talk we walked the 900 meters to the start.  I knew they started at 6:30 sharp so I beat it up there, while the others didn't quite make it to the field.  It's funny how much I did not remember about this course.  You basically run up this gigantic hill for a few miles and run over a gaggle of leaf covered rocks.  Unless you are free from a lot of people and young enough to rely on your dexterity, you basically get through in a fashion as to not bust apart.  Passing people slower than you is almost useless as you immediately are behind others.  You then become okay with this.

At around 9 miles my legs were kind of beat and I questioned even breaking 9 hours.  At 15.5 when I saw my peoples I was just under 3 hours, it was raining, and my legs felt trashed.  I wondered briefly if I would even break 10 hours.  I'm pretty sure as I got on the pancake flat tow path I would $6 million dollar man it and start waxing people.  I had 26 miles (of tow path) to do so and I am a flyer (I told myself), but the opposite occurred.  People smarter than me were flying by...even the guy in the Panda gear.

The next place you can see your peoples is at 27.1 miles.  At about 25 I did something.  I started doing pick-ups of 40-50 yards with intermittent jogging.  Suddenly the fog lifted and I was able to easily begin running in the low 9:00 pace.  This feels great by-the-way as you are only catching people.  You have to keep and eye on it and I basically did.  A couple people tried to go with me, but I just went faster until they disappeared.  Nothing personal, but when you go from having a tough time running 10:15 pace to running a minute a mile faster you go with it.  My legs felt great.

Just past 37 miles you can see peoples again, and I had the feeling I was probably going to out strip my coverage.  That's completely my bad as I told them to figure 10 minutes a mile.  When they finally got there and checked on me they discovered I was even past the 41.2 checkpoint and heading in.  The last 8 miles are on rolling roads.  I love roads and just kept rolling to about 5 miles to go.  I wasn't completely shot, but could tell the minimum miles in training started to expose weaknesses.  I develop a really bad lean/drift to my left.  Pictures of me look comical and the announcer even stated, "Here comes someone with the famous JFK lean."  I crossed in 8:27:27 for 91st overall.  A bit off my 8:10 goal, but did achieve my top 100 goal.  Looking back I was in about 103rd when I hit the last road section.  Not a spectacular run, but I do know that zero people passed me the final 25 miles.

My friends Dean and Andrea had a great run as well.  They finished together in 11:17 and it sounds like they were running 10 flats on the road and just cruising by people.  I also got to see Howard Nippert and we chatted and caught up for about 30 minutes.  It was another great JFK experience.  Will I go back?  Not sure, but I will remember how big those hills are at the beginning.