Bayshore Marathon

I'm playing a bit of catch up on life right now. I went from running a marathon to closing on a condo to moving to hosting my parents and nephews for a weekend. I've barely had time to breath. Next weekend I'm running Ragnar Relay and I've already started marathon training for my goal race in October. As Ferris Bueller once said " Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around for awhile, it could miss it." And so with that missive I took the time to enjoy a weekend in Traverse City, Michigan even with all the chaos going on.

The weekend began with a Friday road trip to the mitten state with Annabelle. We cruised along and luckily only hit a couple of slow spots with it being a big travel weekend and all. We made it to TC and to packet pick up in the early evening. Afterwards Annabelle dropped me off at my hotel where I waited for Mo to show up who came pretty late after being stuck in awful traffic. After a short night's sleep it was race day.

We were going to get a ride to the race start from Jakre, but the spectator bus was at the hotel as we walked out. The driver looked at us like we were crazy, but we jumped on the bus. We got to the start with plenty of time to spare. We headed into the school to stay warm since it was freezing outside. With bathroom lines crazy long indoors we went to use the facilities outside one last time before the race began. We headed to the start line and were soon off and running.

In spite of the cold I decided to run in just shorts and short sleeves. It was going to warm up greatly during the race and I didn't want to be hindered. My conservative start soon gave way to recklessly fast miles much like I ran at Circular Logic.  I felt much comfortable this time though and wasn't straining. I even struck up a conversation or 2 with fellow runners. The course was beautiful. We were running down simple 2 lane roads past beautiful homes and amazing views of the bay. It was certainly one of the more scenic routes I've run. I reached the halfway point in around 1:37:xx much like I did for Circular Logic.

The race was an out and back course. After the turnaround I was facing a wall of wind I didn't realize I had been running with the first half. That along with rising temperatures had me feeling uncomfortable and off my stride and pace from earlier. I stopped to use the restroom to see if  that would straighten me out, but it didn't. I decided at mile 20 that rather than enduring a ton of discomfort pushing for a PR, that I would enjoy myself the rest of the race.

For the last 10K of the race I switched to a run/walk strategy and even stopped for a couple beers along the way. It may have taken me an hour to finish that last 10K, but I made sure that I wouldn't be miserable the rest of the weekend. I wound up crossing the finish line in 3:32:14 for my 2nd fastest marathon. Once past the finish line there was amazing ice cream and a food tent stocked with pop, homemade cookies, bananas, bagels, pretzels, etc.  All in all it was a well organized event and easy to see why it is so popular.

The rest of the weekend after the race became a blur. There were a couple bars hit after the race meeting with other Chicago runners. We also managed to hit 6 different breweries and a distillery. Somehow we managed to make it back to the hotel in time for Game of Thrones on Sunday night and then promptly passed out and missed the episode. Well at least I did.

Traveling home with @Ortonpants