Chris Sinagoga | Sunday, October 27, 2024 at 4:40PM by, Mrs. Carey
Wow, running a half marathon was a “rush” of a feeling. It’s waking up at 4:00am to hang out in the dark streets of Detroit packed with other nervous runners. I certainly had feelings of doubt, fear and wondered why I signed up for this in the first place. I constantly wanted to drink water, but I had nervous pee. All the runners were definitely like cattle squeezed into our waiting corrals. We all started to move, walking together to the street where I saw the starting line. I heard clapping, cheering, laughing, cowbells, and a clock ticking… we had started our run! I looked around and saw people in the dark on the side of the road holding signs, fists pumping and shouting “we are proud of you.” I couldn’t believe it. Random people woke up this early to help me run. I started to feel like a celebrity, a parade participant and I was loving it! The darkness was fading into light, I was laughing with strangers, my family was there, traffic had even stopped to let me by. For a few minutes, I was a rockstar!
The first 3 miles were easy peasy, then came the Ambassador Bridge with the sun rising on the river – a sight to behold. I couldn’t wait to climb that bridge. We entered Canada and now I’m thinking I’m an international VIP. I’m feeling no pain. The tunnel taking me back to the US was better than I thought. The breeze helped me run and carried me through. I had finished 8 miles with only 5 to go!
I’m back to pounding the pavement in Detroit, but now my feet are starting to hurt. My legs are heavy, and my run is slowing down. My head starts to hang low, and I can barely remember miles 9 and 10. I’m grabbing waters, taking sips, hearing people telling me to “keep going”, but man I’m tired.
I’m waiting to see the mile 12 flag, but nothing, I’m starting to wonder if I’m on the right track. I feel like I’m barely moving, I’m just going with the flow with so many twists and turns on our route. My feet and shins feel like needles are stabbing them. I’m looking around the city but losing focus. I lock in and keep my head straight, “2 more turns” I hear my son yell. I thank God as I make it to that first turn. I’m waiting, I’m running, and I’m looking for the last and final turn. Then there it is, and I see the glorious finish sign! I slowly trot past the finish, and I stumble into the gate. I made it! My stomach hurts, I’m dizzy, but I’m relieved. I did it. It’s hot now, my legs are shaking as I look around and see people cleaning up the garbage in the street. “I’ll never do this again” I think to myself.
I finally met up with my family and the Champions Club friends, we hugged, and they seemed so happy for me. We laughed and talked about how it’s finally over. As I drive home, I have a smile on my face as I’m thinking, maybe I will run a half marathon again!!
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by, Mr. Kuiper
The signage at the Detroit Marathon events sucks like Michigan's passing game. Confusing. Unstructured. Inconsistent.
So when I passed the 9 mile marker at the beginning of the Dequindre Cut, I honestly almost cried. It had been a push to make it that far. Not sure if that's because I only did two long training runs, or if it's because it's just empirically a long way to run.
But one of the ways you survive this thing is lying to yourself. So onward I trudged. At the end of the Dequindre Cut, I had convinced myself we'd turn toward downtown, but instead we went east on Lafayette, past the old Kuiper bachelor pad.
Another mile out. And another one back in.
That's the only time I really wanted to walk. I was running sooo slow by that time anyway, why not take a break? And that's I started to coach myself. "Might as well." and "Easiest run of the bunch." and "Last two miles." I thought of the pain the marathoners endured and the folks we know who don't have the opportunity to run.
Talking out loud to myself like a damn homeless dude. But it helped.
I finished under 11 minutes a mile, my original goal, but 2:22 total which didn't meet my stretch goal of 2:20.My family and you all got me through that last two miles, and I'm super appreciative and proud because it cost a lot.
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by, Mrs. Hill
I have thought about what to include in the post for longer than I’d like to admit! lol. I sent you a short version, had a longer one, but settled on something in between…
What I love about running is finding that freeing feeling of just flying along. It doesn’t matter how fast you are going you can always tune into it. What makes running fun is talking about it afterwards! It was a great experience to have so many Champions Club people training for this race. To talk about long runs, gel brands and race day strategies.
The other cool thing about training is seeing how far you’ve come. Each week, running a few more miles than before. A few months ago I was running 5 miles. Today I can do 26. That is a wonderful sense of accomplishment.
At the start line a woman next to me could see the nerves on my face, and said “just have fun, today is your victory lap”. I smiled, but thought to myself, “no, today I came to work. If I can accomplish my goal, Boston will be my victory lap!” Somehow that did put me at ease and for the rest of the race I kept reminding myself to run smart and even paced. It was a great day!
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by, Anto
When I was asked if I wanted to write my thoughts on running, I was given the choice of what to work on, this or my homework. I thought I could either do a time-consuming task that would require me to put all of my thought into, and something that would be on my mind until I got around to doing it, or I could be doing differential equations. Writing my thoughts on running is something I have thought about (coincidentally while running) but I’ve never gotten around to doing so I would say this is partly because I’m a little lazy but also because most things I completely forget when I’m done running. Maybe next year (when I get that 1:30 time, hold me to it) I’ll keep a log of my running thoughts. Going into my first half marathon in 2022 I thought it wouldn’t be so bad since I ran cross country in high school which wasn’t long ago, and I could get the miles in for the race. Eventually race day came around and the 8-minute goal pace was not even close to happening and a 9-minute pace wasn’t in the cards either. Despite the miserable time my unprepared self had that day, I still wanted to run it again the next year.
Registration for the 2023 race open up and I signed up the first day I could for one reason. Cheap registration (though I still had to spend about $100 for it so I guess cheap is a relative term). Not wanting to repeat the same mistake as the previous year, I decided on a 9-minute pace. By the time the summer ended, and school started up again I decided to actually set time aside to train for this race (crazy idea, right?). At this time of the year, I would have had about a month and a half until race day, but that was enough time for me to get the miles in and finish in under 2 hours. That month and a half did pay off in the end because I ended up finishing it that year in 1:50:33, an 8:26-minute pace. Moral of the story if you prepare for something you will be ready for it.
With another half under my belt, I was eager to sign up for the 2024 race, but this time was different. I didn’t want to just do it, I wanted to do it fast. I signed up again (paying the “cheap” fee) and set my target pace for 8 minutes again. I went into the year with a crazy plan. Start my training at a reasonable amount of time before the race. By the end of the summer, I was on track to keeping the 8-minute pace.
In mid-September I got my first long run in. Aside from the fact that I ran 11 freaking miles on a Sunday evening, there wasn’t anything special about it compared to previous runs. 8:05 average pace-not quite the goal pace but I was confident I could beat it on race day because of the adrenaline, and I won’t have to dodge any cars. I thought I would have to fight more to cut those five seconds off, but after this 11 miler, something changed. Every run after this got considerably faster, including the next 11 mile run that was almost ten minutes faster than the last one! With a month left and one more long run to go before the race, I was ready, not to run this race at an 8-minute pace, but to run every single mile in under 8 minutes. Nothing was going to stop me from hitting this goal, not mid-summer shin pain, not getting to the start line only a couple minutes before the race started, not even a quarter-sized blister on the bottom of my big toe that I felt with every step I took for over seven miles. Every. Single. Step.
When I started the race, I was reminded of another goal that I made when I registered. I wanted the people cheering to say the name on my bib. Now you might be thinking, what name would Anto put on his bib? A nearly two-decade old nickname used by his family, close friends, and everyone at the Champions Club or something that my sister called me because it sounded funny when said into a karaoke machine? Obviously, I chose a name that sounded funny when said into a karaoke machine, Fat Tony. People were telling me “You’re not fat, you’re fast”, some just screaming “FAT TONY”, some that couldn’t finish their sentence without laughing, and my personal favorite, “you’re not fat baby, you’re lean”. Overall, it was a great choice for a name.
I ended up finishing the race with a PR of 1:38:25 (7:31 average pace) and according to Strava I also PR’ed in the 20k, 10 mile, and 15k so I would say this was a good race. I’d like to thank those who came to Detroit to watch, everyone who was tracking the runners on the app, and everyone at the gym, you all helped me through this process more than you know. Big shout out to Dillon and Jess for being the only people (to my knowledge) who actually saw me running (even if it was only for like 100 meters or less). I’d also like to thank Ron for talking about the race with me and being my hype man probably every time I saw him for the past three months. You really helped me through the training.
While I was running (during training and the race) there were several noteworthy things but some of which I couldn’t fit above so here are a few things I thought were funny/interesting.
Conclusion
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by, Bubs
After finally eating peanut butter banana French toast (today Friday 25th) I’m finally ready to write my marathon review.
Although I’m not quite writing rather doing a voice to text as I have thought about what I would say in my head all week and doing voice to text seems less formal than actually writing about quite literally the worst/best possible experience. So here goes my thoughts in chronological order.
The race begun by me getting there 15 minutes later than expected due to trying to go to the bathroom, if you know, you know. Mrs. Hill can testify we were unable to get into our corral due to the large crowd. We would have to wait until corral A started the race, where corral B would then move up and we would be able to enter the designated area. This sent me into panic mode which I believe carried over into the first two hours (13 miles) considering I had a pounding migraine. This was a first to happen during a run, as I’m not often one to get headaches. If only I had Tylenol in my pocket instead of peto bismol. At mile 14 I felt completely exhausted and still had 12 miles to go but I thought “ok I can do this, get to mile 15 and I get to take a GU packet.” However at mile 14.5 my toes started going numb, and I anticipated they would curl at any moment. This sent me into another state of panic, as the anticipation of when my left toes would inevitably curl was haunting me. After running for 2+ hours with a headache, I thought this could not be happening, my toes cannot be curling 4 miles earlier than last time. With 11 miles to go I was already having to stop, walk, stretch on a curb, but I still thought I could PR. If you would’ve asked me last week if I would PR, the answer would be 100% without a doubt, yes, I will beat my time of 14 hours 17 minutes from my first marathon in May. From mile 17 on I started to think I may be cutting it pretty close but I can still finish under 4:10. Oh, how wrong I was. Around mile 20 my left knee gave out shooting pain down my leg, causing me walk, trying to hold back tears. My knee hurt more when I walked, but running caused my toes to curl, so I decided I would just run as far as could each interval (sometimes only running 400 meters before something went.) I don’t recall what exact mile my left knee gave out again, causing me to start bawling my eyes out on the side of the road, hyperventilating, gasping, trying to breathe. My guess would be around mile 21.5 where I was visibly and audibly crying, with people offering me bananas, water, their own personal gu packets and even a police officer asking me if I was ok. I politely shook my head “No I don’t need anything, yes I’m good thanks” thinking to myself “what is a gu package going to do? My knee is f*cked.” I then passed an eight-year-old boy who had set up his own personal stand in front of his house giving out Gatorade, water, snacks, etc. He had asked me if I had wanted anything and I shook my head no with tears coming down. He then started shaking a huge bottle of ibuprofen saying “we have Tylenol” which made me turn straight to him and I said “thank God” out loud, thinking to myself “give me the whole bottle.” This was the peak of the race up to this point: Tylenol from an 8 year old. For the next 2 miles I walked ran walked ran walked ran.
At mile 24 I then passed someone receiving CPR on the side of the road and I thought to myself its just my knee, please God watch over him. Click the link below to see how this amazing human received his finisher metal almost 3 days after the race, surviving a heart attack.
Ok I’m almost done about 2 miles left. At around mile 25 I saw Chris who ran with me for maybe 200 meters before ditching me saying “Bethany is up ahead.” As I turned a corner, I see this human jumping up and down with a “Champions Club Forever” sign. A new “peak” making me teary-eyed all over again for pure appreciation of this hidden gem.
Insert Bethany photo
Although this marathon did not go as planned (I was 20 minutes slower than my first marathon!!!) it was without a doubt way more special. Seeing the Champions Club at the finish line made me EMOTIONAL. I was so overwhelmed with happiness to see Sap post first marathon, Mrs Hill telling me she qualified for Boston, Anto running super fast, Kuiper finishing strong and knowing the Careys finished their first half without stopping!!! I am so grateful to have been along for the “running ride” this fall and I guess all I’m really trying to convey is a big/huge/gigantic thank you to everyone at the champions club for somehow turning this physical horrible race into the greatest/most special/meaningful celebration.
Conclusion.
anto, bubs, crazy jeff, free press, half marathon, marathon, mr. kuiper, mrs. carey, mrs. hill in Guest Post 