st. jude half marathon: race report

So, it really happened. And we all lived. And actually, we all had a marvelous time! Sixteen of us gathered (plus spouses and our phantom coach) and all sixteen of us crossed the finish line – most of us without crying like a baby. Ahem.

Here is our team the morning of the race (minus Chanda and Matt). Don’t we all look so blissfully ignorant about the pain to which we are all about to subject ourselves?

Have I mentioned that I love these people? Nine of them were brand new faces to me and I was pleased to learn as the weekend progressed that none of them had come to race weekend with plans to strangle me in my sleep and that all of them had such fun, unique stories and personalities. Mmwah!

And now, the actual reporting of how our morning unfolded. And if you hang around, you’ll get to see a picture of me crying like a “distressed ostrich” as Keight puts it. No peeking! You have to wait for it!

So, we met in the hotel lobby at 6am. By 6:30ish we were at race central and we were fa-reezing cold. Oh man, it was so hard to plan what to wear and what articles of clothing we were willing to toss aside knowing we’d never see them again. See Jesse’s green hat (which, combined with the red tech shirt makes him look like a very specific type of burglar) and my white gloves? The Memphis Target was selling these bad boys for a dollar or two apiece and they were lifesavers!

Well, either a Christmas burglar or an elf with a mission.

I told you that Ryan was coming along as the team photographer/support staff. We actually grabbed that yellow backpack at Target the night before too on clearance for $4.98. Totally keeping that – Oliver will love it! (Though I secretly wished the cheapest bag would have had hello kitty on it…)

Fun fact: we called the hat Ryan wore his “high horse” hat because a: it had a big horse on it, and b: we couldn’t help but give him a hard time when he would jump in with running advice with his fancy Chicago Full Marathon experience. He is fun to jangle. And a great sport. There was occasional reassigning of the high horse hat throughout the weekend whenever anyone felt especially superior about a certain subject or situation. (I totally wore it when everyone drove through Krystal for lunch the day before and I made them pull of on an extra exit so I could have a chicken sandwich and fruit cup from ChickFila. High horse, indeed.)

Here are some of my happy running friends. Ashely’s husband Ryan came along as a non-runner. He and my Ryan stuck together through most of the race and I’m pretty confident we’ve got him completely converted to the dark side of running long races for sport. (See you in Music City in April, Ryan!!)

The other Ashley (yes, there were two Ashleys, two Ryans and two Amandas. We’re children of the 80s, what can we say?) brought along her “internet ghost” friend Jenn who neither blogs nor tweets. What must life be like for her? Oh yea, she has 20-month-old twins! We love her and we especially love the way she sings Christmas carols!

Okay, so here’s more of us pre-race. All cold and nervy and excited.

This is Calvin and Amanda. They were our locals and arranged for all the shirt printing, restaurant hopping and general order that I failed to bring to the group. They are awesome and I tried hard not to be intimidated by her absolute gorgeousness. Sheesh. Also, if you ever meet Calvin in person, ask him to part his hair down the middle for funsies. It’s good for a solid laugh.

Me and my pet pony, mentally preparing for what was ahead.

David and the happy elf, also ready to make it happen.

Okay, now it’s time to get down to business. Fifteen minutes until the starting gun, we all make our way into the corrals. This was the lonely part because almost everyone had a corral buddy, but I was all cold and alone. You pick your corral based on your expected mile per minute pace and I just happened to land solo in corral #9.

On the way to the corrals I walked with Ashley Kirnan (we nicknamed her AK-47 to differentiate) and I have to tell you that that girl is absolutely amazing. First of all, she was so sick. Not only were her tonsils huge and spotted, but her sports doctor (I’m sure there’s a better name for him than that) warned her that if she ran the full race, it was possible that she might actually fracture her already injured leg.

But you know what she said to me on the way to the starting line? Instead of talking about herself and how crappy she felt or how nervous she was? She told me that the night before as she was falling asleep, she just kept thinking about Evie. She said that if it hadn’t been for Evie, none of this would have ever come to be. There would be no blog. No team assembling from across the country, no training from couch to 5K, no running to benefit the kids of St. Jude. She said that Evie’s short little life has touched more lives than I realize, and in some big and powerful ways.

Yep. She said that. And I love her for it. I felt 50% like breaking down and crying right there in a big pool of emotion, and 50% like I was just so proud of my girl and ready to go show this race who was boss.

I chose to go with the latter. I’m pretty sure I would have scared Ashley away or made her feel badly if I’d gone the other direction. :)

And just like that, we all gave each other one last big warm hug and I was off to corral #9. And before I knew it, I looked down to see this on my phone:

We’ve been waiting and training for this moment for six months. I was prepared. I could do this! (Of course, the funny thing about races of this size is that I didn’t actually cross the starting line until about 15 minutes later.)

Regardless, we were off! Ry said he’d be at mile .5 to cheer for us and take photos as we ran past. Jesse got ahead too quickly, so the first person he saw was Olivia. (Who managed to look absolutely adorable throughout almost the entire race and after. Sheesh.)

I came in right after Olivia. And yes, that woman was wearing a pink tutu. She was pretty tame compared to some of the things folks were wearing while they ran. Next came the Ferrisses and Morisses. (thanks a lot for having terrible names to pluralize, guys!) Oh, and also a random guy who chose to run 13.1 miles in cargo shorts. No biggie.

And here is AK-47, A-dub, Katie Vick, & Kerry Lammers – all feeling amazing at the .5 mile mark in their fancy disposable gloves.

And then Keight. My girl. Who knows what to do when she sees a camera. And who does not worry about exerting extra calories in the name of an awesome photo. Delight me she does.

Our next checkpoint with Ryan was mile 2.75 – Beale Street.

And, I told you the lady with the tutu was tame. When I saw this picture I was so mad because these dudes were wearing full marathon bibs. Who needs compression pants and a tech shirt when you’re the king, anyway?

Here are a few pics Ry captured of us on Beale Street. I’m sparing the one of Liv because she had literally just thrown up seconds before she saw Ryan and the camera. Poor gal!

The two girls in the black pants are Amanda Barnhart and Amy Nickel. That was the last time we saw them since they had to leave right after the race. Great to see you, girls!

The next point Ryan planned to see everybody was at mile 4, right at the entrance to the St. Jude campus. Unfortunately, it turned out that he just missed me (I know, I’m just so fast…) and I didn’t get to see him again until just before the finish line.

But, as I was coming up on the campus, I thought it might be cool to get a little video footage of the race from my perspective. It’s pretty shaky, but you can see the crowd and the balloons as we enter the campus and you can hear all the loud, festive music. You can even see writing on the roads with sidewalk chalk to encourage the runners. (Um, adorable!)

I expected to see more patients out there cheering for us just based on what I’d heard from other runners from past years, but we did see a couple and just being in the presence of the campus and the pain and hope that goes on within those walls was immensely inspiring.

After mile four the crowds will still great, but they were thinner. The miles started to run together and it started to get a little lonely out there running all by myself. (Which was surprising, considering that I’d done all of my training solo AND there were hundreds of people around me at any given moment.)

At around mile 7 my right knee started to hurt a bit and by mile 9 my right hip was in serious pain. I had to keep stopping to stretch, then hopping up fast to hit the ground running again so I wouldn’t think about the stiffness. It certainly helped that by that point I was no longer counting up miles completed but now counting down miles to go.

By mile 11 I called Ryan using my headphone mic crying like a big baby because it hurt so badly. I never doubted that I would finish, but I think I just needed somebody to talk to in that big sea of strangers. That helped, just to know that Ryan knew it hurt. Am I such a woman, or what?

At mile 12.1 I started to compose a tweet using the voice dictate function on my phone: “1 mile to go. Running this last one for my Evie girl.” And just as I pressed send, my screen went black and my phone was dead. It didn’t go through.  Oh, it was a low point. I was already in a bunch of pain, and now I had lost complete contact with Ryan and everyone else.

And then strangers started patting me on the back, telling me I was doing great. And I remembered a shirt I saw a few miles back with a birth and death date both within the past three years saying “I a miracle!”

And I sucked it up. (And walked a little, too.) But I knew nothing was stopping me from getting this last mile behind me and making it happen. (Who knew running could be so doggone emotional?)

400 meters from the finish line I spotted Ryan. (And he obviously spotted me to, as evidenced my the promised “distressed ostrich” photo with which you are now being rewarded.)

You’re welcome. So embarrassing, but it’s exactly what I looked like as I ran down the hill into the stadium and rounded the corner across the finish line.

I finished the race with a time of 2:24:47 and promptly ran to the nearest patch of grass and collapsed. I had two medics that thought I was in serious trouble but I reassured them that I was just exhausted and it was just IT band pain and unless they could supply me with ice or ibuprofen without checking me into the medical tent, I really didn’t need any help. They let me occupy that little patch of grass for a few moments before I realized I was the only person who crossed the finish line and insisted on immediately laying down. How embarrassing. I stood up, collected my emergency blanket and medal and smiled for a victory photo.

The emotional ostrich was feeling better and ready to see her team!

 ……………

Meanwhile, other fun/interesting things happened at the finish line…

While I was still running, and before Jesse (our team’s first place finisher) arrived at the finish line, Ryan saw one guy collapse just as he was running down into the stadium. He had an amazing time (well under 2 hours) but his legs just literally gave way and he suddenly couldn’t even stand. Ryan said that two other runners picked him up and helped him all the way to the finish line – totally throwing their very impressive times out the window.

Aren’t runners friendly?

Not long after that, Jesse showed up a the finish line with a time just fifteen seconds short of 2 hours (his goal)! So impressive!

After Jesse were those darn Elvis guys. Yeah, they were pretty fast in their costumes, but the joke’s on them because they turned off at the half marathon split and didn’t actually do the full race. Hm.

Second place on our team was Olivia. Followed by Sir Paul McCartney, I’m pretty sure. Oh yeah, and there’s me again. So attractive.

David and Chelsea finished after me, but Chelsea’s time was actually 1:31 faster than mine just because she crossed the starting line so much later than me too.

 Those were all of the running shots we got because Ry left his post to congratulate me on my patch of grass at the family reunion area. It felt so good to see him. And to be done. And honestly? I kinda think running might be a little like childbirth: when you’re in the middle of it you think it’s the stupidest idea you ever had and you swear you will never do it again, but time makes you forgetful and within a week you are already thinking about what a rush it was and how you definitely plan to do that again!

#TeamFMF 2011

So, who’s got the itch? Anybody want to spend the winter training for a Spring half? I hear the April Country Music Marathon in Nashville is quite lovely!!

Related posts: