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beige_alert) wrote2013-01-27 02:52 pm
beige_alert) wrote2013-01-27 02:52 pm
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Marathon Weekend
During the weekend of January 18 through 20 the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee hosted the Icebreaker indoor running races and the national and North American speed skating marathons, as well as some hockey events.
The Icebreaker weekend consists of a 5km run an Friday night, two half marathons and a marathon relay on Saturday, and a full marathon on Sunday. A surprising number of people enter the Gold Medal Challenge and run both a half marathon on Saturday and then the full marathon on Sunday. It sounds very tiring.
The US National and North American speed skating marathon consisted of a 25km, 64.5 lap race on Saturday and a 50km, 129 lap race an Sunday. A surprising number of people do both. It sounds very tiring.
I've run a number of half marathons and last year I ran a full 42.2km-96 laps-at the Pettit center on my own on my 40th birthday. This year I signed up for the full marathon at the Icebreaker, my first organized marathon. I watched the skating marathon last year and I thought it looked pretty amazing but also like something I wasn't ready to actually do. This year I'm a better skater, and wanted to try it. Having the running and skating events on the same weekend is either bad for the very few of us who want to do both or else good because we get to somewhat-insanely do two different kinds of marathons in one weekend. I had already signed up for the running marathon before I found out the skating marathon was the same weekend, and only later still did I find out that the schedule made it possible to skate the 25km and then run the second of the two half marathons, which got turned into an actual category of participation, the Blade Runners. Berry Rohling took on the full challenge of skating the 25km, running the half right afterward, and then running the full marathon the next day. I ended up going with skating the 25km and running the full marathon the next day. Apparently no one else was up for any combination of skating and running, due to good sense or something.
I think having both events running at the same time was fun, and as far as I've heard most participants agree. As a runner, it's nice to have something going on over on the ice to look at as you go round and round. As a skater, it's nice to have stuff happening and music playing in the early morning when usually it's just us few crazies.
Given what I feel like after a 7.5 lap 3000 meter race, a 64.5 lap 25000 meter race sounds totally insane. Fortunately, it's a different kind of race. Everyone starts together, and skating in packs taking turns leading and drafting is the usual strategy. Serious Athlete Pat Meek skated both races, and was mighty impressive to see. He had a lower skating position and higher speed in the 50km than I have in a 3000. Most of the rest of us, though, stand up a lot higher and don't achieve quite so much speed. There were several groups with different paces, and people would switch among them sometimes. I spent the whole race with a group mostly of people I know well from skating at the Pettit. Skating in a group, spending most of your time in the disturbed air behind the people ahead, is a whole lot easier than skating a time trial on your own. It's actually far less painful that it sounds like it will be, at least if you are on the sort of pace I was, finishing in 51:32. Meek's 38:32 probably was a lot more uncomfortable.
Pat was fast, but I think the real champion of the 25km was Marshall, with a 1:44:02 time. Most of us just hope to still be alive when we're in his age group, the 80+, but he finished a 25km race.
The marathon was a lot harder than the skating. The first 20 or 25km felt pretty good, the last 15km were a heck of a lot harder. I've observed before that running 42km spread out over three days is fun and easy, it's doing it all at once in a solid block of non-stop running that is much harder.
The Icebreaker is super-organized. The water table volunteers who hand you your bottle and take it back when you circle back around so you hardly even need to slow down are awesome. People think running 96 laps is going to be dull, but you are in a big group of runners, they have music playing and an announcer announcing, we had a speed skating race going on, you are never more than about two hundred meters from water (or the toilets), and it's really a fun event. They had the finish line process very organized: Someone would hold onto you so you didn't fall over (which might well happen at that point) while someone else removed the timing chip from your ankle (since you might not be able to bend over and get back up again at that point), and they'd hand you water and ask if you could walk or maybe needed to sit down for a moment.
I finished in 4:02:08, a good improvement over my time of 4:16:50 last February just running the full distance myself.
As the joke goes, primarily people who don't run talk about the "runner's high." I did feel oddly cheerful and quick to laugh after finishing. Usually when your body feels like that you don't feel so cheerful. I'm not sure if that's some sort of neurochemical thing or if it's really just that you are happy to finally be able to stop running and presumably everything will start hurting less, or at least won't get worse. I started the morning as a fit athlete, by shortly after noon I was having trouble walking. Victory! And I was able to walk like a normal person in a few days: The relevant Frazz comic
Albertus Rohling completed his 25km skating race in 39:01, ran the half-marathon race and finished 7th out of 186 runners in 1:22:56, and finished 6th out of 100 runners in 2:56:50 in the marathon. He's amazing. And he was there cheering on my finish in the marathon.
It's hard to get people to agree on anything, but after talking to runners and skaters I think I've succeeded. The runners think I'm nuts for doing a 25km speed skating race, the skaters think I'm nuts for running a marathon, and the normal people all thought I was nuts all along. While I was running Olu called out on the PA system that I had skated the 25km the day before and was one of the two running the same weekend. At the speed skating time trials one week later, before the races started, our announcer Jeff was filling time talking about the races the week before and mentioned me as the marathon running skater who would soon be racing in the day's time trials. It's awesome, but I'm just not used to doing things that people are talking about a week later, at least not positive things.
The Icebreaker weekend consists of a 5km run an Friday night, two half marathons and a marathon relay on Saturday, and a full marathon on Sunday. A surprising number of people enter the Gold Medal Challenge and run both a half marathon on Saturday and then the full marathon on Sunday. It sounds very tiring.
The US National and North American speed skating marathon consisted of a 25km, 64.5 lap race on Saturday and a 50km, 129 lap race an Sunday. A surprising number of people do both. It sounds very tiring.
I've run a number of half marathons and last year I ran a full 42.2km-96 laps-at the Pettit center on my own on my 40th birthday. This year I signed up for the full marathon at the Icebreaker, my first organized marathon. I watched the skating marathon last year and I thought it looked pretty amazing but also like something I wasn't ready to actually do. This year I'm a better skater, and wanted to try it. Having the running and skating events on the same weekend is either bad for the very few of us who want to do both or else good because we get to somewhat-insanely do two different kinds of marathons in one weekend. I had already signed up for the running marathon before I found out the skating marathon was the same weekend, and only later still did I find out that the schedule made it possible to skate the 25km and then run the second of the two half marathons, which got turned into an actual category of participation, the Blade Runners. Berry Rohling took on the full challenge of skating the 25km, running the half right afterward, and then running the full marathon the next day. I ended up going with skating the 25km and running the full marathon the next day. Apparently no one else was up for any combination of skating and running, due to good sense or something.
I think having both events running at the same time was fun, and as far as I've heard most participants agree. As a runner, it's nice to have something going on over on the ice to look at as you go round and round. As a skater, it's nice to have stuff happening and music playing in the early morning when usually it's just us few crazies.
Given what I feel like after a 7.5 lap 3000 meter race, a 64.5 lap 25000 meter race sounds totally insane. Fortunately, it's a different kind of race. Everyone starts together, and skating in packs taking turns leading and drafting is the usual strategy. Serious Athlete Pat Meek skated both races, and was mighty impressive to see. He had a lower skating position and higher speed in the 50km than I have in a 3000. Most of the rest of us, though, stand up a lot higher and don't achieve quite so much speed. There were several groups with different paces, and people would switch among them sometimes. I spent the whole race with a group mostly of people I know well from skating at the Pettit. Skating in a group, spending most of your time in the disturbed air behind the people ahead, is a whole lot easier than skating a time trial on your own. It's actually far less painful that it sounds like it will be, at least if you are on the sort of pace I was, finishing in 51:32. Meek's 38:32 probably was a lot more uncomfortable.
Pat was fast, but I think the real champion of the 25km was Marshall, with a 1:44:02 time. Most of us just hope to still be alive when we're in his age group, the 80+, but he finished a 25km race.
The marathon was a lot harder than the skating. The first 20 or 25km felt pretty good, the last 15km were a heck of a lot harder. I've observed before that running 42km spread out over three days is fun and easy, it's doing it all at once in a solid block of non-stop running that is much harder.
The Icebreaker is super-organized. The water table volunteers who hand you your bottle and take it back when you circle back around so you hardly even need to slow down are awesome. People think running 96 laps is going to be dull, but you are in a big group of runners, they have music playing and an announcer announcing, we had a speed skating race going on, you are never more than about two hundred meters from water (or the toilets), and it's really a fun event. They had the finish line process very organized: Someone would hold onto you so you didn't fall over (which might well happen at that point) while someone else removed the timing chip from your ankle (since you might not be able to bend over and get back up again at that point), and they'd hand you water and ask if you could walk or maybe needed to sit down for a moment.
I finished in 4:02:08, a good improvement over my time of 4:16:50 last February just running the full distance myself.
As the joke goes, primarily people who don't run talk about the "runner's high." I did feel oddly cheerful and quick to laugh after finishing. Usually when your body feels like that you don't feel so cheerful. I'm not sure if that's some sort of neurochemical thing or if it's really just that you are happy to finally be able to stop running and presumably everything will start hurting less, or at least won't get worse. I started the morning as a fit athlete, by shortly after noon I was having trouble walking. Victory! And I was able to walk like a normal person in a few days: The relevant Frazz comic
Albertus Rohling completed his 25km skating race in 39:01, ran the half-marathon race and finished 7th out of 186 runners in 1:22:56, and finished 6th out of 100 runners in 2:56:50 in the marathon. He's amazing. And he was there cheering on my finish in the marathon.
It's hard to get people to agree on anything, but after talking to runners and skaters I think I've succeeded. The runners think I'm nuts for doing a 25km speed skating race, the skaters think I'm nuts for running a marathon, and the normal people all thought I was nuts all along. While I was running Olu called out on the PA system that I had skated the 25km the day before and was one of the two running the same weekend. At the speed skating time trials one week later, before the races started, our announcer Jeff was filling time talking about the races the week before and mentioned me as the marathon running skater who would soon be racing in the day's time trials. It's awesome, but I'm just not used to doing things that people are talking about a week later, at least not positive things.
no subject
I'm in that group. :-) Still, wow.