So I had signed up for the Sunburst marathon last year on a whim wanting to go run with the ship. 31 minutes after I signed up I learned that I would be going to a wedding with my wife. So I called to try and cancel my entry and was told to stuff it (that after 30 minutes it too late to cancel), but that if I wanted to come next year they’d apply it to next year. So I knew I would be going to South Bend in 2006.
I flew into Chicago Thursday evening and after fighting with my “Never Lost” system got to my hotel. At 6:40 in the morning on Friday the hotel (?) that I was staying started construction. I called downstairs and expressed my appreciation for their work ethic, but perhaps we could wait until at least 7am before hammering and jack hammering? But apparently we couldn’t.
We got into the car and set the Never Lost and headed to South Bend. The car wasn’t happy about where I was starting the trip and kept telling me to “Please proceed to the highlighted route”. Finally I was annoyed and told it “I’m trying, shut up!”. Which caused massive bouts of laughter from my 4.5 year old. This would be the joke for the rest of the weekend. He would find unbounded humor about the highlighted route for days.
We arrived in South Bend and saw the elevation chart was accurate (www.sunburstraces.org/images/elevation.gif) then we went to the expo and then went to a nice eye-talian dinner at Sunny Italy. It was very nice but slightly pricey. Somewhere between the expo and dinner we lost my son’s stuffed puppy (which was a huge tragedy. He had had the dog since he was born and was an important figure in his life). Being the great dad that I am I inform my son that I’m sure the puppy thought he was grown up enough and went to help some other little boy or girl. He proceed to break down and start crying and say that he didn’t want him to help any other little boys, only him. Great move dad.
The race started at 6:00am on Saturday. In honor of the fighting Irish I wore my Texas Longhorns cycling Jersey so that everyone in South Bend could properly cheer for the horns. We got to the race early and took some photos:
www.livaudais.net/img/run/sunburst_boysbefore.jpg
We were two minutes away from starting when they started to inform us about the flags on the course (Green being safe, yellow meaning caution, red meaning please use caution (still unclear on the difference between these two) and black (meaning the race is over timing mats are turned off). I started thinking when would you ever need a black flag? Then the announcer comes back on saying there was a HazMat spill and we may not get to race. (I was going to be really pissed if I traveled all the way here to run their race and then they canceled it. Because seriously, how bad could the spill be?). 20 Minutes later they decided it was safe to go and we lined up again:
www.livaudais.net/img/run/sunburst_startline.jpg
I had run a 20k on Monday in Dallas and felt like garbage so I was planning only on knocking off one more state (#22), but in the morning I felt pretty good. I had narrowly missed a PR two weeks ago and still felt like my conditioning would be okay. So off we went:
The first 6 miles are easy, I started in the front and it was a small crowd so I was able to run my race from the beginning:
0-1. 6:43
1-2. 6:47
2-3. 6:56
3-4. 7:02
4-5. 7:03
5-6. 7:08
I still feel really good running thru a largely concrete course, but the weather was great (60 degrees at the start and 75 at the finish; I was expecting much hotter compared to last year). The next few miles went by pretty easily. I was keeping a better eye on my nutrition and so far it was working. I decided that if I could hit a 1:32 or 1:33 half then I would go for a BQ time.
6-7. 6:58
7-8. 7:02
8-9. 7:08
9-10. 7:05
10-11. 7:02
11-12. 7:09
12-13. 7:19
I went thru the half in about 1:32 or so still felt great. The mile was pretty easy.
13-14. 7:11
Then here is where reality ceased to exist and the mile markers became random:
14-15. 6:34
I surely hadn’t run a 6:34 mile, but I figured maybe it was a little short and then the next one would make up for it.
15-16. 8:50
Boy did it. I was running the same ~7:15ish pace but did an almost 9:00/M mile. I tried to pick it up a bit just in case:
16-17. 5:06
Okay now I am totally confused. I have never run a 5 minute mile in a marathon. It just doesn’t make sense. At this point I continue to take mile splits when they have markers but am looking more at my gps for actual distance.
17-18. 7:34
18-19. 5:49
Another sub 6 mile. Hahhaha, yeah right. I’ve never run a sub 6 minute mile in a marathon and for sure not in mile 19.
19-20. 7:33
Throughout the race I’d had lots of people cheering “Go Texas”, “Go Longhorns”, but as I passed a guy he starts coughing and says “<cough> go Irish </cough>”, so I was forced to show him the horns and in my best Sandy imitation just drop him.
20-21. 7:23
21-22. 7:41
22-23. 7:51
23-24. 7:36
24-25. 7:48
In the distance I eye Touchdown Jesus www.livaudais.net/img/run/sunburst_touchdownjesus.jpg and know I’m almost done.
25-26.2. 8:38
As I turned the corner and headed into Notre Dame stadium I knew I had the PR and jogged it home to make sure I could get a good picture doing the Heisman on their 50 yard line (So hopefully it will come out). I crossed the line in 3:07:05, which was about a 80 second PR and I felt great.
After the race Christopher started running the bleachers to stay in shape. It was a proud moment to have your son giving the stadium hell. He paused for a photo to Hook ‘Em again: www.livaudais.net/img/run/sunburst_hookem.jpg. Afterwards we walked around the campus and checked out the architecture: www.livaudais.net/img/run/sunburst_us3.jpg and enjoyed the campus.
Overall this was a great race, the course is really flat and if you get lucky with the weather you can run a good time.
As Allegra said “Run a marathon every chance you get”.