Des Moines Marathon race recap

 So, as some of you remember, the 2024 Des Moines Marathon did not go well.  It got hot, I felt sick to my stomach and couldn't take in any nutrition after mile sixteen, I went out too fast, etc., etc. I signed up for the 2025 race at the end of last year, literally referring to it as The Redemption, not to be dramatic or anything.  I ran the Fargo Marathon at the end of May and got some confidence back, running my second fastest time ever at 4:35:01. I started training for Des Moines in mid-June.

The fall racing season leading up to Des Moines included the Harvest Moon Hustle 10K in Elmwood, NE; the Monument Half-Marathon in Scottsbluff/Gering, NE; and Market to Market from Omaha to Lincoln.  My times/paces at all of them were pretty good, but not spectacular.  Also, because of other races, I wound up doing my longest run of twenty miles five weeks out from Des Moines, which wasn't ideal.  Any time anyone would ask me how I felt about Des Moines, I would preface with, "Well, I started my taper a little early, but..." My longest run is typically two-four weeks out.  I wasn't sure how that would go.

I got to the expo late Saturday afternoon. Chelsea and Brock were working the Market to Market booth, and within half an hour of getting there I'd seen like six other friends who were signed up for the half, so that was awesome.  The temperatures at the start were actually looking pretty chilly at that point and I had packed short sleeves and capris, so I decided to buy some arm sleeves at the expo. Sunday morning at the race I lined up with the 4:35 pacer and figured I would speed up if I could, hoping I could at least beat my second-best time from Fargo.  The following things then happened:

1) I got ahead of the 4:35 pace group going up a hill during the second mile and decided to just roll with it.  A few times during the first ten miles I knew I was going way too fast, like there were a couple of miles in the 9:30s, but I just decided to do what felt good and try not to think about it too much.  This strategy worked pretty well; I slowed down a little as I went, but never really "bonked"; the first ten miles were mostly in the 9-10 minute range, the second ten were in the 10-11 range, and the last six were mostly in the 11-11:30 range.  Ideally, I would want to pace a little more evenly, but I didn't have any truly terrible miles like I did at Des Moines last year, or Chicago in 2021 or Monument in 2023, so I was happy about that.

2) I crossed paths with Brock, Nick, and Mia, who were all running the half, at around mile three, I think.

3) Also at around mile three, I decided I was ready to ditch my arm sleeves.  This turned out to be a Whole Deal since I had put both my watch and my pace bracelet on over them.  Long story short, the pace bracelet had to be ripped off and got thrown in the trash at the next opportunity, and though I tucked the arm sleeves into my flip belt, I noticed at some point later that one was missing.  I'm not allowed to buy arm sleeves ever again.

4) For nutrition, I alternated between Honey Stinger chews and mini Honey Stinger waffles every four miles through mile sixteen.  Then, not long before I was supposed to have more chews at mile twenty, there was an aid station with pickles, so I had a hunk of one of those.  Then there was an aid station sponsored by the Iowa Pork Producers offering strips of bacon, so I had a bite of bacon.  Oh, also, at some point, someone along the course offered me a Jolly Rancher, which I enjoyed because it kept my mouth from getting dry for awhile.

5) The Omaha folks who had run the half were there to cheer me on at the finish.  Finish time was 4:32:05, almost three minutes faster than Fargo in May and just one minute and eleven seconds shy of my 4:30:54 PR.  So, cautiously optimistic that I may be able to PR again one day.

Not sure if there are any huge takeaways to be had, except just try not to overthink things too much, whether in training or on race day.  Both this and Fargo have been confidence-building.  I have one more race left in 2025 with the Good Life Halfsy.  In 2026, I'm looking forward to Grandma's Marathon, and looking into possibilities for fall marathons.

Fargo Marathon Race Recap

 I don't know if blogging is really a thing anymore, but I prefer this format for race recaps, so here goes.

I signed up for the Fargo Marathon somewhat on a whim last Labor Day weekend.  An ad came across Facebook, I needed a spring/summer goal race, and after doing some light research, I discovered that Fargo was less than a six-hour drive away and that hotels weren't very expensive.  I figured if I could get someone to go with me, great, but if not, oh well. 

As some of you know, I ran the Des Moines Marathon last fall and it went terrible.  I went out way too fast, fell back from the pace group I never should have been trying to keep up with in the first place at like mile nine, it got hot, I felt sick to my stomach and couldn't get down any nutrition after mile sixteen, and so on, and so on.  At one point during the later miles, I thought to myself, "Maybe I will be done with marathons.  This sucks."  Then I almost immediately thought, "Well, I already signed up for Fargo.  I'll still do that." Then before the new year I'd already signed up to do Des Moines again.  The point is, even though as recently as this past spring I told like five-ten people that I was probably going to retire from the marathon distance soon, if I ever say that to you, just ask me which ones I'm already signed up for.

My spring race season made me feel cautiously optimistic.  Last year's half-marathons both sucked (are you seeing a pattern from last year?), with the Lincoln Half happening with apparently too little recovery from the Zion 50K and the Rock Island Trail Half happening on a day that was hotter than the surface of the sun.  I set a cautious "I guess maybe under 2:05?" goal for Lincoln this year, and was happy to make it in 2:03:59.  I wound up running most of that race with my friend Anna without really having planned that in advance, and I was surprised at how much it helped keep me out of my own head.  I can get very discouraged if I get off pace and go kind of crazy trying to do math in my head ("If you run the rest of it at such-and-such pace, you can still make it in under..."), and I found I wasn't doing that and was actually having fun racing for the first time in awhile.  I was slapping people's "Tap here to power up!" signs.  Little kids would hold out their hands to give people five, and I would do it.  I finished the race happy.

As the Fargo race date approached, it started to look like temperatures would not be ideal.  The night before, watching TV in my hotel, the local weather woman cautioned that there was an air quality alert because of fires up in Canada.  "Oh, GREAT!," I probably said aloud to no one.  Regardless, I decided to stick with my original "start with the 4:35 pace group and see how it goes" plan.  My marathon PR is just under 4:31, and it seemed unlikely to be a PR day, but I figured that starting with the 4:35 group would at least keep me from going out too fast and, if I could keep up with them the whole way, get me my second-best time ever.  

Noteworthy things about the course and race, in no particular order:

1) I stuck with the pace group pretty much the whole time, and like when I ran the Lincoln Half with Anna, it kept me out of my head.  The pacers would discuss things among themselves like, "We've been going a little fast, so we need to slow down to XYZ pace," and it was really nice to just let them figure it out and go along for the ride.  They also kept it fun and gave good advice.  One woman wondered aloud at one point if she should go on ahead and they said, "Don't speed up to any pace you can't sustain the rest of the race," and I decided that was good advice, since I normally tend to bonk somewhere between miles sixteen and twenty.  There was a little going back and forth with the group at the end, but I mostly stuck with them and finished pretty much right on at 4:35:01. 

2) One of the pacers kept saying that the first half of a marathon is actually twenty miles and the last half is 6.2, so with that in mind, at mile twenty, he led us in the chorus to "Livin' on a Prayer" (Ohhhh, we're halfway there..."). In general, let me just say how much good music selections help, especially in the last miles of a marathon.  I still think back fondly on Grandma's Marathon 2022, when I heard "All I Do is Win" at mile twenty-four and just went, "Okay," and took off.  In the last miles of this one, I got perked up at mile twenty-three or twenty-four by "Party in the USA," then in the last mile by a live band playing "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" with slightly adjusted lyrics ("You have run five hundred miles...") followed by "Tubthumping" ("I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down..."). Huge pick-me-ups.

3) I stayed on top of nutrition for once in my life and got down every single thing I brought with me.

4) Best race sign went to "Leo Would Stop at 25."

5) The people of Fargo really came out for the race.  The course went through a lot of residential neighborhoods, and a lot of people were out on their lawns cheering.

6) I guess you know you're up north when you notice how many hockey nets there are in people's yards.

7) Packet pick-up the day before was at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and there were signs all over that said, "Home of the Cobbers" or whatever.  "What the heck is a Cobber?" I wondered.  It turns out it's this mean little corn man who showed up when we ran through the Concordia College campus:

I love me a random-ass mascot.  I'm not one to stop to take pictures along the race course, but I wish I had gotten one with that guy.

8) There were a lot of turns on the course and lots of places where you crossed paths with runners who were at a different place on the course.  This was mostly fine, but there was one place where you had to run single file because you were on a narrow path with people coming from the other direction.  That part sucked.  They had plenty of volunteers directing people and did their best, but it still was frustrating and felt unsafe.  That was my only real complaint.

With eight marathons under my belt, the marathon distance still continues to humble me.  You have to be consistent in your training and realistic in your pacing, and even then, bad weather and/or a challenging course can throw all your time goals out the window.  I was really happy with my time this race, and/but am very aware of all of the things that had to come together for that to happen. Forever grateful to the Omaha run crew peeps who will jump in for a loop or three around Cunningham or Zorinsky and/or get me out on gravel roads, and to Carrie N., who listened to all of this on the phone on my drive home 😂. Special shoutout this time to the Beast Pacing team.

Next up: Cornfield Cornfield 10K

Fall goal race: Des Moines Marathon II: The Redemption

 

Des Moines Marathon race recap

I posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that my A goal was sub-4:30:54, for a PR; B goal was sub-4:56:32, so it was at least not my worst; and C goal was to finish in one piece.  Apparently, my C goal was actually my D goal, because when things started going south, all I could think was, "I hope I at least finish in under five hours."  I did, at 4:57:30.

I've tried to write this recap a few different times, trying a "play by play" approach and a flippant "it is what it is/each race is just different" approach.  Basically, the end result came down to the following:

1) It got hot.

2) I started feeling nauseated at around mile sixteen.  I had been taking Honey Stinger chews every four miles prior to that (which is pretty typical for me) and had also accepted a Twizzler from someone on the course at one point, but after that, I was afraid I would throw up if I had anything other than water.

3) I made some poor pacing decisions.  There was a 4:20 pace group and a 4:35 pace group, but no 4:30.  In retrospect, when I saw the forecast and realized how hot it was likely to get, I should have just started with the 4:35 group and not worried about trying to get a PR.  In reality, I went out with the 4:20 group and tried to see how long I could hang, which wound up being about ten miles.  I still kept up a fairly respectable pace until about mile twenty, at which point it became "just get through it" territory.

Obviously, I wanted a different/better result, but I'm still proud of the fact that I can feel as bad as I did during that race and still finish in under five hours.  I also felt good about this training cycle; I felt prepared going in.  Also, I love Des Moines in general and thought the expo and after party were both great.  Shoutout to Ross, Joe, and Jenn for cheering me on after they finished the half.

Now, it's time to recover and just keep a base up for a couple of months.  I'm running the Fargo Marathon at the end of May 2025, so training for that will begin in January. Onward and upward!

Zion Ultras 50K

 Way back in November, the gang started making plans to do the Zion Ultras in Utah.  We had people at the 100K, 50K, and half-marathon distances.  We made all the travel plans and started training.  At the time, it seemed so far off; when the weekend finally arrived, it seemed almost unreal.

The five of us who were signed up for the 50K, Nate, Tim, Myung, Mikki, and I, lined up at the start on Sunday morning.  Karri had finished the 100K in the night with Carrie pacing her the last twenty miles, and Amber, Theresa, and Josh were set to do the half-marathon an hour after us.  With Amber, Theresa, and Josh cheering us on, we took off:

The first six miles were on dirt roads that we'd done a shakeout on a couple of days prior.  Myung, Mikki, and I pretty much stuck together during this portion, and we were feeling pretty good.  After the first aid station, we headed into Gooseberry Mesa still together.  Here the terrain became very rocky and technical, which I tend to be more cautious on, so I fell back a bit.

The trail was marked by white dots and pink flags, and sometimes it was hard to tell where you were going.  For example, at one point, I saw a pink flag on a rock and took it to mean that you were supposed to go around the base of the rock, but when I started doing so, there was no trail there.  Someone told me I was supposed to go OVER the rock. Okay then! The following things happened in no particular order:

1) I started up a hill that was an out-and-back and crossed paths, first, with a woman who was breathing quickly, almost like she was hyperventilating.  Someone asked her if she was okay, and she said yes.  Then I crossed paths with Myung, who said something like, "It's scary up there, Molly."  It was, in fact, very high with a steep drop.  A lot of people were stopping to take pictures, but I didn't even want to mess with my phone, so I headed back down.

2) At a couple of points, I had to use my hands to help myself over rocks, and at one point my knees were down on a rock, too.  I had debated the "shorts vs. capris" question the night before, and I was glad that I had chosen capris so that my bare knees weren't down on the rock.

3) I came upon a permanent trail marker that said something like, "Difficulty level: Extreme," and a guy running near me said something like, "As opposed to what we've been doing already, which has been a walk in the park?"

4) A couple running together asked me what mileage I had on my watch.  I said 13.8.  They said they had the same, and asked if I'd seen an aid station; they said there was supposed to be one at (I think) 12.7.  Then I ran into another girl who said that she was pretty sure there wasn't another aid station until mile 17-point-something.  It turned out it was somewhere between 14 and 15.  I used the port-a-potty, filled my water bottles, grabbed part of a turkey sandwich, and headed back out.

I continued on Gooseberry Mesa and had thoughts like, "Is the whole race going to be like this?," and "Holy crap, how long am I going to be out here?" The terrain made for slow moving.  Then I hit another aid station that took you back out to the dirt road. There, I could finally get moving at a decent pace, and I started picking people off again (A LOT of people passed me on the mesa). I wondered how far ahead Myung and Mikki were.  There was a crossroads where you turned left, and that's where Josh, Theresa, Amber, Karri, and everyone (those who had done other distances or were there to pace or watch) were cheering.  Amber ran out to me with a bag of food and asked what I needed.  I said I was good and took the left turn.  I continued to pick people off and started crossing paths on an out-and-back with people who were heading to the finish, including Nate.

I headed into Grafton Mesa.  At the aid station there, a volunteer told me that I would do a 5-point-something-mile-loop, come back, and then head back on the dirt toward the finish.  On the loop, I crossed paths with Mikki, who was somehow behind me now (she later said I had passed her at the aid station going in and hadn't seen her).  Also on the loop, things got technical again.  I had to use my hands a couple more times to pull myself up.  Also, at one point, some sort of spiky plant got caught on my capris, I cried out, and the dude behind me pulled whatever it was out for me.  There was a HUGE hill at one point, and I said aloud, "You have got to be kidding me."  Whatever mileage the volunteer had said it was, my watch had it at more than that, and as my water dwindled, I started thinking things like, "How much further?" and "I want to be done with this."

Finally I made it back to the aid station. I caught a glimpse of Myung just leaving, but I badly needed to fill my water bottles, so I didn't try to catch up to her.  I headed back out to the road and started on the final dirt stretch to the finish.  The course took us again past the crossroads where you had turned to go towards Grafton Mesa, and where you headed towards the finish.  The gang was still there cheering and going crazy, which gave me a boost.  Also, there was a dude in a grim reaper costume stopping anyone who still had to go to Grafton Mesa; they had missed the cutoff and would be "reaped" from the course.  But for those of us who just had to go to the finish, he high fived us, so that was something, being high fived by the grim reaper.  I headed toward the finish.  Amber and Karri were there to cheer and take pictures.  Myung had finished about five minutes ahead of me, and Mikki finished about five minutes after, so we were all really close despite having separated.  We all took some group pictures and headed back to the Air B&B.

So, it was by far the most challenging course I've ever done and probably ever will do.  Though time goals went out the window pretty early on due to the terrain, and though there were times I was cursing the heavens, I, as a whole, felt good-- no injuries, no feelings of nausea, etc. Two days later, I am back in Omaha, still tired and sore, but as a whole feeling pretty good.  Though I at one point thought to myself, "a half-marathon would have been plenty on this terrain," I'm glad I did it.  As always, shout out to the awesome running crew from Omaha, who also kicked ass at their goals over the weekend. We have the best group ever.

thoughts on the Mean Girls movie musical

 So I've been out of high school for more than twenty-five years at this point, and sometimes I will watch a teen movie or show and think, "Were kids in high school that mean?  I don't remember them being that mean."  Then this person or that will come up in conversation and I will find myself saying, "No one was nice to them.  I know I definitely wasn't," or I'll think back to a time when a bunch of us got really carried away talking about someone behind their back and I'll realize, "I didn't even dislike that person.  I just let myself get caught up in it."  So the point is, no, high school kids are maybe not as overtly mean as they are on something like Glee or Cobra Kai, but I think the social dynamics are such that it sometimes seems better to join in, even on mean behavior, rather than be the one on the outside.

In Mean Girls, both the original 2004 version and the 2024 musical version, newcomer Cady Herron, who has been homeschooled and lived in Kenya prior to the beginning of the movie, learns that it's not only nearly impossible to stay above or outside of the high school social hierarchy, but that it's pretty fun to be at the top-- but that getting there isn't pretty, and your position there is always tenuous.  Almost immediately after starting at her first American high school, she catches the attention of both the outsiders, Janis and Damien, and the Plastics, the "cool girl" clique, led by the beautiful, rich, and mean Regina George.  At first, she doesn't see what's so bad about the Plastics, but then when she catches Regina kissing Aaron Samuels, her crush and Regina's ex, she agrees to Janis's plan to get revenge on Regina, who also wronged Janis in middle school.  Though she succeeds, she loses sight of who she is and hurts a lot of people in the process.

The original Mean Girls was iconic, with Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, and Lizzy Caplan turning in memorable performances as Cady, Regina, Plastics Gretchen and Karen, and Janis, respectively.  Though they were a tough act to follow, it wasn't long into the movie that I thought to myself, "This actually makes a lot of sense as a musical."  The original movie had some funny, over the top elements that the musical format gets to play up, and the songs let you see into the heads of not only the main characters of Cady, Regina, and Janis, but secondary characters such as Gretchen and Karen.  Karen (played here by Avantika) gets a hilarious song about how fun it is to dress sexy on Halloween.  This version also incorporates contemporary social media effectively; the way teens communicate is different now than it was in 2004, so it's neat that they work that in.  The only real problem I see with this version is that while the actors playing Regina and Janis (Renee Rapp and Auli'i Cravalho) are GREAT, Cady (Angourie Rice) is just GOOD, meaning Regina and Janis really steal the show.   I'm not sure if that's even a problem; I just found myself thinking that I would have liked to see 2004 Linday Lohan in a musical version, since we know she can sing and did a great job with the character.  Regardless...it's fun.  If you like musicals, go see it.

Monument Marathon Race Recap

 As those of you who read this blog know, I ran the Monument Half-Marathon last year and decided to come back this year for the full.  Though I knew from the half that the course would be challenging and that I should manage my expectations when it came to time goals, as the days approached, I found myself printing a 4:30:00 pace bracelet off the Internet just in case. I had a 4:35:00 pace bracelet the day that I set my PR of 4:30:54 at Grandma's Marathon in 2022, and it helped to be able to just glance down and see where I was at in terms of time.  (Pace bracelets tell you not just what your pace per mile should be, but what time you should be at each mile, so you don't have to try to do math in your head in the middle of everything).  I figured the bracelet would just give me something to shoot for in terms of time, and if I didn't make it, fine, but at least I had a goal pace in mind.

On the Thursday before the race, I sent Carrie N. a Facebook message that said, "Now is the time pre-marathon where I start overanalyzing stats and having thoughts like, 'This race will be about the same temp as Grandma's, but it will be hillier.  But there will be no humidity.  But...'" This only got worse in the next couple of days.  I am prone to anxiety dreams, and the night before the race, I had one about work, of all things.  When I woke up, the first thing I thought was, "Oh! You weren't feeling well at Grandma's this year! You thought you were catching a cold!  You're feeling better today!"  I kept finding reasons to be optimistic.

My parents dropped me off at Five Rocks Ampitheatre on race morning to catch the shuttle to the Wildcat Hills.  It was really foggy, and as we approached our destination, the shuttle driver said something like, "Thank you for coming! I hope the fog lifts and you get to experience some of our natural beauty out here!"  When we got off the bus, volunteers were there to greet us with a table all set up with water and food.  They welcomed us and told us we could go inside, where we would find bathrooms and places to sit down.  In line for the restroom, I struck up a conversation with a woman wearing a Grandma's Marathon sweatshirt.  Then several of us went upstairs to an open room with chairs all around the perimeter.  Someone joked, "Are we the elites, or what?!" I saw another woman with an Indianapolis Monumental Marathon cap, and I went over to tell her I'd done that one, too.  "I used to live in Evansville!" I added.  She gave me a blank look at the mention of Evansville. It turned out that she was from California and trying to run a marathon in all fifty states; Nebraska was actually her last.  I realized that though it was a small race (I later learned that around eighty people had started the Full, with seventy-six finishing), a lot of people were from out of state.  Some were from neighboring states like Colorado and Wyoming, but I also talked to people from, or overheard people mention, Pennsylvania, New York, and Montana.  Some, like the woman from California, were working towards all fifty states and using this as their Nebraska race.

We went outside to line up.  The race benefits Western Nebraska Community College scholarships, and  members of the basketball team were lined up with pace signs to show us where to line up.  Someone jokingly said to one of them, "You're going to be pacing us, right?" The basketball player gave him a look of utter panic and horror.  The guy asking laughed, all, "You're like, 'I was just told I would be holding a sign."

We took off.  I'd been warned beforehand not to go too fast down the hill.  I did okay.  I was a little faster than goal pace, but not terribly so.  One lane of the four-lane road was closed for us runners.  The basketball players passed us in their cars, cheering.  For the first ten-eleven miles, there were a few runners that I went back and forth with consistently, including an older man who was run-walking.  I would pass him when he walked, and he would pass me when he ran.  My parents were at a few different stations cheering me on.  By the halfway point, I was a little off of my 4:30:00 goal pace, but not bad.

Though elevation started to gradually climb at mile twelve.  Miles fourteen-sixteen had the steepest elevation gain.  I'd had to go to the bathroom for awhile at that point, and I kept bribing myself, like, "After you get up the hill, you can stop at a port-a-potty.  No, after you pass these two people, you can stop at a port-a-potty."  This resulted in me accidentally, almost comically bursting out of the port-a-potty just as the two people I'd previously passed came by.  I left them behind for good at mile eighteen or nineteen, I think, just after we entered the dirt road to the back side of the Monument.

The next stretch was rough.  Though last year, running the half, I was amazed at how beautiful it was behind the Monument, coming up so late in the race, I couldn't really appreciate it.  It was also at that point that us runners really spread out.  After I passed the two people at the backside of the Monument, I I swear to God, I passed no one else, and no one else passed me.  I had slowed down way off goal pace at that point, and it didn't really help that there was no one close to catch, or who was close enough to catch me.  That part was really mentally hard.  

Not long before the end of the stretch behind the Monument, there was a great Barbie-themed aid station.  They called it the Mojo Dojo Casa Aid Station, and everyone was wearing costumes and calling out things like, "Great job, Barbie!" That perked me up a little.  Finally, I reached the part of the race where I was back in town.  With all of the runners spread out like we were, the people at the aid stations would get really excited when one of us approached.  Some girls made a tunnel for me to run through at one point.  My parents showed up at two more aid stations.

So I'll do these little mental tricks when I run, like, at mile 23, instead of saying to myself, "You only have a little more than three miles to go!," I will say, "You've got less than four miles to go!," so that way it seems like a treat when it's actually MUCH less than four miles.  This caused me to momentarily panic, however, because I had a moment where I thought that to myself, then calculated how long it would take to finish and thought, "OH MY GOD, AM I NOT EVEN GOING TO FINISH IN UNDER FIVE HOURS?!" Then I realized, "Oh, yeah, you don't actually have a full four miles to go, you should be fine."

Heading towards the finish line, you go down a paved path through/past the cemetery, then you get on gravel again to head back to Five Rocks Ampitheatre.  There, there was a steep downhill with a sign warning to beware of loose gravel, and a volunteer warning to be careful.  I had another little freak-out moment where I thought, "OH MY GOD, AM I EVEN IN CONTROL OF MY LEGS AT THIS POINT?! WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN?!" But I was fine.  Then you have to take a steep uphill back up, which I was not cool with at that point, but again, I was fine.

I finished in 4:55:13, far off of the lofty 4:30:00 goal, but better than my worst time of 4:56:32.

thoughts on the Barbie movie (some spoilers)

 

My mom, last weekend on the phone when I mentioned that I had plans to see the Barbie movie: You know, I still have an old Barbie in my hope chest.

Me: You used to let me play with some of your old Barbies.

Her: I let you play with all of them, except her.  I didn't want her sitting in a mud hole in the yard with the rest of the Barbies and GI Joes.

Me: Oh, yeah.  We used to make a swimming pool for them.  And then you would wash them in the sink.  We probably called that "going in the hot tub."

Her: Yep.  They got the full experience.

I open with this story because one of my favorite parts of the lead-up to the Barbie movie has been reminiscing about Barbies, which I played with with varying degrees of regularity from the time I was three until I was about eleven.  Some common things that have come up include that MANY of my friends my age also had Great Shape Barbie (my favorite), who wore a unitard and cool rainbow legwarmers (though I'm pretty sure I lost the legwarmers nearly immediately); it was pretty normal to give your Barbies other names, like Joanne and Shelley, in my case; most everyone had far fewer Kens; and we liked it when we had a Barbie that looked different in some way, like had a different hair color, which was less common in the 1980s than I imagine it is now.

One of my other favorite parts of the lead-up to the Barbie movie is that there has been a lead-up.  I used to go to the movies all the time pre-pandemic; since the pandemic, I have been probably fewer than ten times, and when I fell asleep during House of Gucci whenever that came out, I remember thinking to myself, "Maybe I just don't like going to the movies anymore."  It's been fun to look forward to going to the movies again.  Today, when my friends and I were walking down the hall to the theater, one said, "Just follow the pink!" The theater was packed; probably 98% of the people there were women and girls, and probably 90% of those women and girls were wearing at least some pink.  It's fun to have a movie feel like an event that you get your friends together for and even plan what you're going to wear.

I'm not sure if I have anything profound to say about the movie that hasn't been said already, and I won't give a full plot summary since that's also been covered elsewhere. Instead, here are just some random things I liked, in no particular order:

1) Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who is the way she is because she was played with too hard; they show a little girl cutting her hair and drawing on her face with a marker.  Yes.  I did not do anything like that on purpose, but inevitably, weird stuff just happened.  For example, the aforementioned Great Shape Barbie that I liked so much?  Well, you know how Barbies had a little ball on the top of their neck that held their head on and made it so that their heads moved?  Okay, well, that ball broke off of Great Shape Barbie at some point, after which I had to just shove her head down on her neck, meaning she basically had no visible neck and was shorter than all the other Barbies.  I had another one whose leg was constantly coming off and often just got played with with a missing leg.  The point is: Weird Barbie was a great idea.  I'm sure everyone had at least one Weird Barbie, whether they wanted one or not.

2) Where do I even start with Ryan Gosling as Ken? So, his storyline is that in Barbieland, his job is Beach (not surfer, not lifeguard, just Beach), and he spends most of his time trying to get Barbie's (Margot Robbie's) attention; Barbie seems to like him okay but doesn't take that much of an interest in him.  I read an article that said that on average, girls had one Ken for every seven Barbies they owned, and that you may have had a Ken but probably didn't ask for one, which-- yeah.  One of my three Kens was a hand-me-down from my mom, and my grandma gave me the other two.  It's pretty funny that the movie works that dynamic in.  After accompanying Barbie to the Real World, Ken learns about the patriarchy.  He likes the part where people respect him just because he's a guy, but doesn't like that "you have to have all these things like 'medical degrees' and 'swimming lessons'."  (I don't know if I'm getting that line right verbatim, but Gosling's delivery is SO FUNNY-- I don't think he actually does air quotes, but they are definitely there in his voice).  So he goes back to Barbieland and sets up a ridiculous version of the patriarchy.  At one point, all of the Kens sing "Push" by Matchbox Twenty.  There's a war that devolves into a choreographed dance number.  I said afterwards, "I feel like Ryan Gosling has been training his whole life to play this part."  He was great.

3) Though I laughed a lot during this movie, I also got teary-eyed a couple of times. The first was during America Ferrerra's speech about all the contradictions inherent in being a woman that everyone has been quoting, and which she delivers even better than I imagined.  The second is when Barbie decides she wants to be human and live in the Real World, and Barbie's creator Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) takes her hand.  Barbie sees flashes of moments of joy from real women's lives, where women are doing things like playing with kids and graduating, but also, for example, getting a strike in bowling and being cheered on by her friends.  I don't feel like I can adequately describe how or why it is so moving, but it is.

4) The movie is really well-paced.  It has to cover a lot of ground, from establishing what life is like in Barbieland to Barbie and Ken's trip to the Real World to Ken messing up Barbieland with the patriarchy (which, he admits, he pretty much lost interest in once he realized that it wasn't all about horses), and so on.  It moves right along; it never really drags, but also never feels rushed.

Anyway: fun summer movie.  Go see it with some friends.

Grandma's Marathon Race Reflection: 2023

Here's the thing about me: I am not the fastest runner, but I am consistent.  Every single road half-marathon I've raced, over the course of eleven years of racing and twenty-six half-marathons, has been run at an average pace somewhere between 8:40 and 9:45 per mile, which has resulted in a best time of 1:53:37 and a worst time of 2:07:55.  Times have started to skew a little toward the slower end over the years, but conditions like temperature, whether the course is hilly or flat, etc., have also played a role, and keeping them all that close (with most of them falling between 1:55 and 2:05) is something I'm pretty proud of.

With full marathons, I haven't had as much experience, but I have run five now, with a PR of 4:30:54 at Grandma's in 2022 and a worst time of 4:56:24 at Chicago in 2021, and, guess what? The overall time gap is bigger than with the half since I'm running twice as far, and the overall pace is a bit slower, but the pace difference (within about a minute per mile, around 10:20-11:20 in this case) is about the same.  So, when the temperatures started to climb and I started falling off goal pace at Grandma's this year, and when I crossed the finish line at 4:40:24, I was disappointed, first, to not PR, and second, not to at least get sub-4:40.  However, by the time I talked to Carrie N. on the phone on my way home from the race the next day, I had put it in the perspective of, "I think I found my range.  4:30:54 is what I can do when conditions are perfect, and 4:56:24 is what I can do when conditions are terrible, and the rest will fall somewhere in between.  And the good thing about Chicago sucking so hard is that I can always say, 'At least it wasn't as bad as Chicago!'"  I do hope that I have not peaked and that I can still hit a sub-4:30 someday, but prior to Saturday, I had PRed at every full marathon EXCEPT Chicago, and it's probably not realistic to expect that every time.  Train for it, go for it, but manage expectations and don't make it the end of the world if it doesn't happen, I think is the lesson.

Also: I was not hating my life this race.  At any distance, there have been races where I have gotten MAD, and not in the good, "My competitive spirit is revved up!" kind of way, but in the "I hate everyone and everything!" type of way.  At Chicago, for example, I remember crossing the 18-mile mark and thinking, "Eight more miles of this? REALLY?!" At the Lincoln Half this year, which was one of my worst at 2:06:16, I was ready to fling my slick-with-humidity water bottle to the side of the road, and a completely innocuous conversation between a couple of other runners made me think, "Shut UP!" I was straight-up not having a good time.  This race was not like that.  At mile 20, knowing that I had fallen off pace and not quite having it in me to pick it up, but also not feeling terrible, I thought to myself, fairly calmly, "It's just a 10K left.  You can do a 10K."  Also, though I did slow down in the second half, I don't feel like I "bonked," as I did in my first two Indianapolis marathons; I feel like I slowed down slightly and naturally as the temperature rose, which I can't say was a strategy, but I think was pretty normal.  

Other things from the race weekend as a whole that I will remember:

1) I spent the night in Minneapolis on the way so I could get to the marathon expo early enough to see Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher, who was signing her new book at the expo on Friday.  At my hotel in Minneapolis were a bunch of middle-school girls who were in town for a volleyball tournament.  I had been told there would be cookies in the lobby at 10 p.m., and since I was still up, I went down to get one.  Those middle school girls descended on those cookies like a swarm and had them gone in like thirty seconds.  There were more cookies where that came from, it turned out, but it was a pretty funny thing to watch.

2) I got to add to my collection of photos of me with famous lady marathoners, which prior to this included Kathrine Switzer, Deena Kastor, and Shalane Flanagan.  This one was the most personally significant, however, because I read Kara Goucher's book on running for women early in my running career and used to constantly talk about what "Olympic marathoner Kara Goucher" had to say about this or that.  I managed not to go on and on about that and to just say normal things like "Hi" and "Thank you" as she signed my book and took a picture with me.

3) I got to hang out with my friend Julia at her first full marathon, which she crushed! So glad we got to ride the shuttle together and hang out after the race!

I actually have ZERO races in July and August!  But I'm doing the Monument Marathon in Scottsbluff in September and the GOATz 50K in October, so training starts on July 10th.  I'm trying a different training plan geared toward the 50K which includes hill repeats, so we'll see how that goes!  The plan is to run pretty minimally this week, then take it relatively easy the two weeks after with long-ish runs at 6-8 miles.  I think a three-week training break will be about the right amount, because I had like three MONTHS after the fall racing season last year, and while it was nice to not have to follow a training plan when it was so cold, I did feel like I lost some fitness (though I was still doing some running).

Okay! Spring racing season 2023 in the books! Onward and upward!

Unpacking Daisy Jones and the Six: Daisy and Billy and Camila (Spoilers)

Billy Dunne has this version of himself that he wants to be, which is the version that stays clean and sober and is a good husband to Camila and a good father to Julia.  Then Daisy Jones enters his life, first to sing harmony on one song and then as an official member of the band, and she brings out a lot of his insecurities and challenges him in ways that he isn’t used to being challenged.  He expects her to just sing that first song, “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” as written.  She rewrites it, and he hates, and has a hard time admitting, that it’s better her way.  At her first live performance with the band, he tells her they’re singing the song fourth; she comes out after the first song, they do the song second, she never leaves the stage, and he hates that the fans don’t want her to.  Basically, he hates, and has a hard time admitting, that he needs her more than she needs him professionally.  There’s one point where he tries to threaten her that unless she does this or that, she’s not coming on tour, and she says, “There IS no tour without me, you stupid son of a bitch.”  He really has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that he’s not in control with her.

He also has it in his head that as long as he never actually crosses the line of sleeping with her, he’s not doing anything wrong as far as his marriage to Camila is concerned, even though Camila literally tells him otherwise right to his face.  Literally.  She straight up tells him, “I don’t have to know everything, but if you love her—” He interrupts her to tell her he doesn’t.  She says that if he ever does, they’re over.  Yet, when Camila is upset after seeing Billy and Daisy having what is clearly an intimate conversation, he is very insistent that all they’ve done is kiss once.  He can’t get it through his head that she doesn’t care about that.  With both Daisy and Camila, he has these clear ideas about how things are going to be without it ever even occurring to him that they never agreed to those terms or that they might have their own ideas about what they want and what is important to them.

This becomes clearest when, after leaving messages for Camila begging her to give him another chance and come to the fateful Soldier Field show that winds up being their last, a fan buys him a shot, and he takes it.  He is drunk and high at the show that night, and he is different with Daisy than he ever has been before, joining her at her microphone, coming so close their lips almost touch and, at one point, putting his arms around her from behind as they sing.  When they go backstage before the encore, he begins kissing her, and she responds at first.  But she realizes he isn’t being himself and that he’s just reacting to Camila leaving him; he tells her this is who he is: broken. “Let’s be broken together,” he says.  Essentially: I couldn’t live up to Camila, so I might as well live down to you.  To Daisy’s credit, she doesn’t accept this for herself, and firmly tells him, “I don’t want to be broken.”  Daisy told him early on, when they were writing songs for the album together, that he writes from the perspective of who he wants to be, not who he really is.  Billy both loves and hates that Daisy sees who he really is, and loves, hates, and is scared of who he is with her.

Bottom line, he puts A LOT on both of the women in his life.  But Camila isn’t perfect, and Daisy isn’t “broken.”  They’re both real, human people with strengths and weaknesses, and I am really impressed that the show lets them both be that, even if Billy can’t always see them as anything but projections of what he does or doesn’t want to be.  I think it’s a huge departure from a lot of music films.  I love Walk the Line, for example, but in the context of that movie, June was there to save Johnny Cash, and his first wife, Vivian, was there to hold him back; that made sense in the context of that story, which was told from John’s perspective, and very well may have been how he saw things.  Things get more complex when you start showing events from multiple people’s perspectives, though, which we get in Daisy Jones and the Six, where there are no heroes or villains, just a bunch of flawed people trying, and sometimes failing, to do their best; sometimes bringing out the best in each other, and sometimes bringing out the worst.

GOATz 50K Race Recap

 I signed up for the GOATz 50K back in April, I think, on the day that my friend Carrie M. organized a forty-mile run as preparation for an upcoming 100-mile race she was training for.  I was in the midst of training for Grandma's Marathon at the time; I had fourteen or fifteen miles on the training schedule that day, I think, but wound up running seventeen, and signed up on the adrenaline of the day's run and the buzz of a few post-run beers.  In June, I ran a marathon PR at Grandma's and was a little dismayed to realize that training for GOATz needed to start pretty much immediately.  I took three days completely off from running and a full week off from any training plan, then went back to it.  As the fall race calendar started filling up with the Harvest Moon Hustle 10K and the Monument Half-Marathon in September, then the Market to Market relay and the Garmin Kansas City Half-Marathon in the weeks immediately leading up to GOATz, I started to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew.

This feeling came to a head at the GOATz preview run the weekend before Market to Market.  I already had one twenty-miler under my belt during this training cycle, but I had run it on pavement during my friend Karri's brewery run.  This time, I did two loops of the GOATz course (the 50K would be three loops) and was hit with how hard it was going to be and how long it was going to take.  Two loops (twenty-one miles) took me something like 4:35, which was slower than my most recent marathon time.  "I thought this would be okay since I've already run marathons, but those were all on flat roads!," I told my friends.  "This is on hilly trail!"  A couple of them chimed in to point out that you don't run a trail race as fast and that you hike up the hills.  "That makes it even worse!," I said.  "I'll be out there for like seven hours!" I was told that wasn't a bad time for a first 50K; I was like, "But I don't WANT to run for seven hours!"  I knew the GOATz course was a loop of 10.5 miles, and that there would also be 10.5 and 21 mile races going on at the same time.  If literally any one of my friends had been like, "Well, you know, you can always drop down to the 21," I would have been like "OKAY! YES! I'll do that!" None of them did.  

Market to Market came and went.  Garmin Kansas City came and went.  Next thing I knew, there was nothing to do but run a 50K.  The morning of the race, Jimmy Brown of Runner Church gave a short message where he quoted a Bible verse about finishing the race, and said something along the lines of, "You did not just sign up for this race to sign up, and you did not come here to just run part of the race.  You came here to finish the race, and unless you get sick or hurt, you will finish."  I looked at my friend Julia, who was also running her first 50K but was much more excited about it. I wish I could say that that's the moment where I was like "YES!," but I was still really nervous.

The race started, and everyone, except for the 50 milers, who had started at 3 a.m. (!!!) took off together.  A few of us had planned to run at least the first loop together, so during the first few miles I was mainly focused on staying with the group while everyone in the race was trying to settle into their paces.  Eventually, people spread out a little bit, and it started to feel a little more relaxed.  I had told myself I would eat something, whether the Skratch chews I had brought along or something from an aid station, every four miles, so I had six Skratch chews four miles in, then some peanut butter pretzels at the Runner Church aid station at mile eight.  The start/finish aid station at mile 10.5 marked the end of the first loop.  I used the Port-a-Potty, ate a few more pretzels, Amber refilled my water bottle for me, and then we were off again.  At that point, our group spread out a bit.  Karri was planning on pacing me for the whole thing, so she stuck with me; Anna and Julia went on ahead for awhile, then we caught them, then Julia took off at our next stop at the Runner Church aid station.  Anna was doing the 21 miler, so the end of the next loop was her last.  I made one more stop at the Port-a-Potty; Macy, who had won the 10.5 miler for the women earlier that day, refilled my water bottles; and Karri and I were off again.

Four miles into the loop, I tried to eat Skratch chews again, but after the second one I had a strong feeling that if I tried to eat any more, they would come back up.  Luckily, I was still at least able to drink water.  I think I got maybe one more Skratch chew down later down the road.  It got very windy.  At one point, where we were briefly on pavement on our way back into the woods, I felt like I was going to be blown over sideways.  Karri had been playing music for us, and at one point, "Jessie's Girl," one of my favorite songs of all time, came on.  "I'm going to do the hand-clappy part to see if I can still clap in rhythm," I told her.  I kind of could.  Running and clapping is hard, FYI.  At the Runner Church aid station, I tried to sip a little ginger ale, but since we were 2.5 miles from the end at that point, I didn't try to get anything else down.  Karri needed to put on sunscreen, so she told me to go on ahead and she would catch me.  After the Runner Church station, you ran up a grassy hill, crossed some pavement, and went back into the woods.  At that point, I tripped over a root.  I caught myself and didn't hit the ground.  Still, I shouted, "THIS SUCKS!" to the heavens.  Karri caught up with me again.  The next thing that stands out is that there was a big hill, and Karri was like, "What song can I play to get you up this hill?," and I was like, "Nothing."  Like, not in the mood for songs right now, let's just finish this thing.  (Later, I realized that "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" would have been the correct answer.)  We crossed the finish line in 6:58:34, so I was pretty right when I predicted that I would be out there for "like seven hours."  Our friends were there to cheer us in at the finish line.

I went and sat at a picnic bench.  Then I wanted to lie on the ground, so Carrie M. went and got a blanket.  Then I drank some ginger ale.  Then my stomach started to settle down.  I drank a Coke.  Eventually, we went our separate ways and made plans for dinner later.  I went home, took a shower, ate some Pringles, and by the time we were on our way to dinner, I said to Karri, "I reserve the right to change my mind on this, but I have felt worse after other races."  I threw up at the finish line of my first half-marathon.  I ran a 15K trail run in July heat back in 2012 that I still refer to as Death in the Woods.  Lying on a blanket feeling a little queasy didn't seem terrible by comparison.

We all went out for dinner, and Theresa asked me what the best and worst parts were.  I was quick to recount the queasiness as the worst part.  Then I said that the best part was the camaraderie, and I can't stress that enough.  Between getting to run the first loop with Karri, Ross, Anna, and Julia, Karri pacing me the whole way, Macy and Amber there at the aid stations, everyone there at the finish, and still more people there to congratulate all of us on Tuesday at run group, I felt so supported before, during, and after.  My friends are so great.

I drank a beer that was literally the size of my head that night.  That seems like an important detail.

I didn't sleep well that night and woke up sore the next day.  I got a really good night's sleep on Monday and woke up even more sore on Tuesday.  Tuesday night, I went to IRRC and walked with Julia and Theresa.  Afterwards, I talked to Carrie M. and said, "I feel like with races like this, it's you versus the course," and she said, "That's exactly right." I planned to take a full week off running and have stuck to that so far, but I am mostly not sore anymore and starting to feel a little antsy.  Still, with midterm grades due today and some fun social plans coming up this weekend, it should be easy enough to wait until Sunday.

Some takeaways:

1) The three weeks between the preview run and the race were very stressful and full of self-doubt.  However, I'm VERY glad that I did the preview run and kind of got real with myself about how things were going to be.  Up to that point, I think I thought it was going to be "not that much harder" than running a marathon.  It was a lot harder.  I'm glad I was prepared for that.  It's not good to be so scared that you talk yourself out of things, but it's also not good to kid yourself or not take things seriously enough.

2) That said, I actually was fairly physically prepared at that point, or I wouldn't have gotten through it.  I basically adapted the Hal Higdon Intermediate 1 plan that I did for Grandma's Marathon, doing more runs on trails and adjusting as I needed to for other races.  I totaled up and figured out that I did 88% of the workouts on the plan, giving me a B+ for preparedness.  Though I joked with my friends about the fact that I calculated all that and graded myself and all, I think it was actually a pretty good gauge, and think that in the A-/B+ range is a good place to be; I don't want to ever be so rigid that I can't ever miss a workout, but I also am not someone who "wings" things.  I would not have done it if I was not actually prepared.

3) I started my adult running career (I ran track and cross country in high school) in the year 2011.  I've run alone, with different small groups of friends, and with organized training groups, and I imagine that I will run as long as I am able and still liking it regardless of where I am or who I'm with.  However.  It's my friends who have consistently helped me level up and supported me.  In 2018, after finishing the Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon, showering, and venturing back out for lunch, my friends and I passed people who were finishing the full.  While I was thinking, "Man, I'm so glad I didn't do the full! That looks terrible!," Carrie N. was like, "If they can do it, we can do it."  I was like, "FINE." So we registered for the Monumental Marathon in Indianapolis that fall, trained together, and my friends Alice and Shannon surprised me at the finish line with signs they had made.  At lunch, they gave me a decorated box full of cards and gifts from other friends who couldn't come but wanted to show their support.  The next year, Alice brought our friends Mel and Erin along.  I still remember (and have video somewhere) of running down the stretch before I made the last turn to the finish and seeing them cheering.  There was a woman holding a sign that said "Tap here to power up" with the mushroom from Super Mario Brothers, and Alice started shouting, "TAP THE SIGN! TAP THE SIGN!" I still giggle when I think about it.  Then I moved to Omaha, and was introduced to the Omaha running community through the Inner Rail Run Club; it was the friends I met there who introduced me to trail running.  I knew ultrarunning existed before meeting them, but I had never actually known anyone who had run further than a marathon.  I started thinking about it, but when I got into the Chicago Marathon in 2021, my focus all went toward training for that (though I did some shorter trail races throughout the year).  So, this was the year.  Thanks so much to Karri, Carrie M., Julia, Anna, Amber, Macy, Theresa, and the MANY other awesome people who did training runs with me, ran with me for all or part of the race itself, or were there at the finish line-- all while working toward their own goals.  Would I run on my own?  Yes, but definitely not as far, and it definitely wouldn't be as fun.

Monument Half-Marathon Race Recap

I used to be able to hit sub-two hours in the half-marathon consistently, with just the occasional exception on an especially hilly course or a really hot, humid day, until 2019, at which point it became much more hit or miss.  I hit it most recently in October 2019 at the Evansville Half with a time of 1:55:56.  Though I'm sure age has something to do with the difference, I will also say that nine of my top twelve half times (I've run twenty-three road half-marathons) were at the Evansville Half, which is held in early October; the weather tends to be cool, and the course is mostly flat.  There was bound to be more variation once I started branching out more frequently to different courses, running them at different times of year, training for longer distances, and doing the occasional not-that-smart thing like running halfs on back-to-back weekends.

This past Saturday I ran the Monument Half-Marathon in Gering, Nebraska, and I knew a sub-two time was probably not in the cards when miles two and three were both up the same, seemingly endless hill.  The first mile was downhill; when my watch chimed and I had an 8:31 pace, I wasn't sure whether to think, "Oooh, you went out too fast," or, "It's fine, you have some time banked now," or just, "Well, that was downhill, who cares?" A woman running near me, who I will refer to as My Musical Friend because she was playing music over her phone, and throughout the race I would speed up when I heard the music coming behind me, scolded her husband for pacing them too fast during the first mile.  During the second mile, when we all started uphill, he said something to her like, "Look, I will stay with you until it doesn't make sense anymore."  My watch chimed at the end of the second mile: 9:39.  "Oooohhh," I said aloud, in a tone like, "That's not good."  My Musical Friend said, "It's okay.  It'll even out with the downhills."  That made sense at that point, since my first mile was about thirty seconds too fast and the second was about thirty seconds too slow for the pace I was trying to hit...but then mile three continued uphill.  "Just go!" My Musical Friend said to her husband.  Up ahead, another woman urged her friend to go on ahead of her; the hills were breaking up duos left and right.  Mile three was another 9:39.  The hill finally started to descend at mile four, but not quite at the same degree; mile four was 9:07, which was better and back on pace, though not enough faster to make up tons of ground.

A few things happened relatively simultaneously at mile five: the course turned onto a gravel road; the half-marathon relay, which started thirty minutes after the half-marathon, had its first exchange point, so there was a "Why are there so many people just standing around?" moment; and the course became just BEAUTIFUL.  If you've ever been to the Scottsbluff/Gering area, you know that it is beautiful in general, but at this point there were some Badlands-like formations that you don't normally see.  We were running on a gravel road around the back side of the Scottsbluff National Monument, which you don't normally have a reason to go to.  Also at this point, us runners spread out a bit more.  I passed an older man who had started alternating between running and walking.  Occasionally, I would hear My Musical Friend's music behind me, then the music would fade again.  One thing with the early uphill miles was that you started to see people struggling earlier in the race than you normally would.  I wouldn't say I was struggling, but I did consciously adjust my goal from sub-two to "just try to keep all your miles under ten minutes."

Things kind of became a blur around mile seven or eight.  My Musical Friend disappeared somewhere behind me (I wish I knew her real name so I could look up how she finished).  We got back on pavement as the course turned onto the paved bike/running trails near the monument.  My parents were cheering two different places.  The first, my dad called out that I was twenty-fourth out of the women.  The second, my mom called out, "Molly! Look who's here!  It's Kaitlyn!"; my cousin's daughter was volunteering with some fellow nursing students.  The course kind of zig-zagged through some neighborhoods, with arrows on the ground pointing our way and volunteers in the confusing spots.  We switched back to gravel to head back to the start/finish at Five Rocks Amphitheater, running past a cemetery.  There was another downhill, and a volunteer kept calling out to us to watch ourselves on the gravel.  Next thing I knew I was crossing the finish.  My time was 2:07:55, far off the goal (hope?), but sometimes you adjust as you go when the course is more challenging than expected.  Final results were 24/125 women and 61/218 overall.

It was a great race.  I really enjoyed the mixture of pavement and gravel, and the scenery was beautiful.    Since it was a smaller race, you spread out a bit more than you typically would in a road half-marathon; the person who finished before me was forty seconds ahead, while the person behind was more than twenty seconds back.  I think I'm going to go back for the full next year.  For the full, they bus you out to the Wildcat Hills, and the first five miles are downhill.  Their second half overlaps with the half-marathon course.  I imagine pacing would be challenging since the second half is the more difficult half.  At any rate, I'd like to try it.  I think I love smaller races.  

One of the sponsors was the Flyover Brewery, and they offered a free beer if you brought your race bib in before six p.m.  My parents and I went sometime between five and six, and there were lots of people there wearing their race shirts, and the race director was coming around talking to everyone and thanking us for being there.  The proceeds go to scholarships at Western Nebraska Community College, so she emphasized how much they have raised since they started doing the race.  The whole community was really supportive of the race.  I would definitely recommend.

Grandma's Marathon Race Recap

Grandma's Marathon race day started with them shuttling us via school bus from hotels/dorms/various locations around Duluth to the starting line.  I noticed as soon as I got on the bus that my phone battery was already down to 52%, which I cursed myself for and knew would not end well.  Fortunately, that would be the worst thing that happened that day.

My previous marathon PR was 4:36:17, set at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in 2019.  Having bonked at all three of my previous marathons, I decided to start off with the 4:35 pace group.  During the fourth mile, I kept finding myself having to slow down and let the pace group catch back up to me, which eventually started to seem dumb, so I decided to just run my race.  I warned myself not to let myself get under 10:00 miles until at least mile sixteen.  I accidentally did once at mile thirteen, but it wasn't much under so I didn't worry about it.

Though I left the 4:35 group behind, I had a pace bracelet telling me what time I needed to be at at each mile to hit 4:35, which was SUPER helpful.  With two miles to go, I knew I had banked somewhere between two and three minutes and would hit my goal as long as I kept within the range of what I'd already been doing.  Then someone started playing "All I Do is Win," and a random stranger called out to no one in particular, "YOU'RE DOING IT!!!," and I was like, "I AM doing it!," and I took off.  Mile 25 pace was 9:39.  Mile 26 was 9:33.  After I crossed the finish line, I got the notification on my watch from the Grandma's app that said, "Molly Brost has crossed the finish line at 4:30:54," and I was like, "HOLY CRAP!" I managed to collect my medal and, with my phone now at 7%, shoot off a text to my family telling them my time.  Somehow, even after my phone died, I was still getting notifications on my watch, so even though I couldn't respond, I managed to get the gist of where my friends were and find them with only *a little* wandering around cursing myself for not making sure that I had started the day with a properly charged phone.

Some things that helped me reach my goal:

1) Nearly perfect conditions.  Temps were in the 50s, the course was nice and flat with some downhills and only really one big uphill.  I commented to more than one person, "Part of me wants to retire from marathon running right now, because I will never have this perfect of a race again."  A random stranger who struck up with a conversation with me at a water fountain was like, "Oh, wow, what a great thing to be able to say! You're not going to, though, right?" I was like, "Of course not."

2) The Hal Higdon Intermediate 1 training plan, pictured below:

For my previous three marathons I used the Novice 2 plan.  The main difference between that one and this one was this one included five weekly runs instead of four, which meant back-to-back runs on the weekends.  This sometimes led to things that I never would have considered possible before, such as, say, running the Early Bird 10 Miler one day and then waking up the next morning and doing fifteen miles.  I thought to myself multiple times throughout training, "I don't know if I'm actually getting faster, but I can DO MORE than I've ever been able to do before."  I didn't follow the plan perfectly, because life happens, but I calculated it and determined that I did 91% of the workouts on the plan.  I think it's good to choose a plan that is maybe just A LITTLE too hard, because even if you fall slightly short, you're still going to be doing more than you've done before.

3) Proper portions of Honey Stinger chews.  I always struggle with race day/long run nutrition.  I was worried because I felt like I'd been really fading on my long runs.  Then I looked on the back and saw that the serving size was six Honey Stinger chews.  I'd been eating four every four miles.  I upped it to six, and I swear to God it made a huge difference.

4) Last, but CERTAINLY not least, awesome running friends! Omaha has a fantastic running community.  There are running groups most nights of the week, and through those groups you can meet awesome friends to also do your weekend long runs with 👍. Thanks so much to everyone who did training runs with me, shared the race weekend experience, or offered support from afar!

After the disappointment of last fall's hot AF Chicago Marathon, it was nice to have a race go really well.  I feel like this is the first full marathon that I've actually raced and not just tried to survive.

Reflections on the Chicago Marathon almost a week later

My training for the Chicago Marathon officially began the week of June 7th. I was still pretty trained up after back-to-back spring halfs: the Kentucky Derby Mini-Marathon, held in a staggered format over four days (I believe), mostly on running paths over the Indiana border; and the Lincoln Half, held in a more normal format with some Covid restrictions. I wasn't overly happy with my performance in either; I'm really motivated by competition, and the staggered format for Derby had us so spread out that I found it hard to keep up a good race pace. Not only was the Lincoln Half fairly hot and humid, but it was literally a week and a day after Derby, so I really hadn't had time to recover. I was pretty proud of myself that I was in good enough shape to do halfs two weekends in a row, though.

The training plan that I followed was the Hal Higdon Marathon Novice 2, which, according to the web site, is designed for runners who may have already finished their first marathon and are looking to build mileage and improve speed for their second or third. I actually used the exact same plan when I ran my first two marathons. I like it, but while looking at the web site just now I saw the Intermediate 1 plan and am preemptively excited to use it for my next full. It has runs five days a week instead of four, which I sometimes did anyway even when I was doing Novice 2, so I think I'm ready. The Novice 2 only included one race in the build-up to the marathon, a half-marathon. I did A BUNCH more than that, including the Don Childs 5 Mile Run; the Cornfield Cornfield, Boonville Backroads, and Harvest Moon Hustle 10Ks; the Dizzy Goat endurance trail run, which for me wound up being 12.4 miles; the What the Hill?! trail half-marathon; and the Market to Market relay, where my legs added up to around 14 miles. I know this doesn't sound ideal, but I think it worked out okay, because I was still able to keep up with my long runs even on 10K weeks, and the 10Ks basically wound up being my pace/tempo runs on those weeks. Also, most of them were so much fun; there were only one or two that I can even imagine NOT doing next year, so that's just going to be how it goes in the summer/fall racing season, I guess.

My first two fulls were the 2018 and 2019 Indianapolis Monumental Marathons. I ran the first in 4:37:35 and the second in 4:36:17. I figured I would shoot for 4:30 in Chicago and drove my Omaha running friends and my Indiana friend, Carrie, who was also going to be doing Chicago, absolutely INSANE trying to determine whether I would start with the 4:30 pace group, the 4:20 pace group, or just not run with a pace group and try to keep my pace under 10:17/mile, which is what I needed for 4:30. In the end, I went with the third option, only I hadn't counted on it being SO FREAKING HOT.


The Chicago Marathon has an alert system where green means ideal running conditions, yellow means proceed with caution, red means potentially dangerous, and black means so dangerous that they would have to shut down the race. The alert level was at yellow when we started the race; I don't even remember which mile I was at when I saw that it had changed to red. I DO remember thinking, "If they change it to black and I don't get to finish this race, I am going to lose it." Luckily, that didn't happen.

My first four miles were sub-10 minutes, which was a little fast but not alarmingly fast. When I fell back into the 10-11 minute mile range at mile five, I thought that was good; I was settling into a pace. A few miles were slower than the 10:17 pace I needed, but I figured it would probably all work out since the first four were a little faster than I needed, and I had it in my head that as long as I stayed at a net pace of 10:30 or under, I would still PR. At maybe mile twelve or thirteen, the 4:30 pace group caught me, and I ran with them for two or three miles. One pacer was going real crazy waving her sign around; I was already kind of fading and in a bad mood at that point, and all I could think was, "Take it easy with the sign! You're going to hit someone!" Or maybe something meaner. You know. Then at mile fifteen I was like, "Whoa! Why are they taking off at a dead sprint?" They were NOT taking off at a dead sprint. Friends, The Wall is real, and I hit it hard at mile fifteen, and harder at mile nineteen. At some point I basically abandoned all time goals and just focused on keeping going. Also, I drank A LOT of water. I carried my own water bottle; at some water stops, in addition to the paper cups, they had people just standing there with jugs who would fill your bottles for you, which was nice. I also ate, over the course of the race, some Skratch chews, two mini Honey Stinger waffles, and part of a banana that a volunteer gave me at some point in the last ten miles. They gave me I think half of a banana; I couldn't eat all of it, and as I threw the rest on the ground, I was like, "Oh, no, what if someone slips on my banana peel?!"

Another thing is that my watch didn't quite line up with the mile markers. I had been warned beforehand that the tall buildings and tunnels would throw off my GPS, so I knew that was going to happen, but it was a little demoralizing to hear the beep signaling a mile and then not see the mile marker for like a quarter mile. (My watch wound up measuring the course at 26.59, so less than half a mile off, which doesn't seem terrible given the distance, the buildings, etc.) At some point I thought to myself, "Well, I think I can still finish in under five hours, but who the heck even knows at this point?" That's right: I fell pretty far off goal pace. I ultimately finished in 4:56:24, which obviously wasn't what I wanted, but given that the temps were literally thirty-five to forty degrees higher than they were when I set my PR at Monumental in 2019, I didn't think it was that bad. The difference made sense to me.

Even though I ate more/better during this race and drank a lot more water than I did at Indy in 2019, I still don't feel like I have race nutrition totally figured out. As I mentioned, I am going to the next step up in training plans the next time, so that should also help. However, I was pretty happy with the training season as a whole. Also, wow, what an experience race weekend was! Everywhere had long lines, but everything was run very quickly and efficiently. It was also great that basically the whole city seemed excited about the race; a banner greeted us at the airport, and even flying out the next day, people were still wearing their shirts and medals at the airport, which was neat.

It was also, of course, super fun spending time with my friend Carrie, who I hadn't seen in six months, and her family. All in all, the whole weekend was a great experience. My next full will probably be a considerably smaller one, but it was great to have the World Major Marathon experience.