On Sunday, I ran the 2013 Little Rock Half Marathon held in Little Rock, Arkansas. This was my first time traveling by plane to a race and it was a pretty cool experience. It seems like the flight on Saturday morning was full of nothing but runners heading in to participate in the Little Rock Marathon events. This year’s theme was “Get Lucky” with more of a western flare. I wanted to wear a little cowboy hat for the race, but the weather was a bit questionable for the weekend and so I opted to leave it home.
This wasn’t my first time in The Rock. I have traveled here numerous times when my brother was stationed at LRAFB. It was really nice to return to this great city, after a few years, for an awesome race. I didn’t do any real sight seeing, but I did take a few photos of some buildings in the downtown area that I didn’t take in previous years. I've been to President Clinton's library before, but I thought it was cool to get a picture of it at night.
I arrived in Little Rock around 9 a.m. on Saturday. The next flight out of ATL would have gotten me there around 3:45 p.m. The expo hours ended at 5 p.m. and I didn’t want to take a chance at missing the final packet pick-up time due to a flight delay or time wasted getting my rental car. Getting there early was a good idea. I was able to do some running around after leaving the expo and before it came time to check-in at the hotel.
Getting to the hotel was a bit of an issue being that I decided to stay in one that was located downtown and right at the starting line. Some of the roads were blocked, but I was finally able to find the hotel, park in the garage, and get myself settled in.
Okay, enough of the fodder. Time for the race stuff...
GENERAL INFO:
Race start: Sunday, 8:00 am for the 10K / Half Marathon / Marathon. There was a 6:00 a.m. early start for marathoners requiring more than 6 hours to finish the full. There was a staggered start for each corral.
Temps: Around 26* with mild winds. On Saturday, there was snow flurries. Those who ran the 5K and the Kids Marathon had a treat. Glad I came prepared for the weather here.
Song playing right before our corral took off: “Country Girl (Shake it For Me)” by Luke Bryan. I’m from the south and was raised and still live in rural SC. I consider myself a Southern girl and not a country girl (sometimes it gets confused), but I have to admit, this tune was right on time. I think I found another song to add to my collection of eclectic music. LOL!
MY EXPERIENCE:
After a quick warm-up run and stretch. I went back to my hotel room to empty the bladder again. The lines to the porta-johns was too long and I didn’t see the point of waiting. I’d have to abandon that way of thinking sooner than I thought...
I found my way into the Open Corral on President Clinton Blvd, and situated myself between the 5:10 and 5:25 marathon pace teams (there were no pace teams for the half). I didn’t want to go out too fast and knew that by running the first mile or two with the groups I would be on target. I also wanted to know how this pace felt, being that my predicted marathon finish time is currently 5:10 based off my fastest HM time.
Song playing right before our corral took off: “Country Girl (Shake it For Me)” by Luke Bryan. I’m from the south and was raised and still live in rural SC. I consider myself a Southern girl and not a country girl (sometimes it gets confused), but I have to admit, this tune was right on time. LOL! I think I found another song to add to my collection of music. I’m very eclectic.
Miles 1- 3: I don’t know if it was the extra cup of coffee I drank that morning, the dancing at the start, or some hidden nervous energy that irritated my bladder, but sometime before mile 2, I felt the urge to take a leak - AGAIN! It was a strong urge. I figured if I kept running and not think about it, I’d be okay -- the urge would go away. But I just couldn’t shake it! I knew that if I didn’t stop soon, this would turn out to be a miserable run. I’ve never had to stop during a race to use the portables and was a bit taken aback by this experience. I wasted about 5 minutes doing the pee-pee dance in line while waiting to use a stall and I knew at that moment that this would probably not be a PR race for me. I would be cutting it really close. With that in mind, I decided that my new goal would be to at least catch up with the 5:25 pace team. I knew that if I caught up with them, I could get ahead of them and would finish the race at a more acceptable time. For me, anything is acceptable as long as I finish it faster than my slowest.
Miles 4-6: Wow! There go the first of the Elites! It’s always an awesome site to see the fastest men and women around, blaze by you in record time. Finish times most of us only dream about. But honestly, I’d be happy with a conversational 10:30 pace.
Okay, back to me...(brace yourself), somewhere around mile 4 someone lost their gallon zip lock bag full of fried chicken. LMAO! I kid you not! It was right there in the middle of the road. I don’t know if it was a joke move or a marathoner lost his fuel along the way, but it was the funniest thing we had seen during the entire race. I wanted to go back and take a photo so bad, but I was just too determined to catch back up with the pace teams at this point. I hope no one tripped over it. Can you imagine that? LOL!! Somewhere right before the 10K split and crossing over the Broadway Bridge I was able to meet and get ahead of the 5:25 group. The 10K runners broke away shortly after we crossed the bridge.
Miles 7-10: We’ve made our way into the residential area of the course. Several of the residents were giving some crowd support to us. One guy decided to play his guitar and sing to us from his front porch. [There was some musical entertainment provided by various groups at every mile for the race]. The half marathon and marathon split right around mile 10.
Miles 11- Finish: There are quite a few hills in the course, but I was still able to keep running close to my target pace, despite the elevation changes. It wasn’t until around mile 12 (after the beer stop), that I began to feel some tightness in my left quad. I kept running, but when the muscle started to spasm shortly thereafter, I stopped so that I could rub it out a bit. I walked for about a minute or two before picking up more speed to finish my race. Maybe I should have downed that free cup of beer at mile 11 instead of taking the free Loreal lipsticks. Beer is good for muscles, right? LOL!
I made it through the finish line, received my medal, took a picture, ate a few items provided as fuel (they had chocolate milk on tap) and made my way back to the hotel.
END RESULT:
Offical Chip time: 2:35:51 my PB is 2:28:54
Garmin data: 13.29 miles in 2:35:47
Final thoughts: This was a great race. I really enjoyed myself and look forward to returning in 2014. My goal is to make the Little Rock Marathon my #2 if all goes well with my debut this November. I MUST get my hands on one of those ridiculous marathon medals! It’ll all be worth it.
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| Half Marathon medal and Marathon medal |
Thanks for reading and Happy Running!
