Pat's Run 2012

So, a couple weeks ago we all did Pat's Run, and I was too hot and then busy to tell you about it.


We were all kind of psyched, bc it's not a common distance so it made for an automatic pr (me), nT's whole company signed up for it (practically), and G did a report on Pat Tillman for a school thing this year.  Plus, it seemed like every time I mentioned the race to someone I found more and more people who were signed up.

So, I was looking forward to it.

This is how it looked on the other side of "forward".

I've never run with a group before (I guess I still haven't- more later), and everyone from nT's company was excited about running in ye olde logo shirts, so I set about making necessary modifications to mine.

As you can maybe tell, I wound up with sort of an 80s feel.  I went with it.

The vast majority of half marathons I've been to have been big-ticket items, so I figured I knew what to expect with the 44,000 I heard had signed up for Pat's Run...but it turns out, with the shorter race distance comes fans who are willing to park it and wait for their runners to finish, not to mention nine majillion kids waiting to start the kids' race (.42mi instead of 4.2, awwww it's cute).  What I am trying to convey here is, it was kind of crowded.

I am totally bothering him while he tries to buy train tickets.

In what I thought was a stroke of genius, nT and I drove down to a train stop and took the train in to ASU stadium.  In what was clearly not a stroke of genius, I did not forsee that five hundred other people also had this stroke of genius.  Again, what I'm getting at is, we missed the first two trains.  While I am in constant awe of the Japanese white-glove system of boarding and have gleefully dived into a few packed trains at Grand Central in my time, we couldn't imagine how to even mayonnaise our way into the train sandwiches we were presented with that morning; there was literally not one footprints' worth of standing space until the third train rolled up, a judiciously added "supplement" train provided by Rural Metro to appease the huge crowd of disgruntled runners. So we finally got on. Luckily we don't mind starting in some random corral, bc they had already started several by the time we got to the starting area.

Holy bazingas, any corral will do!

Ahh, we were young and happy.

So!  With the kids getting a ride down to meet us later and only 1/3 the usual distance to tackle, TnT figured we were in for a good run.  Together! And it was, so good.  That 43/100ths of a mile was really good.  In the 44th sliver of that first mile, we remembered why we never run together, and that is because it's virtually impossible.

I am a very slow runner.  Maybe even "jogger" is kind of a stretch; I'm what you might call a "slogger".  <-- HA that is extra funny bc it could be a contraction of "slow jogger", as well as the visually-onomatopaeic way I meant it.  Anyway.  nT has longer legs than I do (he tells me), weighs about 40lbs less, and is a man (which i angrily hold forth is the deciding factor, not the other two facts), which all adds up to mean running for him is quite a bit easier for him.  At least in short distances; I think we both agree that in the long run (HA again!) I hold up much better and recover a lot quicker.  Anyway.  We are not talking about a long race now, we are talking about a short one, one in which I followed nT's optimistic starting pace, went out too fast, and was already tired once I settled in to my happy pace.  And once I did, I wasn't happy, bc if we run together at my pace, we *still* aren't running together!

Bc he is WALKING.

I know I'm slow, and yes some part of me deep somewhere knows it's not a contest ((everything is!) (shut up!)), but I really lost the game mentally in that first mile feeling like I was giving it what I could and he was *walking* comfortably along beside me.  Not even like speedwalking, like that uncomfortable I-can't-really-run-but-it's-too-fast-to-walk walking, just strolling along beside me.  Yeah.  So, needless to say, I wasn't great company after I got all demoralized, and he stuck it out like a champ until the third mile.  At that point he said he'd "meet me at the bottom!" of a hill and I never saw him again.

Guess who else will not be waiting for you at the bottom!

Hey Mr. Speedypants, I know this was a thinly-veiled setup for doing your own thing, and I'm okay with it.  Also, you only picked up five minutes in those two miles, so you didn't outrun me by much!  I checked because I am not competitive!

Anyway.  I was off my game and the heat was the straw on my overly-laden emotional 'back'.  I did not have a good race.  But, I do now have a pr for this distance- albeit a crotchety 57-minute one.  Hey, it'll just be easy to beat later!  (<-- queen of setting the bar low)  The course was a pretty good one, taking advantage of our one hill here in Tempe, and crossing over the "lake" twice is always a good move.  I also got passed by a big military(esque-?) group all running and chanting in sync together, which was a cool experience.  I liked feeling their wave of energy as they went by, although I would like it even better if I could run fast enough to keep pace with them, at least for a little while.


So, once we got back and met up with the kids (fiasco! did i mention it was crowded!  clusterfuck!), we queued up to run the .42 with them.  Not that I needed another race at that point, however small; there was just no clear way to end up with them at the end other than to run with them.

They might be signing something to me.  I wouldn't know.

Again, it's not really "running with" when everyone leaves you in the dust.  Including the 7yo.
I'm going with a) he was fresh and I was tired, b) it was hot!, c) they were sprinting and d) I am not competitive!

Short story long, I'm glad we did it (great race shirts! autopr! I actually ran that week!) but don't think I'd go out for it again (too much crowd for a short race!  transportation clusterfuck! already have the shirt!).  We didn't have a chance to see anyone we knew in the gigantic crowd, and between coworkers and friends there must have been 75 people we knew there.  Out of like 45,000.  So I guess that's why we didn't see anyone.  but still, in a smaller race or longer distance it just seems easier to coordinate and catch each other; this race is like a plague of locusts descending on ASU, all rushing madly  hither and yon, and then magically evaporating 3 hours after the rush began.  But, it was a good excuse to ride the train.  I do love the train!

I also love that he makes this face.