Bob Mann: 2010 Charlotte Thunder Road Marathon

Sat Dec 11, 2010

On Saturday Dec 11, I ran my 17th marathon. This one was in Charlotte NC. I chose this one for a few reasons. I wanted to get one more marathon in before 2010 ended and this weekend fit my schedule nicely; I hadn't run in North Carolina yet, so this one allowed me to fill in another spot on my marathon map; and I was able to get cheap plane tickets the allowed me to fly in and out while only staying overnight one night.

I was going down to Charlotte by myself. This would be the third time that I flew off to a marathon by myself without meeting up with anybody I knew. The first two times were in Tulsa OK and Green River WY. But I've never had a problem going away by myself. And since this would be for only one night, I knew this would be no big deal.

I had a weird feeling about this race. I just never got myself very focused for it. I had trained fairly hard all Summer for the race in Minnesota and I got a new PR there. After Minnesota, my training lagged a little, so I knew I wouldn't be in shape to push for another PR. So my only real goal for Charlotte was to finish the race and knock another state off the list. I originally chose 4 hours as my goal time for the race, but in the days before the race I decided that even that might be a wee bit too ambitious. I had initially chosen 4:00 because it was a nice round number. But I finally decided that was just arbitrary, and I reduced my target time to 4:05, feeling as though that was more realistic. I also decided that I would like to try and run a negative split. I think I had only done that once, in Wyoming, but I hardly count that because of the elevation profile of that course.

I flew into Charlotte on Friday morning. I had nothing to do for the rest of the day except get my race packet at the expo. So instead of taking a taxi to my hotel in town, I found a city bus that went from the airport to within a block of my hotel. Instead of $25 or so, I spent $2. Yes, I am enough of a cheapskate to find this worthwhile.

After arriving at my hotel, I walked about 4 blocks to the expo at the Charlotte Convention Center. The expo wasn't anything to write home about, and I didn't spend much time there. I just picked up my race packet and went back. Back in the hotel, I changed and then went out for a very brief shake-out run. I didn't even go 2 miles, so it wasn't much, but it was enough to get the juices flowing a little.

I had an early dinner at a pub near my hotel. After that, I went to a dueling piano bar nearby. I thought it would be a fun way to kill a little bit of time. I didn't stay very long, but I did manage to consume 4 beers between dinner and my time at the bar. That's probably not the best pre-race fuel. But at least I called it a night early and was able to get in bed by 9:30pm.

There were a bunch of bars and nightclubs in the vicinity of my hotel. Even though I was on the 14th floor, I could still just barely hear party music from within my room, and I guess it affected me just enough. I woke up numerous times up until about 2:00am when it finally started to quiet down. In other words, I did not get a good night's sleep. I woke up for good at about 5:30am, and I was still feeling very tired. Between the beers and the poor sleep, I felt like I would be in for an unpleasant run.

But thankfully I wasn't feeling hungover. Tired, yes. But hungover, no. However, it was cold. According to the Weather Channel, it was 33 degrees in Charlotte at that time. I think that makes it the coldest temperature I've faced on the morning of a marathon. I had seen the forecasts, however, so I had packed for the cold. I had packed for just about any conditions actually, so I could choose my gear on race morning. I went with shorts, a long-sleeve Under Armour Cold Gear shirt with a short-sleeve running shirt over it, plus a pair of gloves. I figured that was good enough. It wasn't windy, it wasn't rainy, and it was fairly cloudy. Overall, it was a very good day for a run.

The race started near the Convention Center. It was a bit of a mess getting into the start corral, but we all made it. There were about 1300 marathoners, with another 3000 or so running the Half Marathon, which shared the same course for about 12 miles. I enjoy races about this size. There are enough people to make the crowds interesting, but not so many to make it a zoo.

After the start, we immediately ran towards some of the outskirts to the south of Charlotte. The residential neighborhoods for the first half of the race were very beautiful. Lots of nice, large houses and tree-lined streets. The course was rather hilly. Since I hadn't really spent much time thinking about this race, I didn't know what the elevation profile was like, so I wasn't expecting the hills. They weren't bad. The hills weren't terribly steep or long. But they just kept on rolling and rolling. My paces over the first half of the race varied from 8:42 to 9:24, based mostly on whether it was an uphill or downhill mile.

I was feeling pretty good, taking plenty of BobCam shots along the way. At Mile 12, the Half Marathon split off from the Full. The crowd thinned out considerably, and the scenery changed radically as well. We were no longer running in beautiful residential areas, but we were now going thru uglier industrial zones or busy roads lined with strip malls. We also spent quite a bit of time running on roads that were not fully blocked off. In other words, traffic cones were set up splitting the road so that the runners could get one side of the road, and moving cars could drive on the other side. While I am certainly used to running on active roads during training runs, it is not an ideal situation for a race. This certainly made the second half of the race a bit less pleasant than the first half.

I had passed the halfway point in a few seconds more than two hours. If I were to run negative splits, that meant I'd have to finish in under 4 hours. Based on how I felt, I thought this was unlikely. So it seemed as though the negative split would elude me again. So now I focused on 4:05 although, frankly, I didn't really care if I missed that too. I just wanted to finish.

The second half included a couple passes back close to the start line. Around Mile 18, we ran right past my hotel. By this time, I was definitely getting tired, and a nap would have felt really good. I was slowing down little by little, but I knew I could make it the rest of the way.

The second half was flatter than the first. Not completely flat, but flatter. Still, my pace was creeping down closer to 9:30 per mile. I was definitely feeling the lack of sleep. With 4 or 5 miles to go, I could tell that my time would be between 4:00 and 4:05. I knew there was nothing I could do to finish under 4:00 and that it would take a complete collapse to finish worse than 4:05. Yes, I was tired. But I felt certain I would avoid a complete collapse. So I was content to cruise on in for the last few miles at around 9:30 each. My final time: 4:03:05.

And marathon #17 was in the books. This put me more than 1/3 of the way done with the U.S. My first marathon was in October 2005, so that means 17 marathons in just over 5 years. I would like to finish all 50 states by the time I turn 50 in Spring 2021. 33 marathons (in 33 different states) in a little over 10 years? I think I have a fighting chance of dong that...

Anyway, after the race, I didn't hang around for very long. I went back to my hotel, showered, changed and packed up. I checked out, grabbed a big greasy bacon cheeseburger at a pub nearby, then took the cheapo bus back to the airport. I snoozed a little on the flight, and I was back home by 7:00pm.

The next race I have scheduled is in Little Rock, Arkansas in March. I was registered for this one last March, but skipped it because of my health issues. They allowed me to defer to 2011, so here we go. I don't think I'll stick in anything between now and then, but you never know...

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.