Bob Mann: 2012 Lake Geneva Marathon

Sat May 12, 2012

On Sat May 12 2012, I ran a marathon in Lake Geneva WI. This was my 22nd state on my way across the 50 states. Lake Geneva is a tiny town and this was a tiny race, but it's one I'd had my eyes on for a few years. My father was born and raised in Lake Geneva. Also, my parents had met at the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison. So for a few years, I'd been wanting to plan a family vacation there, since neither of them had spent much time in Wisconsin in the last 45 years or so. And of course, since I still needed to check Wisconsin off my list, I wanted to schedule the vacation around a marathon. Every year, something kept coming up to get in the way of the trip. But this year the plans finally worked out.

So on Friday, my parents, wife, daughter, and I flew from New Jersey to Chicago. From there we rented a car and drove up to Lake Geneva, only a little over an hour away, and not far north of the Illinois-Wisconsin border. Lake Geneva is a beautiful summer resort town. Since the Summer season hadn't really gotten underway, I wasn't sure if there would be much going on in town. But the weather was beautiful, and that brought people out. The town was buzzing with people. Unfortunately, the town was also buzzing with mayflies. Zillions of annoying little bugs were fluttering about in the park at the start line. Thankfully they're not a bitting or stinging insect. And thankfully they kept themselves confined to a rather small area near the water. But wow, I'm not sure I'd ever seen so many bugs in one place before. Nonetheless, this was a minor issue.

I knew this would be a small race. So far, the smallest marathon I had run was the one in Wyoming, which was 123 runners. This one turned out to be just a bit smaller, with 114 runners. There was, however, a half marathon that had 300 runners and a "Euro Cross Country" race that had another 60. The Euro race ran on a trail around the shore of the lake, which has a total perimeter of 21 miles. The marathon stuck to the roads which only touched the lake at a few certain points. The course had to drift away from the lake for quite a while to add the necessary extra 5 miles or so to the distance. These three races all started together, so there was a decent crowd at the start line.

This marathon has a very hilly course. And my long-distance training leading up to it was not the best. I seemed to have a decent amount of speed at shorter distances. But the few long runs I had done in the past couple months had all seemed to end with me running out of steam badly. So I was assuming that I would struggle a bit in this race. I was okay with that. All that's really important is finishing another state and checking it off my map.

Almost right away, the course got hilly. After just a few hundred yards, the marathon and half-marathon courses turned away from the lake and up a hill. The Euro runners stuck to a trail on the lakeshore, while the rest of us climbed. My paces in the first two miles were 9:02 and 8:31, which was way too fast. My intention was to keep it slow from the start, which would hopefully delay my inevitable running out of gas for as long as possible. After Mile 2, I settled into a consistent pace around 9:15, which might still have been faster than necessary, but it wasn't too bad.

After we made our way out of the town of Lake Geneva, we headed farter away from the lake and out into farm country. At Mile 7, the marathoners split from the half marathoners, and that thinned out the crowd quite a bit. The roads thru farm country were full of long rolling hills and beautiful, peaceful scenery. Crowd support was virtually non-existent. But for a marathon this small, that's to be expected. If you need tons of screaming fans, a small-town race is not a good choice. I was perfectly fine with the peacefulness of the farmlands. Every so often, we would pass an animal farm and gather a whiff of manure. But that was few and far between, so it really wasn't an issue. My pace had slowed to the 9:30 range, which was still fine with me.

Since this race was roughly the same size as the Wyoming one, I was expecting moments similar to that race where there were no other runners within sight of me. But that really didn't happen here. Apparently I just happened to be running at a popular-enough pace to keep other runners near me. I passed the halfway point at about 2:01:30, which was a little faster than I intended. I knew I wouldn't be able to maintain a pace anywhere close to this, especially with the steepest hills yet to come.

At Mile 14, we rejoined with the half marathoners at about their Mile 11 point. The courses ran together back to the lake where we also joined up with the Euro course again. Along the lakeshore in the town of Fontana, on the other side of the lake from Lake Geneva, was the Half Marathon finish line. Soon thereafter, we turned away from the Euro crowd and started up the steepest hill of the course, right after Mile 16. This hill slowed me way down, and I finished Mile 17 in 10:28. The course flattened out and eventually headed back down to shore level, but my pace was permanently slowed to the 10:00 range. After Mile 20, we started up another steep hill. This one wasn't quite as bad as the one after Mile 16, but I was running on fumes now, and clocked my slowest mile of the day at 11:38.

From about Mile 21.5 thru Mile 23, we were running on the shoulder of Wisconsin Route 50, which was a four-lane divided highway. It felt like we were running along the interstate. Worst yet, we were not on the side facing traffic, thus we were on the wrong side of the road. And there were cars and trucks speeding past us at 60 or 70 mph just a few feet to our left. It would have been very nice if there was a lane closed, or at least if there were some traffic cones set up to alert the motorists that there were pedestrians on the road. I was tired and very afraid that my legs might buckle and cause me to wobble into traffic. Thankfully that didn't happen, and after Mile 23 we turned back towards Lake Geneva. At Mile 25, we reached the lake and joined the Euro path back towards the center of town and the finish line. At this point, we were basically running thru the backyards of the houses on the lake. Apparently this is what the Euro runners did for their entire 21-mile jaunt.

I saw my family waiting for me as I approached the finish line, and I was thrilled that Jillian jumped onto the course and ran the last few feet with me over the finish line. She certainly seemed to get a kick out of doing that. My final time was 4:17:21, which wasn't great, but it was good enough for me.

At the post-race party/awards ceremony, I was very surprised to find that my time was good enough for 3rd place in the M40-44 Age Group! This is the first time I've ever won an Age Group award for a race longer than 5k. Of course, it helps that there were only 5 guys in the Age Group. But hey I'll take it. While I didn't exactly have a strong finish, I did pass a guy at about Mile 25.5 who was struggling much worse than me. I ended up finishing about 20 seconds ahead of him. It turns out that he was in my Age Group, so passing him is what allowed me to get the Age Group award.

All in all, I really enjoyed the race. Again, if crowd support is a necessity for someone, then this race wouldn't be for them. But other than the stretch on Route 50, it was a very attractive (albeit quite difficult) course. The views of the lake were outstanding, and I found the farmlands to be quite pleasant.

In addition to my dislike for Route 50, I have a couple other minor complaints about the course. First, the turns were marked only by small purple arrows placed at intersections where we had to turn. And many intersections did not have a volunteer stationed to direct the runners. Thus if someone weren't paying attention well enough, it would be quite possible to miss a turn and head off in the wrong direction. Out in the boondocks, a wrong turn like that could lead to huge problem. Since I typically always had at least one runner in sight ahead of me, I never really had a problem keeping up with and following that person. But I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that someone had run off course.

The other problem was with the mile markers. After the split from the half marathoners at Mile 7, we went a few miles without markers. Then the sign for Mile 11 appeared at about 10.5 according to my GPS. Each successive mile marker was similarly half a mile early. I thought maybe I had a GPS glitch, but at one point around Mile 16 I asked a couple other runners near me and they all had the same discrepancy. The miles continued to be misplaced similarly all the way thru Mile 25. I wondered if the course was measured too short. As it turns out, there was about a 1.75 mile distance between the Mile 25 sign and the finish line, so the overall course measured fine. This is the same situation I experienced in my third marathon, back in 2006 in Las Vegas. Back then, I didn't have a GPS and was gunning for a specific time, so I had nothing to pace myself against besides the mile markers. I was really upset at that race for the mistake. This time, the misplaced mile markers didn't anger me, but just left me confused as to how far I really had left to go. I believe these last couple problems are easily correctable, and they won't prevent me from giving the race an enthusiastic thumb's up.

My family and I enjoyed the rest of our stay in Wisconsin as well. I am very happy to have run the Lake Geneva Marathon as my Wisconsin marathon. Next up for me is the Missoula Montana Marathon on July 8th.

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.