Bob Mann: 2024 Eisenhower Marathon

Sat Apr 27, 2024

On Sat Apr 27 2024, I ran the Eisenhower Marathon in Abilene, Kansas. Abilene was the hometown of President Dwight David Eisenhower, thus the name of the race. I didn't plan it this way, but it turned out to be ten years and one day after my first marathon in Kansas. I thought that was an interesting coincidence.

I flew into Kansas City the day before the race and drove west to Abilene. Abilene is a small town and there really isn't much to it. The main attraction of the town is the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Being a U.S. history buff, I made it a point to visit the museum after picking up my race gear nearby. About the only other attraction of any note is "The World's Largest Belt Buckle", which to me seems like one of those random roadside attractions, like the World's Largest Ball Of Twine, or something like that. That took two minutes to see, and then my tourism was complete.

I did a brief day-before run around town, then had some dinner, then called it an early night.

The weather was fine on race morning. At least it started out that way. It was cool and cloudy, which is always preferable for running a marathon. But it was predicted to get stormy later. And humid. The humidity seems to be following me at my recent marathons. So this was destined to be another sweaty slog.

This was a small race in a small town. There were only 67 runners in the Full Marathon, with another 111 in the Half Marathon. There was also a 5k that started at the same time, and that had 78 runners. Altogether that's still a small crowd. We got started under nice conditions and all ran the same route. It wasn't long before the 5k runners reached their turnaround point and the crowd thinned out a bit. The Full and Half Marathoners continued on.

There isn't much to talk about as far as the scenery goes. We ran out of town down a country road. Then turned into a park and did a loop. Exited the park from the same spot and ran down another road up to a turn-around point. And then ran back, doing another lap inside the park before heading back to the start/finish area. And that gave us half of a marathon. The HM folks were done, while the full marathoners went off to do the same thing yet again. In other words, we covered everything twice, including four laps of the park. I don't mind doing multiple loops, so I'm not complaining. But as I said, it didn't yield a ton of interesting views.

Temperatures increased as the morning went on. Combined with the humidity, it made the run difficult at times. Occasionally the sun peeked out of the clouds, and those are the moments when the run became nearly unbearable. Thankfully the sunny times didn't last too long. Nonetheless, the race was an interesting combination of cool and cloudy, mixed with sunny, hot and humid.

I completed the first half in about 2:07, which is more or less normal for me. But the second half became a bit of a struggle. I suppose I could blame it on the humidity. I was drinking tons of water and Gatorade and I was still feeling dehydrated. By Mile 23 I was cooked, and I practically mailed in the last three miles. These last three were among the slowest miles I've ever recorded in a marathon. But strangely, I felt fine about it. I have long since given up the need for speed, so I was content to drag myself to the end. My final time was 4:42:43, which is slower than usual. But whatever. It's not my slowest. And I actually felt somewhat okay. I think taking it easy those last few miles helped me from feeling worse. If I busted my ass, I probably could have shaved off 3 or 4 minutes. But what good would that have done? I would rather run 4:42 and feel good than 4:38 and feel awful.

Very soon after I finished, the predicted storms materialized. It started to rain, and the wind really picked up. In fact, there were tornado warnings for the area. There were some tornados that caused plenty of damage in Oklahoma and far western Kansas. But to my knowledge, the Abilene area didn't have anything more than wind and rain.

I didn't find this out until a few hours later when I looked up the results on my phone, but it turns out that I won the M50-54 Age Group! That's because I came in first place out of two in my group. Yes, only two Men between 50-54. Even with only 67 runners, I would have expected more than that. I had come in the top three in my Age Group a couple of times before in small marathons, but I had never won before. Not that this is some major accomplishment for me -- it was more dumb luck than anything. But after 61 marathons, it's fun to have a new accomplishment such as that.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful - as I said, there wasn't much going on in Abilene. The next day I drove back to Kansas City. While in KC, I searched for good KC barbeque and settled on Slap's BBQ for lunch, basically just because it had a funny name.

And that's it. It was a nice weekend and a nice race. Nothing thrilling, but it got the job done. So that's 9 states completed twice, as I still maintain the goal of running them all again.

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.