Bob Mann: 2024 Green Bay Marathon

Sun May 19, 2024

On Sun May 19 2024, I ran the Green Bay Marathon in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This was only 3 weeks after my last marathon in Kansas. I don't normally run marathons this close together. Many 50 Staters run them every weekend, often doing two on a single weekend. But I tend to prefer spacing them out more, with a couple of months in between. The last time I attempted two within a month, the second one was the 2019 Boston Marathon, which is still my Personal Worst. Yes, I think I was somewhat ill that day. But I felt awful enough that day to make me not want to repeat that feeling.

So why did I choose to run this race? Well, I had decided that I wanted my second Wisconsin marathon to be this one in Green Bay. I had never been to Green Bay and had never seen Lambeau Field (home of the Green Bay Packers). This race course ran onto the turf at Lambeau, which I thought would be really cool to experience. So I figured that some year sooner or later, I would get around to running this race. But I found out that this race was to be discontinued after this year! At the time I found out, I had already registered for the Kansas race. So it appeared that if I wanted to run in Green Bay, my only choice was to book it for this year and run these races 3 weeks apart. Throw in the one I did in South Carolina in March, and it made 3 marathons in 12 weeks.

I decided that I wanted to do this race, and if I ended up doing poorly, so be it. I figured I'd rather run it and do poorly than to miss out. So off to Wisconsin I went.

On Saturday, I flew into Chicago and rented a car. On the way up north into Wisconsin, I took a slight detour to the town of Lake Geneva WI. Not only was this the site of my first Wisconsin marathon 12 years prior, but it was the town in which my late father was born and raised. I stopped in at the Lake Geneva Museum, which displayed the history of the town. It had an exhibit that represented the drug store that was owned more than 100 years ago by my great-grandfather, Robert Bruce Arnold, who I was named after. That was fun to see.

After spending some time in Lake Geneva, I continued on north up to Green Bay. I had a hotel room right near Lambeau Field. The packet pickup was right nearby, and the start and finish lines of the race were right here as well. It was a very convenient location.

The weather on race day was basically the opposite of the last few marathons that I had done. The previous 3 marathons, dating to last December, were all cloudy and extremely humid. The humidity was very low in Green Bay, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. And getting into the second half of May, the sun can get fairly strong as the morning goes on. So once again, the conditions weren't great for a race, but not totally awful either.

This race was a bit larger than the last one I did, but it still wasn't huge. There were about 700 runners in the Full Marathon, starting at 7:00am. Another 1700 runners participated in the Half Marathon, but that started an hour later. As the race began, we started running around the streets of Green Bay.

It was sunny from the get-go. Between the sun and the fact that I was on only 3 weeks rest, I expected a slow race. I tried to set a slow pace from the start. I clocked my second mile in 9:08, which is faster than I intended to be. But I soon settled into a more reasonable pace.

The normal marathon strategy is to run at an even pace throughout. But not for me. My typical plan is to get slower as the race progresses, but to slow down at an even pace. In other words (in honor of my daughter, who is taking AP Physics this year), I try to run with a constant deceleration, not a constant velocity. 😀 And looking at my splits, it seems like I did a fairly good job of it in this race, at least until the last couple of miles. Mile 3 was around 9:30, Mile 8 was around 10:00, Mile 13 was around 10:30, Mile 17 was around 11:00, Mile 20 was around 11:30, and Mile 22 was around 12:00. By Mile 23 I was totally cooked, and I did a heck of a lot of walking over the last couple of miles. The last two miles each took about 14 minutes, which makes them two of the slowest miles I have ever recorded in a marathon. But that's okay. I had done well enough to avoid a Personal Worst by about 15 minutes. It certainly wasn't a fantastic athletic achievement, but it was good enough to get the job done.

The highlight of the race was near the end. Just after Mile 25, we entered Lambeau Field and ran a full lap around the field. It was definitely an awesome experience to be on the field where so many famous plays in NFL history happened over the decades. The weather in mid May was not very reminiscent of the "frozen tundra" of football fame. But it was still a thrill to run on the famous turf.

Perhaps it was because the lap on Lambeau cast such a large shadow over everything else. Or perhaps it's because I was dehydrated and wasn't thinking clearly for much of the race. But there really wasn't much else from the race that stood out to me. We ran through a lot of residential neighborhoods. We also crossed the Fox River a couple of times, with the hilliest parts of the race occurring on the on- and off-ramps to the bridge that spanned the river. A few miles near the end were on a trail along the river, which was nice. But for the most part, the scenery was rather non-descript.

The finish line was not far from Lambeau Field, so it wasn't long after leaving the stadium that we were done. My final time of 4:48 is nothing spectacular. But I will happily take it. I had been fearing that it could have been much worse.

As I said, this race was sunny and dry, whereas the previous ones had been cloudy and humid. I'm not sure which I prefer. Neither conditions are great. But at least none of the races were both sunny and humid. I'd love to get a cool, cloudy and dry day. But you can't choose the weather. I will continue to try and make the best of the conditions that are handed to me.

After three races in relatively rapid succession, I will now take some time off. Not too much, of course. But I don't think I'll be running another marathon until the Fall. At least I'll avoid the hot, humid Summer months.

Anyway, I enjoyed my race in Green Bay. I had been hearing rumors that the race folks are trying to get another sponsor to take over the race for future years, so maybe this wasn't the final Green Bay Marathon after all. But nonetheless, I'm happy that I got to run it, and I seem to have suffered no ill effects from planning this one at the last minute. This was my 62nd marathon overall, and Wisconsin is the 10th state that I've done for the second time. Nothing to complain about there.

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.