On registration day I cleared my schedule that morning, ready for the 11am registration. Normally that day I go to a 10am boot camp class, but I wasn't comfortable leaving myself 10 minutes to chat with friends in the class and get home in time to register. I changed it to a slightly later time so I could be at my computer, ready to go. To work off some of the nervous energy, I got in a quick run. Before starting my run, I opened the page and after my run I started refreshing for the registration link to pop up. When it finally did, I entered in my login information (since I've run other races in the Marine Corps Event Series, I saved it awhile ago) and then just had to worry about entering in a little more information. I couldn't believe it when I received the confirmation email. I was basically in for my first marathon. The 17.75k sold out in less than 15 minutes.
The timing for the race was perfect. I could run the Rock n Roll DC Half Marathon, then just go right back into the taper. All I had to do was finish the 17.75k and I would have entry into my first marathon!
I ended up driving down the night before with one of the ladies who's in a local running group (and on my DC Ragnar Team) to stay the night at my parents since they live about half an hour away from Quantico. We decided to go down extra early since we didn't go to packet pickup. (I had time to go down earlier in the week, but since the race has a policy against proxy pick up, I couldn't get my friend's packet so I decided against it.)
I set out all of my clothes--Oiselle pocket joggers, my singlet, arm sleeves, balega enduro socks, spibelt, roadID and my Garmin.
I begrudgingly set my alarm for 4am, ready to be out the door around 4:30.
We arrived to the 234 commuter lot (for future reference, it's on the left coming off of 95) at around 5am, then hopped onto a shuttle to the race start almost immediately. Once we got there, we tracked down packet pickup to grab our bibs and shirts. At that point I was kicking myself at least a little bit--they ran out of unisex smalls, but I wasn't TOO heartbroken since the shirt wasn't that exciting.
Not usually a color I wear so into the future race shirt blanket pile it goes! ANYWAYS.
So now to kill time until the gun went off. We hung around one of the lights since it was warm and agreed on a meeting point after the race, then checked out the Tabernacle since it was bound to be warmer. By that point it was about 6am and I was starting to get anxious about the bathroom situation. The line for the indoor restroom was bad, but I didn't anticipate how bad the line for the portajohns would be. I ended up saying bye and good luck to my friend and headed outside. The lines were insane. At this point it was 6:15am, and I was in line until (not even an exaggeration) 6:58am. For a 7am gun time. By the time I came out of the portajohns, the line to the corrals had started to move. So I jumped in line and then headed towards the famous red and yellow Marine Corps Marathon arch.
The race itself was pretty uneventful. I'm not going to lie--it was pretty hilly and a mix of trail and pavement. (I was SO happy to see pavement!) To start, it's a lot of downhills on dirt trail with lots of rocks (about the size of lemons) that you had to be careful about stepping on. There wasn't much crowd support on the course but there were a few campers who were out on the course cheering on the runners. The water stops were every two miles and there was also at least one portajohn at each water stop. Towards the end of the race there was also gatorade available.
I'm moderately happy with my performance in the race considering how hilly it was, but I feel like I could've done better. Here are my splits from the race:
According to my Garmin, my average pace was 11:44. Which considering the hills isn't that bad. (I took this picture from the official course map.)
And yes, that hill at mile 4 is just as bad as it looks in the elevation chart. (My pace for the mile including that hill was my slowest at 13:32.)
After coming back home (and taking a nice long nap) I went ahead and signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon!
Did you run this race? What did you think of it? Did you sign up for the lottery for the Marine Corps Marathon??
Next race recap: The DC Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Miler!
Will be running this year. Are you running it this year as well? Looks like a tough one!!
ReplyDeleteI'm not running this year's race since I have the Richmond Half as a goal race. The 17.75k is tough, but if you're able to finish, you can finish the marathon. The TLDR version of my review is: It's a good mix of trail and road, the smell of bacon from the campers WILL taunt you, be careful of the "gravel" because they're actually rocks and remember when you go downhill, you have to go back up those hills too. The elevation is no joke, so when training for this one do lots of hill repeats!
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