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Comments: This race is a lot of fun. The entire course is lined with spectators and entertainment. Lots of different musical groups and DJ's and dancers. There were Irish dancers, belly dancers, bluegrass groups, cover bands, high school kid garage bands, bag pipe players, local radio stations blaring music, 2 person acoustic groups, whatever you can think of. We started out listening to Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline blaring from a loud speaker, don't know if it was a DJ or what. The sea of runners (and I haven't even mentioned that for the first few miles you are shoulder to shoulder with them) were all singing Sweet Caroline together. It was super fun(ny). :) Kelly and I decided that we kind of liked running with a large crowd because it forced us to start out slowly. Which was a good thing because she hadn't run more than 5 or 6 miles in years probably, and with the excitement of everything we probably would have started out all gangbusters and then died at the end. I never felt held back at all, though. She is a competitive person and historically a strong runner, so she held her own and I was purely there for the experience. Although, I couldn't help myself. When I saw the mile 7 marker, I was feeling great and asked her if she had anything "left" in the tank. We picked up the pace until we saw the 8 mile marker and then realized maybe we'd picked up the pace too soon. I slowed down to stay with her, but then she convinced me to go ahead (so I did). I ran as good of a pace as I could and finished strong, but only about 1:20 in front of her. I was still held up several times by the crowd of runners. At mile 9 I found myself still negotiating between runners. What would you do differently?: Nothing. I had fun.  Post race
Warm down: After I dropped off my timing chip I found Kelly pretty easily. We decided to head back to our car to get a jacket (she was cold) and I wanted to drop off my hydration belt and change shoes. This was a bit of a long walk as we didn't really know where we parked in relation to the finish line. By the time we got back the party was going strong. It reminded me of a huge outdoor concert because of the crowds, the large amount of beer flowing (for free) and the live band. We didn't stay too long for the festivities. We met up with a friend of ours who ended up feeling very ill and kind of limped off eventually with her husband. Then we discovered we'd waited too long to get our goody bag and lunch. By this time I was way tired and ready to go home to bed. What limited your ability to perform faster: Nothing. Huge crowds to navigate in and out of, but we didn't care. Event comments: The only reason I don't give this race a rating of 5 is because they ran out of race goody bags and they ran out of lunches for the racers. We simply waited too long to go and get these things by walking to our car first. The race is a lot of fun, though. I'd do it again for sure, and just be sure I go straight to the lines to get the lunch and bag first. Last updated: 2009-07-02 12:00 AM
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United States
Boilermaker 15K Road Race
70F / 21C
Sunny
Overall Rank = 5416/10586
Age Group = 30-34
Age Group Rank = 233/633
I didn't go to bed until about 11:30 at night and I set my clock for 3:45 in the morning. And then I could NOT fall asleep. I think I only really slept for an hour. I was afraid I wouldn't wake up in time. And in that hour I had the most bizarre dream about missing the race and not being able to get there on time and trying to take a plane there that ended up crashing, but I was trying to hold the nose of the plane up so we wouldn't crash too hard.... See? Really strange. And that's only a fraction of it.
Kelly got to my house at around 4 and after one more stop back at her house and a stop for gas, we were off for the 2 hour drive. She talks non-stop so the drive seemed to go quickly. We stopped at a McD's off the interstate for the bathroom, but I didn't have any "luck", if you know what I mean... Then we got into Utica and I was supposed to navigate, but I missed the street sign I was looking for and we went a bit out of our way before we decided to turn around and try again.
We eventually found a spot to park at about 6:30 and then followed the crowds to the shuttle bus stop. I've never seen a line as long as this. It was at least a 1/4 mile long. We had some anxiety about getting our race #'s in time because the web site said to pick-up between 6 and 7, and it was 6:45 and we were still inching our way up the line. A guy in front of us, who said he'd done the race for 11 years, eased our worries though, and said they wouldn't close it up on us, which was true. The bus line went fairly quickly considering - only about 15-20 minutes. It was a good drive over, where they just dropped us off somewhere and we just kept following the crowds until we hit the tent for our # and timing chip. Then we hit the line for the porta-potties. That was another almost 30 minute wait. I had some "success" this time! After the potty, we just stood in a massive crowd and listened to the national anthem, then something I've never heard before at a race like this - an invocation/prayer from a Catholic priest. Eventually the race began, then we waited 5 minutes before we even moved, then walked slowly for 5 minutes before we even got to the starting line. Whew.