Race Recap: Des Moines Half Marathon

Des Moines Half Marathon Race Report

When: Sunday, October 16, 2016

Where: Des Moines, IA

Weather: 60s and foggy

Division: Open

I have done the Des Moines races before, but it had been a while. I was eager to see if they had fixed the few issues that I had with the race back in 2010/2011. The expo was good, easy in/out, and organized. The hardest part is finding parking, which you basically have to park on the street (metered) or pay $8 for the garage (no thanks). I managed to find street parking two blocks away, so crisis averted! Swag bags are awesome. I did the 5 miler on Saturday morning and that came with a free fleece blanket, which is unique (not just another boring t-shirt), plus the 5 miler finishers got very nice medals. The half bag contained a shirt which is very thin (probably see-through when wet, not kidding ya) but the sleeves are long enough even for gangly me. Picked up a cowbell and some candy at the booths around the expo.

On Sunday morning I walked from my very conveniently located hotel to the start area two blocks away. The start/finish area is quite spread out but it is decently organized, at least if you have checked a map beforehand. I was able to easily consult my map and find the bag drop and port-a-johns. Race started on time and it took me about 6 minutes to cross the starting mat. Or what I thought was the starting mat. Turns out the 5K start mats are INSIDE the starting chute, so I crossed starting mats twice and started my watch at the wrong ones. Mental note: delete 54 seconds from my race time to accommodate this error. It was really poorly marked so I only take partial credit for this boner.

The race course was new this year and avoided an area that traumatized me in 2010 (I DNF'd because I had to drop out...in the area that was now omitted from the race). I felt great. Mile 3 was really long, though, by about 1/4 mile (confirmed by others with GPS watches), and they didn't really even it out later on, so I think the course in general was a bit long. Another bad thing going on was the extreme humidity. It was very foggy for the first hour of this race. "Fog" = 100% humidity, so it was brutal, especially since temps were in the 60s. 

One thing that was great about this race: volunteers and bike support. The bike support was ridiculously on fleek. These people were all over me and I loved it. If you needed just about anything, they either had it on them or were willing to pedal their butts off to get it. The volunteers were enthusiastic. But I was sad to see that they hadn't improved the course markings since 2010. There were a LOT of intersections where, if I hadn't been in a stream of racers, I would have had no idea where to go. How hard is it to put up signs or spray-paint the street? Great course, terrible markings.

Also terrible: the people I was around. Usually the back of the pack is really nice and friendly, since we clearly don't take ourselves too seriously. Not today. I was actually kind of amused by how rude a lot of my fellow slowbies were. "Iowa Nice," my ass. It got to the point where I would try to start conversations and just expect them to ignore me or stare at me like I had three heads. I didn't let it discourage me, though, and by the time I hit mile 9 I had left a lot of those Grumpy Guses in the dust. I mean, geez, folks, eat a Snickers or something, you get a little cranky when you're tired. After 9 miles, the slightly faster folks I was near were much more pleasant. 

At this point in the race, there were a lot more spectators, since we were approaching downtown again. The signs were amazing. Lots of hate for Donald Trump, which was a joy to see. "Run like Trump's trying to grab your [picture of a cat]." "Run like Trump's chasing you." (I didn't see any anti-Hillary signs, but I did laugh pretty hard at a "HilLIARy for 2016 PRISON" billboard on the highway back home.) Also there was a water stop staffed by Air National Guardsmen in uniform, which definitely makes you think twice about bitching about the...

...GIANT HILL! Yes, this course, already fairly hilly, took it to a new level (literally) with a giant hill at mile 10! Keep in mind, this is mile 23 of the full marathon, too. I smiled when I saw it. I love walking up hills, especially when I am tired. Hear me out. Your glutes are big. Your glutes are underutilized much of the time. They had plenty of gas in the tank (that was not a fart joke, although you are welcome to make one). My motto is "push with the tush," which apparently a lot of other folks don't know about because I passed a TON of struggling folks on the walk up the hill. The incline was about 1 mile long and fairly steep at parts. It felt amazing. I was actually kind of dreading the inevitable...

...GIANT DOWNHILL! Shit. Going down steep hills is fun during a 5K, but once you've hit double-digit miles it is a nightmare. I basically limped down the hill and tried to keep my hip flexors from trying so hard to brake me, which is a literal exercise in futility when you are a walker instead of a runner. Ironically, it would have hurt much less if I'd jogged down the hill, but who knows how my shins would have taken that, so walking it was. That downhill took a long time but when it was over I was so happy. 

After the GIANT DOWNHILL we had only about a mile to the finish, which went quickly and easily. Not a lot of "faffing about," as Len would say on Dancing With the Stars. We headed straight back for the finish line. Got a GORGEOUS finisher medal (it has blue stained glass in it, folks) and good food (delicious sugar cookie and a BBQ pork slider? YES GAWD). Bag retrieval was quick and I managed to make it back to my hotel, stretch, shower, and leave right in time for my noon checkout.

Good: 

-course. Great elevation changes, nice sights.

-volunteers. Friendly and eager to help.

-entertainment. Lots of local musicians and a good number of boomboxes. 

-food. Baked Cheetos? Chocolate milk? Prepackaged turkey sandwiches? Yogurt? Snack boxes with nachos in them? And it's not even my birthday!

-food on the course. Those bike folks had everything. Pretzels, gummi bears, Twizzlers, the list goes on.

-photographers are plentiful and in good areas (like when there's cool stuff in the background, like bridges).
-medal is AMAZING. Perhaps the best I've ever gotten. It has stained glass in it, FFS.

Bad:

-kind of disorganized for such a major race. Needed course markings and a more intuitive start/finish area layout. I shouldn't need a map to have a clue where bag check is.

-unfriendly participants. Seriously, WTF? I've never encountered so much stank during a race before!
-course was clearly too long. Was a new course, so who knows. Must fix for next time!

Race Grade: B. What is good is very, very good. What is bad is...kind of unforgivable? A badly marked course makes me unlikely to recommend it for potentially slow walkers, since if you lose the pack you're screwed. I had that problem in 2010 and it contributed to my DNF.

Looooooooooong Walks

There is a point at which the length of your long workouts in marathon training will become somewhat ridiculous. For me, that point is 18 miles, which takes me about 4 hours. Four hours is long enough to watch ANY Oscar-winning film with time to spare. It is long enough to start at a reasonably early morning hour and finish in the damn afternoon, making you switch your greetings from "morning" to "hi." It is a long. Time.

You might be asking yourself, "how am I supposed to get motivated to do such a ridiculous thing?" The answer: stop overthinking it. Honestly, "stop thinking so much" is the cornerstone of my personal training sessions. I tell all my clients to stop thinking so much and just DO IT. This is a real problem with intellectual types. There is a reason "dumb jock" is a stereotype. We have no time for crazy behaviors such as thinking! We are too busy doing! Busy for four hours!

This is not to say that you should not be prepared. Oh yes, you must be prepared. And you must be aware while you are out there. Prepare by packing up and bringing what you need. Prepare by using your Vaseline and getting your clothes on point and all the other tips I've shared before. Be aware on your chosen route so that you do not get murdered and/or die.

Here is what I do for my 18-mile workouts. I do pretty much the same thing I do for 14- and 16-miles. I bring 24 oz of Powerade or Gatorade, which I water down along the way when I stop at drinking fountains. I will probably be fine with my watered-down Powerade all the way through my training (I will max out at 22 miles since this ain't my first rodeo...if it was, 20 miles would do just fine). I bring nothing else. You may want to bring chewable Pepto, since this is the one thing I WOULD bring if I had pockets, since I inevitably feel like dry-heaving somewhere around mile 15.

At some point during your workout, you may feel like you are simply staggering along, your hips tightened up by some invisible bastard with a wrench, staring down the barrel of a few more miles of misery. Keep in mind that THIS IS THE POINT. The more workouts you have where you end up with tight hips and low back pain that makes you feel like you have added decades to your age, the stronger you will be next week. Seriously. This is training. You are literally training your body to handle this. If your body cannot handle it this week...great! That is the whole, entire point of this otherwise pointless endeavor! As long as you complete the miles, there is no such thing as a bad long workout. Let me repeat in all caps: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BAD LONG WORKOUT. The name of the game is putting miles on your feet. Even if the whole thing falls apart, so what? Did you really think you'd get faster every single week? That's not possible. We walkers all have a terminal velocity.

Some weeks will go badly, meaning you will be in pain, you will be two hours in and looking ahead to another two hours and thinking "where the hell am I gonna find this?" Here's a secret, gang. This is the part of the long workout that is less obvious. The mental training. You need to trust your body. Stop thinking. Start doing. Your legs can carry you because you have trained them to. Your brain can go as long as your legs can. Think positive thoughts. If your workout is a disaster, tell yourself "dang, I am going to be so much stronger next week because of this." If your workout is amazing, revel in it, because everything has come together. Your hard work, over the course of four hours every weekend, will reap whatever you sow. So sow your asses off! FOUR HOURS.