Race Recap: Des Moines Half Marathon

Des Moines Half Marathon 10/20/19 Des Moines, IA

Weather: 45 degrees, sunny
Terrain: roads and paved recreation trails

Distance: 13.1 miles
Garmin Data: 13.16 miles, 250.7 feet elevation gain

I hadn't done this race since 2017, but I consider myself something of an expert on the Des Moines Marathon weekend. I DNF'd the full marathon in 2010 (the only DNF of my entire race career - made it to mile 18 2/3 before giving up). My reason for that DNF was, honestly, the poor logistics of the race itself, which would be a blog post in and of itself. Perhaps I'll write it someday.  But I came back and did the Des Moines Half Marathon the following year (for free - thanks, Race Director, for trying to make it right), then again in 2016 and 2017. Every year I say this race does some things very well, and some things unforgivably badly. This year was no exception!

Let me preface this recap with the following updates: 1) I found out the day before the race that my anemia was cured! My iron and hemoglobin numbers were finally back to normal. 2) On the Wednesday before the race, I mildly sprained my ankle on a hike, and spent the intervening days icing religiously. The ankle felt okay in most of my range of motion (and fine in my ambulatory ROM), so I planned to do the race but walk slower if I needed to. My foolhardy goal was still "under 3 hours."

Packet pickup was quite smooth. New this year is a jacket instead of a quarter-zip long sleeve. I actually do not like this jacket. It is clearly made for men, with a very boxy cut and thick, unpleasant fabric. My husband looks better in my jacket than I do. As a woman who was a fan of the quarter-zips at this race in previous years, it was quite disappointing. The swag bag was better, though, with more free samples and a little rubber bracelet for "streakers" of sorts (I got a "3-time finisher" one). Parking the next morning for the race was a bit of a nightmare and I ended up on level 6 of a parking garage. This wouldn't be fun later.

The start area was easier to navigate than in 2017, and I checked my bag and found my friend Amber. Started the race at a brisk walk, as we do in our long walk training together all the time. We did notice, though, that downtown smelled like a zoo. Literally. It reeked like apes or birds or something. Since downtown Des Moines takes up about 5 total miles of the course, this was disconcerting. It took about 2.5 miles to hit the first aid station, to discover that they'd totally run out of water and Gatorade. ALREADY. It was a chilly morning so there was no way the demand was surprisingly high for water. Huge ball dropped. Thank goodness I brought my own bottle of Gatorade Zero because I already knew depending on Des Moines Marathon aid stations is a fool's errand. Shortly after that empty water stop we reached the first big downhill section, where I told Amber I was gonna try jogging. Turned out my ankle felt totally fine, and my cardio felt amazing, so I jogged at least half of the remainder of the course.

AYYYYYYYY

The other aid stations were fully stocked, and because the marathon joins with the half at around their mile 18, we got all those sweet "end of a marathon" aid station perks like gels and fruit. Volunteers were plentiful and enthusiastic. The course itself was marked better than I'd ever seen it before. Nobody yelled at me to "run, not walk" (yes, I'm still angry about that from 2017!). There appeared to be more photographers than usual, even. Again, this race gets a lot right, and it helped that my cardio was feeling quite easy breezy.

This is one long-ass bridge.

I set little goals for myself to avoid going too slow but I didn't want to push the pace too hard on my ankle. I made it a goal to jog the entire Grey's Lake bridge. I made goals to jog to the next mile marker or aid station. I felt surprisingly good considering I was running on an ankle sprain. I could have run another 5 miles easily. When I crossed the finish in 2:49, it felt pretty emotional. Seven weeks ago I was in the hospital for acute blood loss anemia, and now I was back to normal and felt fit and strong. The crowd was great and I pretended the cheers were for me, even though they were obviously for the fast marathoners finishing at the same time.

Shower me with praise, good people!

After the race I retrieved my bag and saw that the line for food was RIDICULOUS. I mean 20 minutes just to get into the food area. The line seemed completely insane and senseless until I saw that there was a station where they were cooking pancakes to order. What the actual F*** is the POINT of that?! Des Moines, please, don't try to be cute. Just let people grab chocolate milk and cookies and GTFO of there. Don't make me wait in line for half an hour because SOME people want made-to-order pancakes. Put that bullshit in a different area. As it stands, the only thing I left with was the bottle of water they handed me by the medals. That long line was required for anyone who needed sports drink, carbs, anything. HUGE mistake, Des Moines. And with that big boner, I must rank this race in last place of the Des Moines Half Marathons that I've done. I've never seen that long of a line for food at any race I've ever done, and I couldn't understand how they could have screwed this up randomly when it's gone smoothly before.

I was one hungry hungry hippo.

Pros:

-Medal. Des Moines ALWAYS has top-notch medals.
-Volunteers. Very stellar this year.
-Port-a-potty situation was much improved over previous years.

Cons:

-Jacket. Go back to the quarter-zips. Or get a better jacket.
-Food line. This was absolutely terrible. It's practically a liability issue.
-Water stop layout. The first aid station should be a mile earlier, and it should not run out of stuff.
-Stench. WTF was up with the stench?

Race Grade: C-. Meh. Again, this race gets some things great and some things horribly, terribly wrong. This year just had more wrong than right.