Thursday, August 27, 2015
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Friday, February 24, 2012
Ft Yargo Turn By Turn
Mile 1.60 Cross over gravel road just past gravel road (50 yards) stay left (bypass "Rock Garden" on your right) outer loop
Mile 1.93 Asphalt road - turn right - cross over bridge - past "Mountain Bikers Parking Lot" back onto trail
Mile 2.50 Cross over wooden bridge
Mile 3.0 Cross over wooden bridge
Mile 3.4 Asphalt road - Wil-A-Way - 1st Water Station
Mile 3.6 Short climb after water station / cross over small wooden bridge / cross over fire road staying straight (outer loop)
Mile 4.5 Campground on Right (continue on outer loop) just giving you a visual
Mile 5.0 Cross over wooden bridge (stay right)
Mile 5.1 Asphalt road - cross over
Mile 6.2 Turn hard left - 2nd Water Station (continue on outer loop)
Mile 6.7 Cross over fire road
Mile 6.95 Cross over fire road - continue down hill
Mile 7.3 Bottom of dam - culvert and creek on left - dam on right - turn left back into woods (following the outer loop) then right up hill
Mile 7.4 Sign says option to go "Monster Mile" (hard left) or "Beginner" (straight) race will go towards "Monster Mile hard left back down hill towards "Gas Pipeline"
Mile 7.55 Turn hard right Bypass "Monster Mile" (it's on your left) and go straight up "Gas Pipeline"
Mile 7.75 Turn hard right back down towards dam (on fire road)
Mile 7.85 Turn left at sign that says "Bikers Yield To Hikers" (not hard left) Soft Left (one in the middle) Not Over The Dam - Once on this section "Lake" will be on your right for about 1 mile (flat and fast section - most of it - one good hill in there)
Mile 8.9 Turn hard left back onto gas pipeline uphill
Mile 9.15 Turn hard right back onto the "Outer Loop" (stay right - you will see other end of "monster mile" on left) route is gradually downhill until mile 9.4 (then it's a steep downhill to a wooden bridge)
Mile 9.4 Steep short downhill cross wooden bridge then steep short uphill - turn hard left at top of short steep hill - (stay on outer loop)
Mile 10.0 Trail will merge onto "Gas Pipeline" stay straight - 3rd Water Station (continue straight and trail will merge with gas pipeline and gradually move to the right - keeping lake on your right - back into woods)
Mile 10.45 Cross over "Steel Bridge"
Mile 10.70 Continue straight up power lines and slightly terraced hill
Mile11.50 Cross over wooden bridge and stay left bypass "Root Garden" (stay on outer loop)
Mile 11.65 Primitive Camping Area will be on your right (stay left back into woods - outer loop)
Mile 12.25 Asphalt road (Entrance "B" Road) - cross over - continue straight over "Power lines" on outer loop
Mile 13.1 Finish at Picnic Shelter #5 (on your right) 21K Runners or begin 2nd loop 42K Runners (42K Runners same loop twice)
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Race 7 13.1 Atlanta
Atlanta, GA 10/2/2011
This race was just too close to home to not do, heck it was closer to home than work! The 13.1 Marathon series races, from this experience, are highly organized. Sign up, website, multiple emails from them, track the runner capabilities, packet pick up, great technical shirt, some really good coupons, great race day logistics, really nice medal, everything, was very easy and very organized. Thumbs up to them.
As this is Atlanta, the course is filled with rolling hills – none too bad though, but constant. My approach was the same as Asheville, walk uphill, walk fast/jog downhill, being mindful of heart rate maxing out in the mid/high 140s.
It was quite cold, in the low 40s, for the beginning of the race. According to weather.com it would be in the high 40s by the time I finished. I do love this cooler weather!
Through the miles they provided plenty of water/Powerade, cookies after the midpoint at a few stations, and orange quarters at one station. Plenty of porta potties along the way too.
About 2700 people showed up for this 13.1/5k road race, with about 2400 doing the half. Once again, except for the first mile, it was never crowded. 2:44:49 was my chip time.
There was plenty of crowd support.
The end of race food was: bananas, bagels, small bags of cookies, small bags of pretzels, water, Powerade, vitamin water, chocolate milk, and more that I did not see. There was plenty left for me and the rest of the back of the packers Their set up for this was highly organized – after crossing the finish line, they give you your medal and all of this stuff is available for you at that time in a temporary fenced area – once you leave that fenced area they don’t let you back in (saw some exceptions to this rule, but it prevented people coming back and hoarding). But this pretty much made sure there was plenty available for all finishers, regardless of when you finish. I like this approach.
Race 8 Soldier Marathon
November 12, 2011 (my first marathon), Columbus, GA
I was deeply humbled to have been given the opportunity to participate in Soldier Marathon on Veteran’s Day weekend. Reading the stories of the men and women (at the National Infantry Museum) who have made the ultimate sacrifice so I can enjoy the freedom that I do was quite emotional. The debt of gratitude, a debt that cannot be repaid, became very clear while taking in all the National Infantry Museum had to offer. Also, I was overwhelmingly impressed with the professionalism, courtesy, respect, and encouragement shown to us from all of the soldiers who helped with the race.
This was so much more than a race.
The clock read 3:42 AM – why I ever thought I needed to set alarms to get up I’ll never know. Luckily the Days Inn had a coffee maker in the room – coffee brewing, making a peanut butter on raisin bagel – having a rerun of NCIS or watching the weather channel just didn’t seem to fit… So I downloaded the theme from Rocky I & II and Chariots of Fire to my iPad – a race day medley! This will be part of the routine from now on 
Arrived at the National Infantry Museum with plenty of time. This was nice as it was heated (had to scrape ice of the windshield that morning). The start of this race was unique – the firing of a canon - we were off.
My race strategy was to jog 2 minutes and walk 3 minutes for the first half and then see what made sense at that point. The first part of the race was the best – obviously having ‘fresh’ legs helped but also this part of the race was on Fort Benning and I really like running on post.
The next 15 miles of the race are pretty much a blur. I do not remember much about them. I think at about the half way point I switched to walking only (maybe a few jogs– but not much).
Around mile 20 something (22, 23, 24?) met up with Marsha (from the Marathon Walking site forum). This was good as she provided inspiration and pace. A mile or so after that we met up with another woman who was struggling (and verbally questioning why she was even doing this…). She was asking me questions… (I had no answers for her, I was still fighting my own internal battle) but I did let her know that this was Marsha’s 99th time doing this. This was very cool to observe, I could ‘see’ inspiration happening. Marsha became her inspiration for the rest of the race.
I finished with a time just under 6 hours. My watch had 5:54 but I’ll have to wait and see when they post the results to see my official time.
There were many people near the finish line cheering. This was nice. Crossing over the finish line I was greeted and congratulated by 15, 20, 25? soldiers. Much appreciated!!!
Much of the post race food was gone by this time – no biggie – they still had water, powerade, Coca Cola, cookies,…
The drive home (~120 miles) was anticlimactic and included a few stops just to get out, stretch, and get some food. Once home after a shower and a nap had pizza and a couple of beers – seemed to taste much better than usual
Later that evening, walking was quite difficult and I’m sure I looked extremely odd to anyone observing this. This did cause me to google ‘aches after marathon’ which had a link to a youtube video of a girl ‘trying’ to walk a few hours post marathon – this made me feel better because it looked exactly like how was walking.
Race 9 Atlanta Half Marathon
Atlanta, GA 11/24/2011
The day before the race:
I volunteered to hand out shirts for this race. This is a big race with ~14000 people signed up – most for the half marathon, but also a 5k, and some kids runs too; think they said they needed around 1200 volunteers – I had the 2:00-6:00 PM shift and was assigned to MENS XL & XXL tables. As it turned out, these were pretty good tables to be assigned to because there was a big snafu with the order (either they messed up the order or the vendor did not ship the right things???). They ran out of MENS small & medium and WOMENS medium, large. These ran out with thousands of more people yet to show up. It was very interesting watching how people reacted to this news: it ranged from folks taking it in stride to folks reacting in a way that would make you think this was pretty near to the end of the world! Granted, if you put down medium on the form, you expect to have a medium when you pick it up. A few of them actually chewed my butt out basically just because I was behind a table with shirts on it – but, but I’m just a volunteer!!! They did offer to take name & address and send at later time – but some people even complained about that.
As this was a four hour shift, you get to know the folks you are volunteering with a little bit. The guy I that was assigned to these tables with was a soft spoken 82 year old man. He was a nice guy, very easy going and was very good with our frustrated ‘customers’. His name – Clarence Hartley. As it turns out, Runners World had an article on him in their 3/30/2011 issue
It was really great getting to meet and talk with him for those few hours.
The day of the race:
Up at a ridiculous hour, it was 3 something… the usual, coffee, peanut butter on a bagel, listen to race day medley (Rocky themes, Chariots of Fire,…). Although the race started at 7:30 AM ( my corral was slated to start at 7:50), I needed to be down there at 5:30 – I volunteered to help out with Corral E ( I was in Corral E for the race – that last Corral) - the website said you could volunteer for this job if you were running, so I did. Once again, I learned a lot. For instance, there appears to be this whole sub culture of volunteers (who are not runners/walkers). I was not aware of this – heck I‘d never even thought about it. There were 8-10 volunteers for Corral E and a Crew Leader/Coordinator. Most of them knew each other already from all of these other races that they volunteered for. One woman was telling me, this was her 8th race this year, has one more in December, a Jingle Jog, and then will take off until March. Wow! I was just not aware of this – but they talked about races the same way runners/walkers would except they worked the races. Oh yeah, corralling people is a lot harder than it looks :) I ran into some people (my life is over because you are out of medium shirts type from the day before) that had such an attitude. They had no appreciation that it actually takes some thought, process, and procedure to move thousands of people to the starting line in an organized manner. And they did not hesitate to take it out on me and let me know how stupid this was… Wow!
The race…
Last year this was the first race I did after making the decision to get off the couch and do something for fitness & health – so it is a special race.
Although I am beginning to prefer smaller (fewer people) races & trail races, it won’t surprise me to continue doing this race just because. The race went all over downtown Atlanta, exactly the same route it did last year. Temperature was in the 40s, no wind, no clouds – perfect! I felt good the entire race, stayed in the heart rate range that I wanted to, and really enjoyed the entire race. They gave out Jelly Belly Sports Beans at mile 8, and plenty of water, Powerade, porta-potties every 2 miles. With so many people, was never alone for the entire 13.1 miles. There were a lot of people watching the race. I saw one sign that stood out in my mind it said “Worse Parade Ever”. Good one.
Time was 2:43:28. They had bagels, bananas, pretzels, water, Powerade, at the end – standard stuff.
The best part, as plenty of calories were burned, this made way for many Thanksgiving Day calories to be consumed! :)
Race 10 Victoria Bryant Trail 10K
Royston, GA 12/03/2011
On this day I
did a trail 10K. It was at Victoria
Bryant State Park in Royston Georgia. It
was put on by a group that does a series of trail races and they always
advertise on their website “Walkers are encouraged to participate – need
maintain a 16 minute mile pace for an official time”, so I signed up.
I don’t have
much desire to do these short races, but I had just recently bought a new pair
of trail running shoes (Nike Air Pegasus +28 Trail) and wanted some good trail
time to try them out. I liked the shoes
and did notice quite a difference with traction.
I really do
enjoy trail events; it’s a different type of a challenge. The only thing I dislike about this race was
the distance. I remember at mile 3 being
bummed out because it was half over already.
RD did a video of the trail prior to race on put in on youtube:
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