Towpath Trail 1/2 Marathon

4-9-17 – Cleveland, OH

As I move thru 2017 I keep reminding myself that it is supposed to be a big year for me; with the turning 40 and all.  I need to keep proving to myself that 40 is the new 30…or something like that.  That sounded really great back in January as I had two excellent travel adventures in front of me.  Once booked all I had to do was hang on for the ride.  But unfortunately, vacation time is scarce and free time seems to be equally scarce these days, so it has been harder to come up with things to do that prove my not feeling like 40 or at least prove that I can do what I did at 30 now that I’m 40.

In a moment of perhaps misjudged exuberance for my new year as a 30.. I mean 40 year old; I decided to run a ½ marathon.  Why not?  I’ve done a couple before in my life.  I’ve knocked down 7 miles on a whim and I actually do run with some regularity.  How hard can this be?  It’s not like I’m going to win.  I just need to make it. 

I started increasing my miles little by little on the sly, knowing that this type of training commitment would go over poorly with our already ever busy schedule.  At some point it was like being pregnant.  I just couldn’t hide it any longer.  So I put my maternity pants on and signed up for the Towpath Trail Half Marathon to show my commitment.  I also figured it was on the “towpath” as it is know in Northern Ohio.  This is a dirt path, but it is the path the mules/donkeys/general pack animals used to use to pull canal boats on the Erie Canal back in the day.  In other words it was basically as flat as it could get, but it was on a “trail” so it would be extra badass. 

It turns out training for a ½ marathon, or really doing anything that takes any real amount of time more than 20 min at a time, with two little kids is challenging.  There really isn’t any extra time to be had, so you end up doing it before they wake up.  In my case that is at 4:45 in the morning.  E was gracious and as my weekend long runs got longer she helped work them into the day.  Unlike my past ½ marathon traing where I’d come home from a 10, 11 or 12 miler and crash for the day complaining about being tired; this time I mostly came home and immediately began kid time for the rest of the day.  There is no sympathy for being self-imposed tired with kids or wives who have been dealing with kids.   There is also the kid no sleep, wake up for no reason in the middle of the night factor I had to work into my training.  The already short nights could be cut short to the point of not being able to get enough sleep to run and then go to work all day, so I would postpone my run until a later date.  All factors that had not been a part of previous attempts. 

I made it!  Time for obligatory post race beer.

Somehow I made it thru the training, and even ran the race.  The term race being used pretty loosely.  All but a select few were really there to collect our “participant” medals.  Not to downplay the accomplishment, that’s the nature of these “races” but for the vast majority of us it is more about completing it rather than actually winning it.  Which I did in good time I might add.  1:47…only 6 minutes longer than my ½ marathon in Oakland this same month 6 years ago.  In that run I had trained hard up to 6 days a week at 5000 foot elevation in Reno, before running the race at sea level in Oakland, CA.  And there were no child obstacles either.  I figure if I factor in the child and general life factors into my time, the adjusted time would be very similar, if not better, than my previous attempts.  They are higher level calculations, that I don’t have time to explain here, just trust me.  The “trail” ended up being paved by the way.  This unfortunately reduced my badassedness factor.   The medals are super cool which is hard to find these days, Nice job on that race organizer folks!  E met me at the end, having shed the children for 2 hours, with a little pink Nalgene bottle of chocolate milk.  A present from Sydney who knows I love chocolate milk.  I guess 4:45 isn’t that early.

Me and the kiddos having Cheetos post race