Distance: 26.2 miles
Weather: Perfect
This is it peeps... the post-marathon report. Now, don't get me wrong, while you may have caught some of the photos on Facebook, you won't understand the full experience until you know the juicy details. So here they are:
Here's a pre-race photo of the Brauns than ran: Steven, Michael, Jeffrey and I. We can thank Mom for the matching shirts, although Steven missed the memo we sent out about wearing matching shorts. This was the route we ran:
The race started out in North Idaho, just West of Post Falls. The course went westward along the Spokane River all the way to downtown Spokane. The River has a public paved trail that goes along side it called the Centennial Trail. The whole route has a net elevation drop of 239 feet.
See that doesn't look so bad!
The race started at 7am, ridiculously late, compared to most of the marathons I've seen. I was way worried because I woke up at 5:30 and it was light outside. I was certain that I had slept in (the time zone change always gets me), but I hadn't. It just happens to get light at 5:04 am in Spokane. Who knew?
The weather forecast said a there was a 50% chance of rain but it seemed relatively clear. Steven's friend Cody, who was also running in the race, came over so we packed 6 men into the car (plus my Mom, the poor woman) and cruised out to Post Falls. Standing on the starting line it wasn't that cold, although there was a strong breeze aimed directly in our faces. Fortunately, 200 m off the starting line, we get to turn around and run West the rest of the way, putting that strong wind at our backs. Gotta love that.
Mile 0
5-4-3-2-1, GO! (no gun went off this time... the guy just said "go!")
We started running. There were a lot of runners, 390 to be exact, but they didn't really get in the way (in Ogden, we had to shuffle for the first mile until there was adequate room to run at our normal pace). We did the hair-pin, ran by Michael's place of work (Center Partners, doing customer support for T-Mobile), and eventually got on the Centennial Trail.
Mile 3
(By the way, these mile counts are very approximate)
I'm feeling pretty stiff in my lower legs. Should have stretched beforehand. Also it seemed like everybody was running at a faster pace than I was used to. Steven's watch said we were doing a consistant 8:30 mile. That was probably a little faster than what we needed at the time.
Mile 6
Michael gets the award for the "most entertaining Braun" during the race.
- Point 1: When the trail cames right up next to the highway, Michael did the truck-driver-honk-your-horn motion with his arm in an attempt to get drivers to honk. His persistence paid off because he finally got somebody to honk after about 4 minutes of motioning.
- Point 2: The trail was not closed off for the race, so we often passed people walking or biking in the opposite direction. Without fail, whenever we passed a runner who was going the other direction Michael would shout out "Hey, you're going the wrong way!"
- Point 3: See mile 23.
Michael and I had to stop at the Barker freeway exit to visit the Honey Bucket. The other guys slowed down a bit for us, but it still took us maybe 8 minutes to get completely caught up. Unfortunately, this is about when out mile times started slowing down. Where we were once doing 8:30 miles, now we are doing 9:00-9:30s.
Mile 13
Here we cross the halfway point. Our fan club was there so it was nice to get some cheering as we passed by. Here's a photo of us passing by (with Cody leading the way, and Michael in the back thumbing his nose at the fam):
As you can see, the weather was beautiful... sunny with a breeze at our backs (although maybe a tad too warm). Our halfway split time was something like 1 hour and 58 mins. We had to have a good second half in order to get below the 4 hours some of us were aiming for.
Mile 17
Here we left the river and start running in the neighborhoods in the Millwood area. They had cops stopping traffic for the runners so that was nice. By this point Michael was struggling a bit so we started walking through all the aid stations.
Here's the deal with the aid stations. They usually put up an aid station every 1 or 2 miles where they handed out cups of water and HEED. HEED stands for "High Energy Electrolyte Drink," and it was supposed to be something like Gatorade. Unfortunately, it tasted kind of like river water, which was fine for the first 8 miles or so but by this point everybody was just going for the water. Plus with the water, you could dump what you didn't drink on your head. Occasionally, you'll pass an aid station that was handing out some high energy GEL packets, or gummy bears. They Gel was pretty good, cause they had some nice flavors (like apple-cinnamon, or Montana Huckleberry). The Gummy Bears were nice too.
Mile 23
By this point, everybody was hurting but Michael was hurting the most. Steven and Cody must have got a second wind because they got up ahead of the rest of us, where as previously we had all been running as a group. We found ourselves taking occasional breaks to walk for 200 meters here and there. There was a spot where the Spokane River had flooded part of the trail (the water level was really high) and Michael dunked his head in the river. I didn't go that far, but I started taking two cups of water at every aid station: one to drink and one to dump on my head.
Mile 26
Just as we were getting close to finishing, it started to rain, thus proving the curse that whenever Michael goes running with me, it rains. (see Day 16 and Day 34 for examples). In the Day 34 post I even predicted rain for the Marathon because of this trend. I was right.
Anyways, for this last little bit we were in familiar territory, running by the pavilion, the big red wagon, the carousel, and finally the falls. Our group seemed to have an extra burst of energy, giving us good form as we crossed the finish line. Of course, Steven and Cody finished about 6 minutes ahead of the rest of us.
First of all, props to Steven, who got 3rd place in his age group (with Cody right behind him). I think he could have got 2nd had the rest of us not held him back for most of the race. Hey there's always next year.
Here are our final times:
- #47 Steven Braun - 4:16:34.0 (placed 116th)
- #336 Cody Spillane - 4:16:34.1 (placed 117th)
- #46 Michael Braun - 4:22:20.8 (placed 133rd)
- #44 Bryan Braun - 4:22:21.0 (placed 134th)
- #45 Jeff Braun - 4:22:21.0 (also placed 134th)
If you want to see more photos, you can visit this site and type in our bib numbers to find photos that other people took of us along the trail.
It sure was nice just sitting around and eating food when it was all done (Thank to the Dunns for the doughnuts). Overall, I felt a lot better this time than I did at Ogden (although that's probably because I ran 30 minutes faster at Ogden).
I've gotta give a shout-out to Holly and James Mulloy, who ran the half, as well as some of the Johnson girls. And thanks to Elaine and Tim Dunn for volunteering at the finish line. Way to go folks!
In short, we came, we saw, we conquered, and we fell asleep on the living room floor afterwards. Oh yeah.
