Flying Pig Half Marathon Race Report

Switching the order up a bit to focus on the race given that there is a fair amount of controversy/interest around it:

Name: Flying Pig Half Marathon

Date: May 7, 2023

Distance: 13.1 miles

Location: Cincinnati, OH

Website: https://flyingpigmarathon.com/

Time: 2:01:31

Goals

Finish Yes

<2:00 No

Splits (mi)

1 9:16

2 9:11

3 9:08

4 8:47

5 9:12

6 9:54

7 9:32

8 9:03

9 8:51

10 9:04

11 8:55

12 9:00

13 10:20

13.27 2:35

Pre-race

Parked at about 5:45, got ready and walked to the mile or so to the start, hit the bathroom (lines weren't bad where we went), and lined up in corral D about 15m before the race start scheduled for 6:30. One storm front had passed through between 5:00 and 5:40 so we knew it was in the area. Pre-race speeches were very focused on the weather - I can't tell you how many times I heard "we're leaving it up to you if you want to run today as your own personal responsibility" or similar from the race directors prior to starting. A little rain started falling on us during the national anthem but nothing heavy.

Race

Mile 1-3: We got out the the gates and the course immediately heads out of downtown and south into KY. The first bit was pretty backed up (we should have started a corral up) but nothing unusual. As we're on the bridge heading across the Ohio River it starts to become very obvious that it's going to storm very soon. Lots of thunder/lightning in the west, and the gentle rain is still hanging around. Overall I'm feeling pretty good and settling into my pace towards mile 3. Crowd support is surprisingly strong considering the pending weather!

Mile 4-5: This was the main weather event. As we start heading back towards the bridge to Ohio things cut loose. Rain is heavier than what you would get in the shower and lightning is striking on all sides of us almost continuously. I would say the vast majority was not cloud-to-ground, but still it was quite the experience. I'm fairly insane and there's no shot I would have ran in these conditions during a "normal" run. Coming back across the river into Ohio there was definitely a sense of "this is not smart" as we were super exposed, but there was no real option for where to shelter so we pushed on. In terms of my run I was actually tending a little fast here and had to be slowed by my friend helping to pace us; while it was dangerous it was an adrenaline pumping moment. There were a bunch of us "embracing the suck" having a good time kicking it into a wall of water. Footing got tricky here as the whole course was under at least 1" of water with several spots much deeper than that which made it impossible to see pot holes.

The Pause: At the end of mile 5 we (along with everyone else in our pack) got pulled off the course on 7th St by course officials. We were told that a shelter in place had been issued, however unfortunately there was no shelter available so we just stood on the side of the road. By this time the storm front had moved through, and while we could hear distant thunder, but it was still raining steadily. We didn't have any idea that others weren't stopped at this point, and we were held for about 7 minutes. There was never an all-clear issued that I'm aware of, just a mob of humanity that got tired of standing in the rain irrationally once the danger had passed and started running again. Unfortunately because they stopped everyone at this point for several minutes this created a massive amount of congestion when we started running again. Personally while I was able to recover my heartrate a bit, my legs were starting to tighten up and this obviously kicked me out of my "groove" around the halfway point.

Mile 6-7: A packed climb. This is the hardest part of the course - a pretty steep climb with a couple of stages over 2 or so miles. In terms of weather we still have a bit of rain here, but it was much lighter and the storms had moved off. I'm shocked that we maintained the pace that we did through here and it was a solid 20 minutes of erratic running trying to get through people in a very congested pack. I think the "shelter in place" probably caught everyone from the back of corral C to the front of corral E, so approximately 1:55-2:30 times all got jumbled up in reverse order as the faster runner were pulled aside first with the slower runner filling into the middle of the road as there was no more room on the sides. Personally this was the part of the course I was nervous about running, so the slowed pace made this a bit of a non-issue. Mentally it was tough given lot of jostling and trying to not run anyone over as we tried to push through folks running 11's. Things started to clear out as we got further up the climb near the peak.

Mile 8-12: The decent. A bit of drizzle, but generally cleared conditions at this point with a light wind (5-10mph). Occasionally distant thunder, but didn't see any more lightning from this point on. We made the decision here to push it slightly trying to get back to my goal time of 2:00 knowing that we lost a few minutes in the storm pile-up. Probably a mistake in hindsight, but I don't regret going for it! While I was definitely hurting through here it was a fun part of the race. We had the crowds starting to come back out, and things had thinner out both by the half and full splitting and people naturally spreading out a bit.

Mile 13-finish: The blowup. Sadly I ran out of juice around mile 12 from pushing it just over my threshold pace for too long. Had to take a bit of an extended walk through a water station to get through 2 cups of Gatorade and recover HR a bit. After that I was able to leg it in across the finish at something like 9:30 pace. The crowds were back out and the finish was everything you would expect it to be.

Post-race

The reception area was well organized - no issue finding medal/water/banana/etc. Overall I was feeling the mental fuzz of pushing it to the limit, but I was steady on my feet and didn't appear to have any kind of serious damage. After some fluids and a banana my brain started coming back online and we packed it back to the car. Overall while I was a bit disappointed that I didn't make my goal of 2:00 I felt like I ran a good race given the circumstances and was happy that I didn't leave anything out there. We were talking about our next race on the walk back to the car while still soaked from the storms, which is always a good sign!

Training/Background

This was my first HM and my third "real" race. I started running last August as a 36M who hadn't run for 15-20 years and was unable to run 5k without walking. During that time I had built up to around 33mpw and had mostly used a mix of Higdon plans to base my training during this time on.

Made with a new race report generator created by /u/herumph.