Best of 2012

Side note, this was supposed to be published two weeks ago... I just realized it wasn't... Oops.

I'd love to steal Tim's format and have categories for a bunch of different things, but I didn't run enough races in 2012 to do anything along those lines. Thinking and looking back, the number of races stands at seven. One 5k, two 5 mile/8k, one 10k, two half-marathons, and one marathon.

New Year's Day Dash (5 miles)
Crazylegs (8k)
Flying Pig Marathon
Tri 4 Schools 5k
Haunted Hustle (half)
Tyranena Beer Run (half)
Berbee Derby (10k)

Something that surprises me about that list is that four of the seven are races I haven't done before. For a few years it felt like I was doing the same five or six races every year, with nothing new.

Anyways, onto the random category award winners for 2012... (FINGER DRUM ROLL PLEASE!)

Best Medal: Flying Pig

Only three of the races I ran this year gave out medals (Flying Pig, Haunted Hustle, and the Tyranena Beer Run), so there isn't a wide variety to choose from here, but the Pig's medal is simple but classy. (The back has, as I'm sure sure you can guess, the butt of the pig.)

Best Atmosphere: Crazylegs

Next year I'll call this the Crazylegs award. Otherwise I would likely give this to Crazylegs every year... Yes, I'm biased, but if you've done Crazylegs, you'd understand.

This year was a special Crazylegs for me. First, my beautiful wife Vanessa upped the ante on what each of us will do to run this race. (Not that she had much to top, the biggest extreme was us driving over from Waukesha through a monsoon...) She had a night shift starting at 7:00 Friday night, that ended at 7:30 Saturday morning, all of 2 1/2 hours before the race started. The trooper she was that day, she came home, changed, and begrudgingly ran the race. 

Second, my sister Kendra ran her very first race that day, through likely shin splints none the less. Due to the wave start that Crazylegs has, I was able to run my race, put some warm clothes on quickly (it was a cold/rainy day), and run up to Breese Terrace quickly to see Vanessa run by (and give her the now traditional yell of, "THEY'RE DRINKING ALL YOUR BEER!"). After seeing her go by, I was able to run out to the two mile mark of the course and see Kendra run by (and then was able to see her a couple more times before the finish).

Even beside those two things, Crazylegs is always a see of red and white. The race has grown to over 20,000 Badger supporters that will brave just about any form of weather to support their school and teams.

Best Event: Tyranena Beer Run

If you read my race report, you'll likely understand why I loved this event. Not only did I PR, but I got two free beers (none of the Macro Brew Lite/Light that Crazylegs buys in mass quantities either) and a lasagna meal, in addition to an expansive post-race spread, decent medal, and acceptable shirt.

Best Cause: Tri 4 Schools 5k

I'll be honest, I only know what charities/organizations received money from a few of the races I ran. Crazylegs goes to the UW Athletic Department, the Berbee Derby goes to an organization that buys computers and technology education type things for local schools, and Tri 4 Schools goes to the organization that runs the race... Tri 4 Schools.

The money from this event and a couple of others goes to put on small triathlons for kids ranging from 3 to 14 and to buy gym/fitness equipment for local schools. Now whether you feel that kids as young as 3 should be doing a triathlon, that is up to you. In my opinion, anything that we can do to make sure the youth of this country spend a few more minutes outside and a few less minutes playing video games or watching TV is a good thing.

Let's do one more category... (I swear 12 months from now I'll plan this out better...)

Best Shirt or SWAG: Flying Pig

 

Either way this was going to Flying Pig. Thinking back to the other races, none of the shirts were that great (NYDD - none, Crazylegs - same damn Gilden cotton shirt, T4S - tech, but super heavy (this one is fine, not great), HH - would be fine, except their printer sucks, there are smudges all over the back, TBR - fine, cotton, but better quality than Crazylegs, BD - always the same damn long sleeve styling with different colors), and none of them really gave away SWAG (save for beer or a cheap bag (thanks Haunted Hustle!...).

I wear the shirt quite a bit for running and the gym bag is used almost every day (when I go to the gym). (Evidently they give out something similar to the gym bag every year. I saw a backpack in an airport once, beyond that I'm not sure what they've given)

It's all downhill from here... figuratively

21 days...

Three months ago I wrote about my training plan for Goofy's Challenge. If I had known what I was in store for, I never would have written that entry. I ran nowhere close to 1149 miles. I decided to not run one of the four races I planned on running. Hard workouts were skipped at times. Mileage was reduced so I could ease back into things from injuries. Basically, I created a training plan, tore it up five days later, and then went without a structured one after I was able to run again.

That being said, I have two weekends of back-to-back 12 mile runs and two long runs of 20 miles (one with a Saturday run of eight miles and the other with a 10 miler), I set a PR in the half-marathon about six weeks ago, and have generally felt strong lately.

Even when I was struggling with Plantar Fasciitis, I knew I wasn't going to let myself quit on this, I would find a way to finish no matter the pain or frustration. Those thoughts would help temporarily, but when you are training to run 39.3 miles over two days, hobbling through a five mile run doesn't do much for your mental stability. To be at this point, healthy and strong, makes my "job" of running so much easier. Fighting doubt for 6+ hours over two days in addition to fighting lactic acid build-up would have added greatly to the difficult task already at hand.

Anyways... At this point, there isn't any turning back. I have my bib number (20512) that I'll wear for both races and final runner instructions have been posted online. All that is left is getting to Orlando and toeing the starting line.

Colorado Brewpub Tour 2012 - Stop #5 - The Great Divide Brewing Company

Holy hell, I have fallen behind on finishing out the Colorado Brewpub Tour posts (I still have two more beyond this one)...

Technically this shouldn't be part of the Colorado Brewpub Tour, as The Great Divide isn't a brewpub, but I'll make an exception for something this good.

The Great Divide is located just a few blocks from right field at Coors Field (and therefore about 8 blocks from Wynkoop) in what our best guess is an old repair shop from the early 1900s. Obviously there has been a lot of re-purposing of rooms in the building, but everything about the place is, in my opinion, awesome.

Our entire trip ended up having a bunch of random things happen to us that we didn't plan out. Two of those things happened here. The first was small, about five minutes after we walked into the tap room, we found out they were giving their last tour of the day. Brewery tour that I can bring beer on? Deal. The second was pretty cool, and probably something that will never happen again. We were sitting at the bar in the tap room talking and struck up a small conversation with the bartender. As we're talking to him, a guy walks up to the corner of the bar (we were sitting right by the door) and tells the bartender, "I work across the street and we have these two tickets to the game (Rockies vs. Cubs) tonight that we can't use, can you give them away?". Bartender says, "Sure", guy walks out, bartender turns to us, "Want a couple tickets?". Free baseball? Sure! Especially after getting drenched at the game the night before.

Food: None. Zip. Zilch. Well, maybe some nuts or pretzels if you ask nicely. Not really sure.

Beer: Amazing. Three months later I can barely remember all of the beers we tried. Hades, Titan, Hoss, Yeti... probably a couple more that were only available at their tap room. The best way to describe their beer is to say when you taste it, you can tell it is brewed not only by someone that knows what they are doing, but by someone who loves beer.

The Great Divide currently distributes their beers to approximately 20-25 different states. Unfortunately, Wisconsin is not one of them. Luckily though, Illinois is one of them, and there are a few places very close to her parents house that have their beer!

I highly recommend trying Yeti (Imperial Stout) and Hibernation Ale (Winter Seasonal), but you really can't go wrong with anything in my opinion.

Linky - http://greatdivide.com/

Race Report: Berbee Derby 10K

Location: Fitchburg, WI
Date: 11/22/2012
Time: 9:00 AM
Weather: 50 degrees, 10-15 mph wind from the south, beautiful day

Time: 41:00
Overall: 103/2073
Division: 22/134

THE COURSE

The Berbee Derby has become a Thanksgiving Day tradition for Vanessa and I. Typically we have to drive to central Illinois for Thanksgiving with her family, so prior to our 2 1/2 hour drive, we get a "quick" run in. In years past, I ran the 10k and Vanessa ran the 5k, but this year, since Vanessa is training to run the WDW Half Marathon, she also ran the 10k. 

WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

If you've ran a Turkey Trot or a similar race on a holiday, you'll understand the atmosphere of the race. A lot of families (like ours) use it to start off a long day of food and family events. Typically there is a lot of laughter and abundant amounts of smiles (at least prior to the run).

Also for this year, they basically reversed the course from previous years, which removed a long and steep hill from the end of the sixth mile. This helped for the last mile, but based on the winds of the day, meant that the one long and somewhat steep hill ended up being run into the teeth of the wind.

WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

For the most part, this is an excellent run race. They do a great job handling parking, which is disjointed due to the start being in a business park. They always have plenty of port-a-potties, though this year they didn't announce that they had moved about 3/4 of them over near the start, so unless you walked down there, you would have spent about an hour in line waiting for one of the 10 in the previous location. (Thankfully we heard the announcement saying that there were more, and did our quick warm up job to race over there before the lines migrated over there.) This year they also did something new that I hadn't seen before. Instead of assigning numbers out ahead of time, they assigned you a number when you picked up your bib and packet. They used a bar code reader to scan a bar code on the bib after selecting the participant on a computer. Perhaps that slowed down the bib pickup just slightly, but I have to think it saved them a lot of time overall. 

Since this is the "What wasn't so great about the race" portion, and all I've done is praise them, you might be slightly confused... Well, the start of this race has always been slightly crowded. The start has always been on a two lane street, but not a typical residential two lane street, I'm talking one with enough room for parking on each side (probably for diagonal parking on each side). The problem? They use half of that. They fence in the runners for the 10k and the first two tenths of a mile you're fenced into that half a road width. I'm sure the reasoning behind this is the amount of mats that the timing company has. They likely don't have the setup for 40' of timing mats. Alright, what can you do to fix that issue and not affect the race?

Waves!

I'm guessing they got tired of hearing this same complaint from a large amount of participants, because they tried to implement waves this year. They had three separate waves for both the 10k (A, B, and C) and 5k (D, E, and F). Only problem? I have no clue how they determined the waves. Vanessa was never asked for times when she registered, which for some races isn't a problem if they have results from previous years for you, which they would for both of us. But Mitch, Vanessa's brother, wasn't asked when he registered the night before the race, and he's never run the race before. All three of us ended up in wave B. When we got to the starting line, I looked into wave A and immediately said to myself, there's no way I'm starting in wave B. There was an obvious hodge podge of people with varying abilities, not the typical breakdown by ability.

Instead of my continual rambling, I'll offer my ideas for a solution to their issues. (The immediate one would be talk to the Crazylegs organizers, you've become probably the fourth largest running event in Madison (based on my thoughts, not 100% sure though) behind Crazylegs, Madison Marathon, and Madison Mini-Marathon.)

1. Find a timing company with enough equipment to use a wider starting line.
2. Figure out the courses so that they start and end at the same point. Seriously, if you need help with this, call me. For the 10k, get rid of the new little loop through the residential area between mile markers one and two. Make that difference up with an out and back on Lacy Rd (kind of like what there was previously, but have the turn around in the road). Everyone is spread out enough at that point, you won't need to use the second (eastbound) lane of Lacy Rd.
3. Smaller waves. How big are Crazylegs? 200 or so (at least at the beginning). How big are yours? 600-700. Throw in the difference in widths of starting lines (and the course thereafter), your triple the size waves make no sense. Cut that number at least in half, no matter whether or not you can accomplish number one. (Also, enforce the waves, there were no breaks between the waves, no ropes, nothing.
4. Start the waves one minute apart (tops). From what I think the announcer said, the first wave started three minutes ahead of the second wave. Why? It can't take that long for the entire wave to pass the starting line. If it does, that's an issue in itself. Crazylegs starts 30 seconds apart, that should be enough for you as well, especially with smaller waves.

OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS

In the end, I was very happy with my race. Could I have ran a few seconds faster had I not been impeded for the first half mile by the crowded course? Sure, but I wasn't going to break 40 minutes (my PR is just under 40 minutes, I think 39:56, but the Shamrock Shuffle doesn't have their results from 2007 any longer on their website), so it's not like I feel robbed of anything.