The baddest relay team around....Wait....What? - Mississippi Blues Marathon 2013 Race Recap

The Mississippi Blues Marathon is my "local" race, so it's easy (cheap) for me to do every year.  While the travel is the most exciting part of a lot of my races, it's always nice to not have to worry about that every once in a while! I was super duper excited about the Blues this year since it would really be my first race wearing my Maniac singlet!  AND, lots of Maniacs do the Blues so I was anticipating a fun time before, during, and after the race!

The night before the race I sort of coordinated a Maniac dinner at Julep, a tasty local restaurant.  I had the honor of meeting up with some Maniacs, including my running crush favorite blogger T-Rex Runner.  If you've never read her blog, then your life is incomplete.  Seriously!  Read it!  I was so excited to meet T-Rex (whose real name is Danielle) that I contemplated printing out a picture of her and asking her to sign it, but then I thought that might be weird so I decided against it.  

Me and SJ with Team T-Rex!  I was starstruck!

Dinner was tasty and the conversation was great!  I thought it might be a little weird since I literally knew no one (except Sarah who I begged to go with me) that was going to dinner but everyone was super nice and easy to talk to.  Team T-Rex and another Maniac named Andrea decided that we all sort of had the same goal for the Blues (have fun, finish in 5 or so hours) so we talked about maybe running together the next day.

Pre-race Maniac dinner!

Race morning was a little unusual for me.  I usually can sleep pretty well, but I was up at 3:30 AM and could not go back to sleep.  I was not nervous about the race at all since I wasn't going for a BQ like I usually do.  I was actually paranoid that I might miss the Maniac picture since there was talk that they sometimes do it early!  Yeah.  I'm pathetic.  I know.  Anywho, since it was going to be in the 30's at the start and Mississippi has made me a total wuss when it comes to temps below 50, I wore about five million layers - short sleeve shirt, arm warmers, long sleeve shirt, and my Maniac singlet.  I felt very puffy!  Maniac picture was at 6:30 in front of the Old Capitol Building and, of course, I was there way early.  I found Andrea and Team T-Rex and we chatted a bit before the picture.

Me and my Blues BFF

Me with team T-Rex

No corrals at this race so we lined up somewhere we probably shouldn't have with Jenny, Terry, and Hugh.  Jenny (who I ran Chicago with) and Hugh (a marathon virgin) wanted to break 5 hours and Terry was supposed to pace them.  I wasn't sure whether I had a sub 5 in me that day but I just went ahead and started with them anyway.  

Perfect size race for me - about 3000 total

The first few miles were a little congested since the half marathoners stayed with us until about mile 3.  I was running with Andrea.  Jenny, Terry, and Hugh were only a short distance behind us.  Team T-Rex took off like a bat out of hell.  Apparently they are competitive runners.  After the split, I was surprised at how many marathoners there were.  Seemed like there were a lot more than last year.  

Hey look!  Jenny is running!

The Blues is a pretty nondescript course.  Jackson doesn't really have many "landmarks", so the course mostly weaves through subdivisions slash neighborhoods.  Since I live in Jackson, I found myself not really interested in taking many pictures for the first nine or so miles.  At mile 7, we stopped for a potty break and I got to cheer on some runners from my training program.  They were only slightly confused as to why I was standing on the side of the road cheering and not running.  At this point we also lost Jenny, Terry, and Hugh, never to see them again!

Cheering and taking pictures and mile 7

Once we got to mile 9, we decided that we were just going to start walking up anything that even slightly resembled a hill.  My intentions for this race were to have a good time so I didn't want to ruin that by running too much.  Plus, Andrea had just done the New Years Double Marathon in Texas a few days earlier, so we decided to start taking pictures of everything and anything.  

Mile 9 or 10 ish.  Yes, I jumped on the stage, and yes, everyone was jealous.

I'll grab that monkey some beer.

We even met up with Heather and got this sweet pic!  Can you pick out the creepiness?

13.1 shenanigans

The nice thing about not caring about your finish time is that you get to talk to all sorts of interesting folks.  And it's even better when you are wearing a Maniac singlet because all the other Maniacs will talk with you too.  We met this one guy who was asking everyone how far they were running and he insisted that there were marathons of other distances.  I am still not sure if he was just messin' with us.  We stayed with him for several miles and at one point got to talking with him and another guy and walked for probably close to three quarters of a mile.  Maybe more.   I wasn't complaining.

Once we got into Belhaven (mile 18 ish) we collected another rather interesting guy who had run marathons on pretty much every continent, even Antarctica.  He said that the only thing his children were going to inherit from him were medals and sweaty T-shirts.  He and the guy that insisted that some people were running a 5 mile marathon started chatting about all the marathons they had done all over the world.  Andrea and I asked them what they did for a living because surely these trips must have cost a lot of money.  I think they just ignored us because neither answered the question.  We left them and stopped for another potty break.

Me and Andrea with our new very rich BFFs.  I don't know who the lady on the right is other than she wore those pajama pants the entire race.

At mile 20 we got slightly rained on, but nothing major.  I knew the Fleet Feet tent was at mile 21 so I sent Sarah a text to tell her that we were close.  They were supposed to have mimosas waiting for us and Sarah had been instructed to bring me a banana.

Yay for champagne and bananas at mile 21!

Upon approaching the tent, I noticed that there were several Maniacs hanging out.  Once we got a little closer, I realized that it was Team T-Rex.  Surely they couldn't possibly be finished?  I didn't see any medals.  We were confused and they explained that they were waiting for Andrea and me so we could all run the last 5 miles together.  My heart melted a little.

Sarah likes to feed me bananas.

Yes, that's an entire bottle of champagne.

After hangin' at the Fleet Feet tent for a few and picking my melted heart up off the ground, we started in on the last 5 miles.  Plan was to walk up all the hills (pretty much the same as what Andrea and I had been doing all along).  The last 5 miles of the course go through some pretty ugly parts of Jackson - boarded up crack houses, dilapidated buildings, etc.

Making the turn into scary Jackson.

What beautiful scenery Jackson has!

At some point I remembered that I had brought my harmonica with me (it was part of the race SWAG).  Coincidentally, Danielle had brought an Oscar Meyer Wiener Whistle with her, so we broke them out and made some sweet music for a few minutes, or at least long enough to take this picture.

Making sweet music together.

Deep into scary Jackson, we passed a few rather angry looking gentleman that were making their way over to a very scary looking park.  One of these gentleman was wheeling around some luggage.  I supposed this was either for drugs or a body.  Not sure which frightens me more.  We then saw some wild dogs.  More reasons for me to never frequent this side of town.

Once we hit mile 25, I knew what was comin' since I'm a stalker avid reader of the T-Rex blog - we were gonna do a T-Rex.  That's where you run the entire last 1.2 miles no matter how bad you feel.  You can run as slow or as fast as you want, just gotta get it done.  You can also stop, but you can't walk.  Since none of us were feeling terribly bad, this wasn't going to be a problem for this particular race.

Time to T-Rex!

The last 1.2 were not horrible at all.  It was mostly "flat" with no major inclines.  We made plans to jump at the finish.

That's a good lookin' bunch of Maniacs!

So we approach the finish line and Danielle yells: "We're going to jump!"  Haha!  I really hope that I jumped at the right time.  We shall see when the race photos are available.  My high jump is only about an inch so the photographer better have been on his game that day!  After crossing the finish, the volunteers started to put this tiny little medal around all of our necks and I thought, "Aww,  I get another medal that I didn't even know about", since I knew that the marathon medal was HUGE!!!!  Then I read the medal and it said something about a relay on it and I was all like "Hell no!"  Apparently we looked so in sync (with our matching outfits and all) that the volunteers just assumed that we were a relay team.  Duh!  Read our bibs!  Even after we received our CORRECT medals, some other volunteer still approached us to ask for our relay chip! 

When we finally received the correct medal, it was AMAZING (as usual).

That's a pick dangling (lol - I said dangle) off the medal.

The baddest relay team around.

Food, as always, was amazing!  You could be a 7 hour marathoner and there will still be tons of food waiting around for you at the Blues finish!  Pizza, cookies (I can't tell you how many I had), red beans and rice, beer, and lots of other deliciousness.  I found Terry and Hugh.  Jenny had left because it was pretty cold. 

Hugh (marathon virgin no more) and Terry.  These are my boys!

Looking at this year's medal got me to thinking how far the Blues medals have come since 2008 so I decided to put all mine together to see the progression.

2009-2013 Blues medals (half marathon for the first three).  Only missing 2008 and it was similar but smaller than 2009. 2012 is my favorite because it has both the record and the guitar.

So for next year I have decided that the Blues medal needs to have real guitar strings and pyrotechnics.  I need flames!  I'm not really sure what else they can do to make this medal any better! 

In other odd news, when I went to go put my info in my Maniac profile, I realized that my finish time for the Blues this year was exactly the same as my finish time for the Blues last year.  I think this is funny because I didn't go for any sort of time either year.  5:24:01 both years, which is about 50 minutes slower than anything that I would consider my best performance.  

I've also decided that being a Maniac is the best thing ever!  Bring on the Louisiana Marathon in two weeks! 

In unrelated news, I have found something that certainly should not exist.  An entire pint of ice cream that is only 150 calories.

Besides for the slightly off aftertaste (which really isn't even that bad), this "frozen dessert" is absolutely delicious and a great substitute for the pint of Ben and Jerry's that I would otherwise be eating!  I warn you to not go with the Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor as it does taste like a burnt turd, but the Cookies and Cream is fantastic!