What an awesome race! Forget about Cleveland - "Detroit Rocks"!
Just for the record though, Detroit is a mess right now. I spent the night before in Ann Arbor with an uncle and Karen drove in from Kalamazoo, left that car in Ann Arbor, and we headed into Detroit together. I was Mr. Grumpy Person because we had to pick our packets up by 7:00 p.m. Saturday night or we could not run, and Karen didn't get to Ann Arbor until 4 p.m. Now for those of you in the area, you're saying - yeah - so - it's only 45 minutes or so from Ann Arbor to Detroit, you had plenty of time. Have you seen Detroit lately? I'm not talking about the suburbs, I mean Detroit. It looks like it has been shelled - streets are completely torn up - traffic was backed up inside Detroit all the way out into Dearborn. So we waited, and waited, and .... We finally got downtown, parked, and ran our little butts into Cobo hall and picked our packets up around 6:30 p.m.
Off to the hotel. We thought this was going to be great - we got a room at a Ramada Inn - downtown - for $100. We are not prissy travelers, really, trust me. But blood stains on the mattress? Come on! A room with no heat - in Detroit - in October?! Come on! We stayed in the same hotel, but switched rooms, much cleaner - much happier. Kenny and Dad showed up about 9 o'clock from a 12-hour drive from NY, all raring to go and in goofy moods - which was great - because I let myself get in a terrible mood. They immediately fixed that and it was great seeing them again. We were all up until about midnight or so maybe and finally decided to call it a night (we had to be up at 5 a.m.!) Well, then the fart games started, and the ice machine outside of our room started, and so on, and so on..... none of us really slept much that night. But we all woke up at 5 in pretty good shape. Showered (well they did, I didn't), took our gear down to the car, and met our 5th runner outside at about 6:15. Grabbed some muffins from the seedy little diner connected to the hotel and headed over to Tiger Stadium (AKA - Comerica Park). Right away - BAM! The mood was getting pumped by a live band - 6:30 a.m. - how in the hell did they get that gig?! The place was packed and the Free Press reported 10,000 runners were there that morning - what a charge that was. We said bye to Kenny who was running the starting leg and Karen, Jeff, and I got on our buses and headed out to the relay points. And then we waited, and waited, and.... The race started at 7:35 - I didn't start running my leg until around 10:30
Leg 1 - 7 miles - Kenny He said he was having a great time; the start of the race was cool and he worked his way through the crowd. But then - the bridge. The incline was long and steep. He was running great until he hit that damn bridge and - WHAM - just kind of wiped him out. He ran the whole leg and did great, we'll find out more once the Free Press posts our times, but it sounds like he ran it in about an 11 minute pace.
Leg 2 - 4.7 miles - Karen Karen was awesome. She 'trained' for all of about 2 or 3 weeks. She went into the tunnel feeling pretty good as the entire first half under the water was all decline. But apparently, all things that go down must also come back up, and that's what she did. Ran up, and up, and up, with a curve, and a twist, and up, and up, AND UP! Dad said when she handed the anklet with the chip in it to him, it was drenched with sweat. Way to go Kar!
Leg 3 - 3.3 miles - Dad Dad LOVED that his leg started all of about 2 blocks from the hotel. He didn't come down to the start line with his - he just hung out in the hotel until it was his turn to run his leg. He took a nice long shower, took his time getting ready - damn that sounds good! He took the chip from Karen and was off; off on the culminating run of several months of training which began with 3 painful steps and ended 3.3 miles later, when he turned the corner into Chene park, ran the last quarter mile strong, and handed the chip to me. I took the chip, hugged him and was off.
Leg 4 - 5.2 miles - Me I started out feeling great just to be on the road. I'd gotten cold waiting out there and it felt great knowing that I would be sweating and everything would be warmed up soon. I ran with music this time which was different for me - I trained with music occasionally but never ran a race with it. Popped on my iPod and was feeling great. I used pink bandana woman as my pace setter. She said she runs 10 minute miles and that sounded good to me. I hung with her for the first two miles, then slowly she pulled a little further and further away. I had to stop a few times - my shins were burning from not being able to seriously train for the last month. Jeff popped out of the crowd right before I got on the bridge to Belle Isle, and grabbed my arm. Now, I'm in Detroit, with music in my ears, running a race - so when he grabbed me, it kind of caught be off guard. I turned and yelled "What the F&^! are you doing here?" He pointed to where he was standing, smiled, and gave me a nice push. Belle Isle was gorgeous, I ran hard, and coming across the bridge back to Detroit was definitely tough. I just kept saying to myself, this is the last race of the year, who gives a F&^! if I'm sore tomorrow. So I ran - HARD - and finished my leg strong - maybe not fast, but strong. I'm guessing my pace was somewhere in the 10:30 range.
Leg 5 - 6 miles - Jeff Jeff took off, I got on the bus, back to Ford Field, and I met up with Karen, Dad, and Kenny. I was so proud of all of us when I saw them there waiting for Jeff and me. The next 20 minutes or so were great - we just stood there and cheered for all the finishers as they ran by. It can be an amazingly emotional thing - some runners started crying as they saw us cheering for them, some stuck their hands out to get a high-five, others just did all they could to run that last part of the race. One guy, God bless him, fell to the street, yacked his guts out, got back up and took off. We were breakin' Jeff's balls about not getting there sooner but when he finally got there we just sort of grabbed each other and headed into the tunnel leading down into Ford Field. What a great feeling. We got down to the field and Jeff was so excited he just bolted - took off - sprinted to the finish line and the rest of us just sort of trotted across.
Thanks to the few of you who chime in from time to time with words of encouragment and well wishes. It was an awesome experience and we're already talking Detroit "next year" talk.
Big shout out to the Chocolate Runner - sounds like his "run through hell" was awesome and reading his blog everyday was a big time inspiration!
I'll post the times as soon as the Free Press makes them available.
