If you’ve ever entered a race, only to see cold and rain in the forecast, then this will hit home for you. Being in Texas, you NEVER fixate on the weather man’s predictions. Well…they got this one right…45deg and an 80% chance of rain. I don’t know who runs the odds on these things, but clearly, they were booted out of Vegas! It was 100%, if anything!! It was like Washington state had sent us an early Christmas present, cause we’d been bad all year!! ;oP
Trisa(First Half), Me(First Half in the Wet), Leann(First half to run this slow!), Will(1st Marathon) and Matt(First Marathon and sporting his VFFs which got him running for the first time in January!) ...that's a lot of firsts!!
I’ve started paying attention to the surface from the car to the starting line. The trip there, is no big deal, but once you’ve put a beating on your feet for 13.1 miles, that trek can be the worst part of the event! That’s how I knew I was in for a challenge, before the race even started! About a mile from where we parked with that lovely, big rock buried not quite deep enough in concrete surface, to loose gravel on cobble stone and lovely chip seal...well...it was a testament of things to come! Still, we were there with Club friends and it was all about my wife! This was to be her first Half-Marathon!
We were all gathered in a heated building at Fair Park, waiting to go meet up with some of the early risers for a pre-race photo at the finish line, when my wife’s other Wing-Man, Leann, a slight woman who was pretty much the club’s running Mom/Big Sis, decided to try some Chia seeds. She delved right in before I could explain, dropping about a tsp of seeds into her mouth from the hole in the snack bag I’d brought. The look on her face was priceless! I told her to take some water and she drooled out seeds with an, “I can’t!”, which left the 8 of us standing there laughing hysterically! Poor thing…she was sucking gelled seeds from between her teeth all race! We went out, couldn’t find the rest of our group and snapped a pic of the 5 team members before heading to our respective corrals.
Well…sorta. Leann decided we should stop in B-1 with Will, but he was doing the full and headed further back to find a pace group. Now, I’m not going to lie…the longer than normal trip to the start and the way I’d downed my double shot of UCAN followed by chia and not enough water left me feeling a little sick. Also, I’d just walked a mile and a half on some nasty pavement, my feet were cold, I could see my breath, rain was in the air and I’d already accomplished my first Half-Marathon…I was trying to think of a way out! My Altra Adams sitting in the car were sounding pretty good about now, but I was already here. I dug the Vanilla Stinger waffle cake out of my pocket and took a bite and swigged some water and that deemed to help. Once we started, I began feeling like my old self again, my temp came up, the feeling in my toes came back and I was laughing with my wife and Leann and cussing the chip seal.
The reactions I get from people who have not run beside me during a race before is comical. As people PASS me with a: “Now THAT’s Hard Core!”, “You’re a REAL man!”, “You’re a bad-ass!” and the like, my running partners can’t help but be amazed. Trisa asked,“They are faster than you, but you’re the bad-ass??” I just shrug…if only they knew how much easier this was! Leann said she'd probably be one of those people if she didn't know me. To my running club, I'm just a runner who doesn't wear shoes. We spent the first 3-4 miles cracking up at comments, the conversations behind us and the soggy shoe’s sloshing by, sometimes drown out by the swishing of people donning trash bag rain coats…some even had the easy tie draw strings still attached around the bottoms! LOL! Several hadn’t even bothered to cut out arm holes.
Up to this point, I’d had a couple guys ask if I forgot my shoes and one said he thinks I lost them a mile back. This race I decided to bust out with the,” What?!! You can’t see them either?? I’m soooo glad I didn’t wear the matching shorts! MAN, would THAT have been embarrassing!!!” It was a hit and I got a lot of laughs! It wasn’t raining and I was getting warm with the rain jacket on, so I took it off and tied it around my waist, ah la soccer mom style! I heard a few people read the back of my shirt and chuckle and then, a guy who looked strangely familiar slows on my right and says, “Barefoot. Good job. I like your shirt.” (I was wearing all black with my black “I run naked on sharp pointy stuff” cotton shirt over a long sleeve compression shirt.) I said thanks and he kept going. I looked down and he was shoeless as well. I said, “Hey…you’re barefoot too! Nice!!” He slowed back down and said,” Why yes I am.”
I asked his name and he said his name was Todd. I was like…no way! Now, I’m not one who usually gets star struck, but it was hard, after solo barefoot race upon race, not to be giddy! I thanked him for slowing to talk to me and that I didn’t want to hold him up as I was acting wing-man for my wife’s first half, but he said he didn’t mind. He likes running with other barefooters. He told me, it use to be just him and Ken Bob. If someone said, “Hey, there goes a barefoot runner!”, he knew he was ahead. If someone said, “Hey, there is another one!”, he knew Ken Bob was ahead of him. We only talked and ran for a quarter mile or so, and I would have loved to keep going with him, but today was all about my wife and her watch had just beeped that it was time for a 1min walk, so I thanked him, but then he asked if he could take MY pic! Whaaaaaat?? MY pic?? I said sure, but can we get one together too? My wife borrowed his camera to take a pick of both of us together. (we got some weird looks of people running by, us standing in the road! Lol). Then my wife’s watch beeped that it was time to run again and we started running with him some more. He asked how he could track me down to get me a copy and I told him to look for me on barefootrunners.org and he said, "Barefoot Runners Society? I think I'm on there." and gave him my facebook info also. (I’ll post it once he sends it to me.) He said it was really good to bump into me cause you don’t seem as crazy when there are more than one. I said, “Yeah…one barefooter is a nut, but if you see 2…”, “then it’s a movement!”, he said. Just then, my wife’s watch beeped again I wished him luck as we started walking agin. So crazy! The only barefooter I’ve ever bumped into in a race, and it’s him! Let me just say again…nicest guy you could ever meet!
As we ran, I was explaining to my wife and Leann who he was and how he'd just dont over 100 marathons barefoot, when, and probably cause I’d taken off my rain jacket, the sky opened up and soaked me! Another mile in, a woman I was passing said, “Hey…I know you!” It was a lady I spoke with at the 15K my wife and I did in McKinney, Oct 31st. She and her sister ran it, gearing up for this race. We chatted a sec, but my wife had just downed some shot blocks and was feeling her oats, so I said it was good to see her, waved and went to catch up. We got to run on some harsh surface, rain groves, big bricks dodging trolley rails and huge puddles. There was some nice coble stone of all sorts I got to sample and some highway service road concrete roads worn smooth by traffic that were nice. We al
so got to dodge discarded Gu packets, gloves and trash bag rain coats. I’d say more than half the course was chip seal of varying degrees of roughness, though. At about half way, a girl ran by and turned around and asked if I was running barefoot. I was a little puzzled. On the starting line, that question seems apropos, but now? I said,” Yes Ma’am!” and she kept going. My wife and I looked at each other knowingly and she just shook her head and said, “Really?...this far into the race?”
We stopped for 10min to wait in line for the portajohn. Steak, potato salad and mack n cheese at 7pm was probably too much at too late an hour, but at least the paper towels I’d brought were soaking wet! LOL! Live and learn! Mental note...next time put TP or paper towels in a zip lock! It's that or do that butt accross the grass scoot thing that dogs do! It looks crazy, but it feels soooo goooood!! LOL! Another quarter mile down the road we heard a guy shouting, “All down hill and sunshine ahead!” Yeah…it was down hill alright, but unless there was a chick named Sunshine down the way, he was full of crap!! LOL! Huge puddles and streaming water…there was plenty of that! The rain had let up a little and a lady ran by me and said, “You’re gonna catch pneumonia!”, very accusingly. All I could do was laugh! I mean…ComeonSon!(in my best Ed Lover), there is not a person on the course who’s not soaked and prunny toed by then, but my bare feet are the deciding factor???
As the race wore on, it got quieter. More people digging in and less chit chat…except for us, of course. Just before mile 9, the full went left and the half went right. The folks talking about my feet continued, but not too many talked to me. One lady asked if my feet hurt and joked that I couldn’t feel them. I laughed and told her, really they were just a bit cold, but she nodded like, who’s aren’t! As if to support her look, I hard a couple girls go by talking about how they couldn’t feel their toes in their shoes and I must be hating it...then they started singing "I'm Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO...love that song! Had it stuck in my head the rest of the race! "No shirt NO SHOES and I still get service! Whaaaat?! I'm Sexy and I know it!" About a mile and a half to go, a lady with a megaphone is yelling, “Keep up your pace! You’re doing great! You’re almost there!” long pause “Barefoot people are crazy!!” Everyone cracks up and one guy on the side lines yells at her, “NO…this is the HALF marathon…he’s only HALF crazy!” Uh…thanks for having my back, Dude…I guess. Haha!
Trisa was fading pretty fast by now and we were running maybe a quarter mile and then walking, BUT the tips our own Jimmy Hart had given her were working and her knee pain, which had plagued her 3yrs ago when she attempted a 10K, had not showed up for this event! Awesome! Still, we pretty much ignored the watch and were going by her feel. We walked enough so we could run in the last quarter mile. Man, I hate walking barefoot! The things we do for our women! ;o) Wouldn’t you know, the last 1/8 of a mile was the worst pavement yet! Ugly Chip seal, filled in black top complete with marbles and gravel, etc, but I didn’t care. I could see the finish, a camera showed us on a big screen and we crossed the line. I’m so proud of my wife!! She did awesome! Chatting with her and Leann the whole race really made it fun! Running with someone is way better than doing it alone!
We collected our medals, our finisher shirts, grabbed a banana and hit the bathrooms. The line to the women’s is always long, so I was standing and waiting a while. I ran into another barefooter who was in the full. I didn’t get his name, but he said he’d run it in 3:17! I just fist bumped him in congratulations. He was walking like his feet hurt like a mother. I did not envy his walk back to the car! Mine was bad enough…cold, shivering, soaking wet, tired and my feet just done with me. The best part was a 100ft stretch of soggy grass. I could feel the blood blister on my right foot slide around on the chip seal and walked through every cold puddle I could find over the nasty pavement to the car.
Done and frozen!:
My feet...not so bad. One blister and some past damage that didn't even get worn off...I'm getting the hang of this!
My wife and I changed into dry clothes in the car. In hind sight, a drop bag with dry clothes and my Adams would have been a great idea! We headed to the restaurant to eat with the club and as we got out of the car, I caught a glimpse of us 40yrs from now, hobbling at top speed, but slow as molasses shouting, “Come one! There is a car coming!” both of us cracking up at the image!
-Jonny
Trisa(First Half), Me(First Half in the Wet), Leann(First half to run this slow!), Will(1st Marathon) and Matt(First Marathon and sporting his VFFs which got him running for the first time in January!) ...that's a lot of firsts!!
I’ve started paying attention to the surface from the car to the starting line. The trip there, is no big deal, but once you’ve put a beating on your feet for 13.1 miles, that trek can be the worst part of the event! That’s how I knew I was in for a challenge, before the race even started! About a mile from where we parked with that lovely, big rock buried not quite deep enough in concrete surface, to loose gravel on cobble stone and lovely chip seal...well...it was a testament of things to come! Still, we were there with Club friends and it was all about my wife! This was to be her first Half-Marathon!
We were all gathered in a heated building at Fair Park, waiting to go meet up with some of the early risers for a pre-race photo at the finish line, when my wife’s other Wing-Man, Leann, a slight woman who was pretty much the club’s running Mom/Big Sis, decided to try some Chia seeds. She delved right in before I could explain, dropping about a tsp of seeds into her mouth from the hole in the snack bag I’d brought. The look on her face was priceless! I told her to take some water and she drooled out seeds with an, “I can’t!”, which left the 8 of us standing there laughing hysterically! Poor thing…she was sucking gelled seeds from between her teeth all race! We went out, couldn’t find the rest of our group and snapped a pic of the 5 team members before heading to our respective corrals.
Well…sorta. Leann decided we should stop in B-1 with Will, but he was doing the full and headed further back to find a pace group. Now, I’m not going to lie…the longer than normal trip to the start and the way I’d downed my double shot of UCAN followed by chia and not enough water left me feeling a little sick. Also, I’d just walked a mile and a half on some nasty pavement, my feet were cold, I could see my breath, rain was in the air and I’d already accomplished my first Half-Marathon…I was trying to think of a way out! My Altra Adams sitting in the car were sounding pretty good about now, but I was already here. I dug the Vanilla Stinger waffle cake out of my pocket and took a bite and swigged some water and that deemed to help. Once we started, I began feeling like my old self again, my temp came up, the feeling in my toes came back and I was laughing with my wife and Leann and cussing the chip seal.
The reactions I get from people who have not run beside me during a race before is comical. As people PASS me with a: “Now THAT’s Hard Core!”, “You’re a REAL man!”, “You’re a bad-ass!” and the like, my running partners can’t help but be amazed. Trisa asked,“They are faster than you, but you’re the bad-ass??” I just shrug…if only they knew how much easier this was! Leann said she'd probably be one of those people if she didn't know me. To my running club, I'm just a runner who doesn't wear shoes. We spent the first 3-4 miles cracking up at comments, the conversations behind us and the soggy shoe’s sloshing by, sometimes drown out by the swishing of people donning trash bag rain coats…some even had the easy tie draw strings still attached around the bottoms! LOL! Several hadn’t even bothered to cut out arm holes.
Up to this point, I’d had a couple guys ask if I forgot my shoes and one said he thinks I lost them a mile back. This race I decided to bust out with the,” What?!! You can’t see them either?? I’m soooo glad I didn’t wear the matching shorts! MAN, would THAT have been embarrassing!!!” It was a hit and I got a lot of laughs! It wasn’t raining and I was getting warm with the rain jacket on, so I took it off and tied it around my waist, ah la soccer mom style! I heard a few people read the back of my shirt and chuckle and then, a guy who looked strangely familiar slows on my right and says, “Barefoot. Good job. I like your shirt.” (I was wearing all black with my black “I run naked on sharp pointy stuff” cotton shirt over a long sleeve compression shirt.) I said thanks and he kept going. I looked down and he was shoeless as well. I said, “Hey…you’re barefoot too! Nice!!” He slowed back down and said,” Why yes I am.”
I asked his name and he said his name was Todd. I was like…no way! Now, I’m not one who usually gets star struck, but it was hard, after solo barefoot race upon race, not to be giddy! I thanked him for slowing to talk to me and that I didn’t want to hold him up as I was acting wing-man for my wife’s first half, but he said he didn’t mind. He likes running with other barefooters. He told me, it use to be just him and Ken Bob. If someone said, “Hey, there goes a barefoot runner!”, he knew he was ahead. If someone said, “Hey, there is another one!”, he knew Ken Bob was ahead of him. We only talked and ran for a quarter mile or so, and I would have loved to keep going with him, but today was all about my wife and her watch had just beeped that it was time for a 1min walk, so I thanked him, but then he asked if he could take MY pic! Whaaaaaat?? MY pic?? I said sure, but can we get one together too? My wife borrowed his camera to take a pick of both of us together. (we got some weird looks of people running by, us standing in the road! Lol). Then my wife’s watch beeped that it was time to run again and we started running with him some more. He asked how he could track me down to get me a copy and I told him to look for me on barefootrunners.org and he said, "Barefoot Runners Society? I think I'm on there." and gave him my facebook info also. (I’ll post it once he sends it to me.) He said it was really good to bump into me cause you don’t seem as crazy when there are more than one. I said, “Yeah…one barefooter is a nut, but if you see 2…”, “then it’s a movement!”, he said. Just then, my wife’s watch beeped again I wished him luck as we started walking agin. So crazy! The only barefooter I’ve ever bumped into in a race, and it’s him! Let me just say again…nicest guy you could ever meet!
As we ran, I was explaining to my wife and Leann who he was and how he'd just dont over 100 marathons barefoot, when, and probably cause I’d taken off my rain jacket, the sky opened up and soaked me! Another mile in, a woman I was passing said, “Hey…I know you!” It was a lady I spoke with at the 15K my wife and I did in McKinney, Oct 31st. She and her sister ran it, gearing up for this race. We chatted a sec, but my wife had just downed some shot blocks and was feeling her oats, so I said it was good to see her, waved and went to catch up. We got to run on some harsh surface, rain groves, big bricks dodging trolley rails and huge puddles. There was some nice coble stone of all sorts I got to sample and some highway service road concrete roads worn smooth by traffic that were nice. We al
so got to dodge discarded Gu packets, gloves and trash bag rain coats. I’d say more than half the course was chip seal of varying degrees of roughness, though. At about half way, a girl ran by and turned around and asked if I was running barefoot. I was a little puzzled. On the starting line, that question seems apropos, but now? I said,” Yes Ma’am!” and she kept going. My wife and I looked at each other knowingly and she just shook her head and said, “Really?...this far into the race?”
We stopped for 10min to wait in line for the portajohn. Steak, potato salad and mack n cheese at 7pm was probably too much at too late an hour, but at least the paper towels I’d brought were soaking wet! LOL! Live and learn! Mental note...next time put TP or paper towels in a zip lock! It's that or do that butt accross the grass scoot thing that dogs do! It looks crazy, but it feels soooo goooood!! LOL! Another quarter mile down the road we heard a guy shouting, “All down hill and sunshine ahead!” Yeah…it was down hill alright, but unless there was a chick named Sunshine down the way, he was full of crap!! LOL! Huge puddles and streaming water…there was plenty of that! The rain had let up a little and a lady ran by me and said, “You’re gonna catch pneumonia!”, very accusingly. All I could do was laugh! I mean…ComeonSon!(in my best Ed Lover), there is not a person on the course who’s not soaked and prunny toed by then, but my bare feet are the deciding factor???
As the race wore on, it got quieter. More people digging in and less chit chat…except for us, of course. Just before mile 9, the full went left and the half went right. The folks talking about my feet continued, but not too many talked to me. One lady asked if my feet hurt and joked that I couldn’t feel them. I laughed and told her, really they were just a bit cold, but she nodded like, who’s aren’t! As if to support her look, I hard a couple girls go by talking about how they couldn’t feel their toes in their shoes and I must be hating it...then they started singing "I'm Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO...love that song! Had it stuck in my head the rest of the race! "No shirt NO SHOES and I still get service! Whaaaat?! I'm Sexy and I know it!" About a mile and a half to go, a lady with a megaphone is yelling, “Keep up your pace! You’re doing great! You’re almost there!” long pause “Barefoot people are crazy!!” Everyone cracks up and one guy on the side lines yells at her, “NO…this is the HALF marathon…he’s only HALF crazy!” Uh…thanks for having my back, Dude…I guess. Haha!
Trisa was fading pretty fast by now and we were running maybe a quarter mile and then walking, BUT the tips our own Jimmy Hart had given her were working and her knee pain, which had plagued her 3yrs ago when she attempted a 10K, had not showed up for this event! Awesome! Still, we pretty much ignored the watch and were going by her feel. We walked enough so we could run in the last quarter mile. Man, I hate walking barefoot! The things we do for our women! ;o) Wouldn’t you know, the last 1/8 of a mile was the worst pavement yet! Ugly Chip seal, filled in black top complete with marbles and gravel, etc, but I didn’t care. I could see the finish, a camera showed us on a big screen and we crossed the line. I’m so proud of my wife!! She did awesome! Chatting with her and Leann the whole race really made it fun! Running with someone is way better than doing it alone!
We collected our medals, our finisher shirts, grabbed a banana and hit the bathrooms. The line to the women’s is always long, so I was standing and waiting a while. I ran into another barefooter who was in the full. I didn’t get his name, but he said he’d run it in 3:17! I just fist bumped him in congratulations. He was walking like his feet hurt like a mother. I did not envy his walk back to the car! Mine was bad enough…cold, shivering, soaking wet, tired and my feet just done with me. The best part was a 100ft stretch of soggy grass. I could feel the blood blister on my right foot slide around on the chip seal and walked through every cold puddle I could find over the nasty pavement to the car.
Done and frozen!:
My feet...not so bad. One blister and some past damage that didn't even get worn off...I'm getting the hang of this!
My wife and I changed into dry clothes in the car. In hind sight, a drop bag with dry clothes and my Adams would have been a great idea! We headed to the restaurant to eat with the club and as we got out of the car, I caught a glimpse of us 40yrs from now, hobbling at top speed, but slow as molasses shouting, “Come one! There is a car coming!” both of us cracking up at the image!
-Jonny
