2011 Boilermaker 15K

Well, today was a pretty good day!

Last night, Heather, Chris and I drove to Utica for the Boilermaker! In case you are unfamiliar, the Boilermaker is a pretty popular 15K road race. 13,000 people were registered to run this year, and it was the first year that they had to cap the registration.

We stayed at a Best Western, about 1.5 miles from the race.

We got up at 5:00am to park at the race start before they closed the roads. I had a bagel with almond butter for breakfast and it held me over for a while!

We got to the race start at around six, and then picked up our packets.

And then we waited.

Finally, it was time to head to the start, along with 13,000 others.

We started lining up at about 7:30. And then I realized I left my Garmin in the car. Whoops. 🙁

Chris and I walked the 10 minute walk back to get it, and made it with about 10 minutes to spare. Unfortunately we couldn’t find Heather since it was way too crowded to get back to the spot where we were.

And then the race started!! But we weren’t going anywhere for a while! We finally started walking about 10 minutes after the gun went off. Slowly but surely we made it to the starting line!!

The temp at the start was actually below 60 degrees! The announcer kept calling it the “burrlermaker”! It was chilly! But the heat from all the runners pretty much made it warm after standing at the start for so long and the chilliness was gone.

The first few miles crawled by. I felt like I was running so slowly. I think the gradual incline from miles 1-4 definitely played a big role in how I felt today. My legs felt like lead. It wasn’t pretty.

I managed to snap some shots throughout the race!

I met up with Heather at mile five, the top of the evil golf course hill. I did a lot of walking up this hill, no shame.

Both us of were feeling the effects of the hills by then, and we were pretty tired.

But we must go on! There were four miles left!

Mile six might have been the hardest. I found myself stopping to walk through every water station, since they had one about every half mile. Six went up over a bridge, which was pretty killer.

But what goes up, must come down, and I flew down the rest of the hill. I took a Gu at mile six, so I felt a little bit more energized. Caffeine works wonders, I tell ya. The rest of the race was pretty much downhill, so the last three miles went by SO quickly. Before I knew it, my garmin hit nine miles and I was almost done. The crowd support for this race is incredible, definitely the best of any race I’ve ran.

Almost there! And just like that, one hour and 35 minutes later, the Boilermaker was over. I gave up any hope of PRing after mile three. Those first miles are crucial, and since they were uphill, I was slower than normal. But I’m okay with it. I wanted to have fun, not kill myself over it.

I felt so strong at the end of the race. I honestly could have kept running!! I felt so great. I wish the whole race had felt that good, but I’ll take a strong finish over a weak start any day.

Chris finished way before me in 1:22, PRing his 15K time! He’s so awesome!

Once I found him, we went over to the beer truck to rehydrate while we waited for Heather.

Hurray for post-race refreshments. 🙂

What else would you drink at the end of a race that finished at a Brewery? Adirondack Lager, of course! I have never drank beer so early or so soon after a race before, it was an interesting experience. I couldn’t drink any last year because I felt so sick after the race, but I felt fine this time around!

Shortly after Heather found us. She finished her first 15K in under two hours, which is such an amazing accomplishment!! Heather is so amazing and I’m so proud of her.

Soon we headed to the post race “party” to pick up our goodies and get some nourishment. They had lunches for every runner, but the veggie option was a pretty sad looking PBJ that had been sitting in the sun for a few hours…bummer. But we did score some Chobani! 🙂

I wouldn’t say this was my best race, but I still tried to have a good time. I shared this awesome experience with some of my favorite people, Chris and Heather. And I’m so thankful I get to do awesome things like travel and run races. Its pretty awesome. 🙂