Cellcom Green Bay Marathon

May 16, 2010 was the 11th running of the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon. This was the 8th time I have run the marathon. This was the first marathon I ever ran, back in 2003 and have run it every year since. I originally planned to do the half marathon that year, until I met Shanna Zahn at work and started training with her. We met on Saturday's with the marathon training group (which consisted of very few people and we met in the hallway behind the old Suanne's Bagels in East De Pere, now Cafe Indulge). The routes were incorrectly marked for distance, we didn't have GPS', I wore a big heavy sweatshirt and some soccer clothes in the dead of winter and I had never even heard of GU let alone tried it. Well I have learned a lot over the years and continue to search for the "secret of the marathon". Hopefully someday I find it.


This year's installment of the race turned out to be perfect weather wise. Couldn't ask for anything better. I ran with Mark for the whole race. Our original goal was to start and stay with the 3:50 pacer (which was my friend Craig). Well that worked until about mile 3 and Craig picked it up. Our pace up to that point was exactly where we wanted to be and I didn't want to hang with him and push it too much. The first couple miles were fast enough. I, of course, didn't feel that fresh. Mark did, as usual, and was just bouncing along but I held him back with my slow pace. I felt trashy and low on calories for miles 3-13. I didn't feel terrible, just felt like I was working pretty hard to keep the 8:45 pace I wanted. I was eating this whole time, but I think I start low on calories and so the first few miles of a race are bad and the back end are better if I can catch up on my calories, there's a big "IF" there. We ran into a friend of mine, Shauna, on the course and ran with her for a bit. We then saw my friend Stacy about mile 6 and gave her a big wave. We saw Sue at mile 6.5 and Mark changed his shirt and then shortly after we saw my sister. My brother-in-law Brent was running the half so she was there to cheer for him. He started with us but dropped back about mile 4.5 with a side ache. We saw a few more people we knew and just kept checking off the miles. I took a little longer water stop break at mile 9 to stretch, thinking this would help me to feel better....it didn't help at the time but I think it did help in the later miles. We kept trucking along through the half way point, past where the half and full marathoners split (I almost had to pull Mark with me for the full....there was no way I was doing this alone....sorry buddy!). We ran right by my house about mile 15 and Mark about had to hold me back from going to get Asher. (I think Asher got more props in this race than I did, everyone wanted to know where my dog was!) My foot really started to hurt about mile 15 so I took some more ibuprofen. We ran across the bridge in De Pere and just as we were about to go on the Fox River Trail, we run into my friend Erik on his mountain bike....Awesome!! So he “tried” to stay with us for the next several miles, I say “tried” not because of our blazing pace but because there were so many people on the trail spectating and running that it was hard to maneuver a bike. But he tried and we got to talk to him several times. He left us and I asked him to meet us at mile 24, that's when we are going to need some help, or at least I would given my past marathon experience. About mile 17 I really started to feel good. I started to get my second wind and really enjoy the run. Mark stopped at Fox Point to go to the bathroom and the 4 hour pacer passed us….dang. We caught up to them but then lost them at the Schenck water station, I stopped at the bathroom quick and Mark stopped to talk to Sue. We continued to just plug on. Nutritionally I felt really good. I felt like I had good energy and wasn't lightheaded as usual. I liked the pace we were keeping and was even able to talk to people and look around. Except for my foot, I felt decent. We (okay, maybe just me) danced our way across the Walnut Street bridge downtown to Toby Mac "One World" and were on our way "home" to Lambeau. Mile 23 Jeff Zellner caught up to us. Not sure how he caught us because he started before us, but anyway. We ran with him for a bit. At this point we graciously conceded our demise to the 9's that we were trying to keep and rolled along at 10's. My left IT band got very sore at this point and felt like it was going to cramp around mile 23. Never had that happen before. I think that is because I was altering my gate because my right foot hurt so bad. Erik rode his bike from Lambeau and met us about mile 24. That helped. I talked to him which was nice, it kept my mind off of the task at hand. We cruised through the next couple miles and got back to Lambeau. We ran through the Mile 25 Margarita water station (in which we wisely did not partake) and rounded the corner onto Oneida and saw Jeff, Dave and Jess. We saw Mark's friends Walter and Carol while we ran into the party...aka Lambeau Field and the finish line. Jeff Z got his second wind and kicked our butts through the stadium. We ran out of the stadium and gave it our all to a strong finish. I was very happy to be done. I think Mark was too. Afterwards we met up with all our family and friends and chatted about the race.

Nutritionally I felt very strong, especially in the later miles, which is where I usually run out of steam. I just need to figure out the early miles. My stomach felt good with the gatorade, water, honey stinger combination so I'm very excited about that. And my legs only got a little tight towards the end. I had stopped a couple times along the course to stretch which I think helped a ton in the later miles. If my foot wouldn't have been bad I probably would have done a warm up to get my legs loosened up and stretched out but I didn't want to pound on my foot any more than possible. I think this would have helped with the tight legs. It's hard to go from nothing to 26.2 miles with no warm up. I thought this year’s race was the best yet, the crowd support was fantastic. We saw a ton of people along the course that we knew....which is the huge benefit of running a marathon in your home town. (Mark, the social butterfly, definitely put me away with the amount of people he knows...holy smokes.) Our final time was 4:09:50.  Well my time was later changed to 51...not sure why....so Mark....once again....beat me by 1/100th of a second. I'm going to stop running with him if he's going to continue to push me out of the way at the finish....how rude! J/K  Glad he can put up with me for 26.2 miles.  Until next time....

P.S.  Sue did take a couple pictures of us, but I can't seem to get them added.  Sorry.  Just words this time.