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It was a tale of two races for me. It was a perfect morning for running, a little over cast, cool but not cold and little wind. The place was packed though.Over 5600 runners signed up for the 25k and almost 5000 for the 5k. Throw in the two divisions of wheelchair racers and I think the grand total was over 13000 runners, all packed in like sardines in downtown Grand Rapids. The wheelchair racers went first to a roaring ovation from everyone around the start and then it was our turn.

Here is where my first problem came in. My iPod went awol on me with about 2 mins to go before we started. It just constantly reset itself after 20 or 30 seconds. I must have tried about 5 times to make it work but by then it was too late we had to start running because the gun went off. Needless to say I was pissed.. no infuriated would be a better word. You see the whole entire reason that I bought an iPod and started workoutdump.com was to be able to track my run's with the Nike plus sports kit and iPod tandem. All the training miles, coding, and work I have done this year was to get ready for this race, and now the reason that I am here just goes to hell on me. Yes I was infuriated. But with no time left to ponder I started moving with the mob to cross the start line.

 The first half of the race went well. I started out in the 8 min / mi pace group at the line with nelo, toeknee8, and srybak. We had met up right before the start with a stroke of luck as toeknee8 finding srybak and I in the crowd. We got out to a really good pace and the first couple miles went by with much joking around and finger pointing about who's idea it was anyway to run this thing. I still blame nelso mostly for that one.

I warmed up too much in the first 5 miles, by wearing a long sleeve tshirt, and decided that it was time to stop carrying around a useless iPod and headphones. So at about the 6 mile mark on the course I took off iPod and wrapped it up in my extra shirt and dropped it infront of the park entrance that we ran by, mentally noting exactly where I dropped it so I could tell MrsMcbeev where to go get it for me. I thought twice about leaving my iPod on the ground for about 2 seconds, but since I was still kind of pissed that it wasnt working I didnt really care at that point and dropped it off. In retrospect this was not a good choice, more about that later.

Nelso and I crossed the 7 mile mark at about 51 mins. Now at about this point I started to realize a few things. 1. This was much faster than I had planned, and 2. there could only be two results from this, either I am going to run a really good time, or this was going to be the worst race of my life. Id love to say that number 1 happened, but this would be a pretty boring post if it did.

I managed to keep up the pace to about mile 10. I was totally impressed with Nelso staying with me till about 9 miles but he did drop off a little. When I saw the clock for mile 10 that is when the problems started. I got passed the clock and told myself I really needed a break. I wasnt totally winded but my legs were just too tired. So I stopped and took a couple steps just walking. This was a big hit to my motivation. You see my real goal was to finish with no walking because when I ran this back in 2000 I did have to stop and walk a couple times. So I was hoping to avoid that. As I started to get back up to a jog, my legs just laughed at me. Haha silly Mcbeev, were not going anywhere they said. And they were right. I absolutely hit the wall. The next 5.5 miles were pure agony. I would jog a little, then walk a little, jog a little, then walk a little...

At about the 13.5 mile mark I did see MrsMcbeev and Maggie waiting for me to cheer me on. Which did bring a big smile to to my face. It was near a water station so I grabbed some water and talked to them quickly. I told MrsMcbeev where to look for my shirt and iPod in a hurry but didnt want to stop all out so kept going after saying hi.

More agony ensued for the last mile and a half and I did make it to the finish line, but I was in rough shape. As you can see above in the results my pace slowed way down to over 9 mins a mile. Somewhere between there and finish I saw srybak pass me and ran a few steps with him, but again could barely move. My lungs were fine, I was barely even breathing hard when I saw him. My legs were just 100% dead.

 When I finished I could barely stand there. But it hurt to stand, it hurt to walk, and hurt to bend over try to stay up right. Im not sure exactly how I got my chip off my shoe, but I did. I hobbled over to the outside of the finish chute and tried to sit down. Yeah that hurt even worse. By this point I was also shaking uncontrollably and my feet were burning. So I took my shoes off and the only thing that felt remotely good was to crawl up in the fetal position on the ground.

I must have looked pretty bad because about 3 people came up to me and asked me if I needed medical assistance. 2 people even layed their coats on my because they told me I looked cold. That was nice of them but I wasn't that bad... at least I think. After a few mins I started to cramp up and got in some real pain. I managed to stand up and the force the cramps out of my calves and the people left.

After another few mins I started walking around and looking for some people near the beer tent but couldnt find anyone. MrsMcbeev and Maggie were no where to be found in the sea of people either. About a half hour went by and I did hobble into srybak. We tryied to call MrsMcbeev but I couldnt remember her phone number without my phone so decided to just call it day and walked back to our cars. That was probably the slowest and most painful walk I have ever taken back to my car.

I got home and MrsMcbeev was there. We traded some stories and then I pretty much went to bed for about 3 hours. When I woked up she said she looked for my iPod and shirt where I told her to and it wasn't there. Nothing was there at all. GAaahahhhh. The perfect cap to the perfect race.

So to sum it up. I learned a few things:

• Don't go out too fast in a long distance race
• Don't get too mad at electronic devices that are worth more than $100
• Don't go to Vegas on a vacation the week before a long distance race
• Do drink more water the couple of days before a long distance race
• Do run more long training runs outside, and not on the treadmill

I'm mad enough and dissappointed enough that I might just use this as motivation to run it next year.