Tag: Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Challenge: Half marathon – Pittsburgh, PA (2016)

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With the Stanley Cup parade happening in the city of Pittsburgh today, I feel it’s only right to finish my long-overdue recap of the second half of my Runner of Steel challenge…

The second half of my Pittsburgh challenge would be the half marathon on Sunday morning (May 1). I love this race and how you get to go through a lot of different parts of the city, starting downtown, heading across the Allegheny River 3 times before spending some time on the North Shore, then heading across the Ohio River toward Mt. Washington and the South Side and then finally crossing the Monongahela River back to finish downtown. 


Since I did the 5k on Saturday, I headed to the same parking lot and hung out in my car for awhile before going to Market Square to drop of my bag and hit up the porta potties. The race starts at 7:30, but you have to be in your corral by 7:00 and some of the streets start closing several hours before that, so I got to the parking lot a little after 6:00 and had plenty of time to wander around and take a few pictures at PPG Place before I had to head to my corral.


The weather was very questionable as we headed into this race – I got updates throughout the day (and night) on Saturday as they were reviewing the forecast for potential thunderstorms Sunday morning, but it ended up being really good running weather. It was overcast and a little windy at the start, but in the 50’s, so once I started running, I was very comfortable. The beginning of the race is always a little crowded, but that’s to be expected when you have about 20,000 people running a race. Personally, the best part of this race is getting to see the best parts of Pittsburgh – going over 5 bridges and all 3 rivers in the half marathon is what keeps bringing me back to this race.

Bridge #1: 16th street bridge
 

Bridge #2: Andy Warhol Bridge
Looking over at Bridge #3: 7th street bridge
My favorite view of the race from bridge #4: West End Bridge
 
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture from bridge #5, the Birmingham Bridge… guess that just means I’ll have to run this race again! After the race, I did take an obligatory medal photo with PNC Park in the background

I’m still working on how to make Garmin give me the stats that I want – since I use the intervals on my watch, all of my stats are listed by those intervals which really isn’t helpful when trying to figure out how fast each mile was. I used to be able to manually pull out those numbers off the old Garmin website, but I haven’t figured out a workaround since the new site went live. Regardless, my official time came in at 2:25:52 which is just about the time I took to run it 3 years ago. 

I really liked doing the challenge this year and the 2016 Steel Challenge medal is the one in the middle. Participants got bibs, shirts (short-sleeve for 5k and long-sleeve for half marathon / marathon) and medals for both races, plus the challenge medal after completing Sunday’s race. It was a fairly long line to get the challenge medals, but they had two people checking off names and handing out medals to everyone, so it didn’t actually take as long as it looked like it was going to. 

This year I made the decision to stay in Oakland and make a full weekend out of this trip and I definitely think that is the way to go – it was really nice to be able to have more than just 24 hours in the city and have a place to call home base as I wandered around the different areas. After this year’s race, I’m definitely thinking about doing the full marathon again, even with the monster hill at mile 13! 

2016 Race #9 – Pittsburgh Challenge: 5k

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My second challenge of the year kicked off with a Saturday morning 5k through downtown Pittsburgh. I headed to the expo on Friday afternoon to pick up my packets for both the 5k and the half marathon and then wandered around the expo for awhile. I had been looking forward to picking up some shirts from Fresh Factory since I had seen them at the 2014 expo, so I was really excited to see them there again. I haven’t had a chance to wear my new running shirt yet, but I’m interested to see what the local reaction will be! My goal for this 5k was to race it like I wanted to race the Run! Ballantyne 5k which would be two weeks later since I would be competing against someone in that race… I wanted to see where I stood. 

There was virtually no elevation change for this race, with the course starting on the North Shore near PNC Park doing a little loop and then heading over the Andy Warhol Bridge toward downtown. There were a lot of participants in the race, with over 3,300 finishers. According to the announcer, there were over 10,000 people participating in the 5k and the 1-mile kids race that followed. They did have pace signs in the starting corral so that people could sort themselves into approximately the right order and I overestimated my pace a little bit, but I didn’t have any issues with keeping up with or having to weave around too many people, so it worked out well.
  • Mile 1 – 8:31
  • Mile 2 – 8:28
  • Mile 3 – 8:19
Official time: 26:15
 
As I was crossing the bridge, I came up behind two boys, a teenager and one who was probably 7-8 years old. The younger one was participating in the kids marathon and my goal for the last quarter mile was just to try to keep up with them. I did pretty well until we hit the 3 mile mark and then they just took off! The race definitely hurt, but I felt really good about the effort I put in and I had kept my time virtually the same as my race in December, so I felt pretty good about my chances going into the Run! Ballantyne 5k.
 
The post-race party was held at Point State Park, the same place as it would be the next day, and I took advantage of the smaller crowd to get my picture taken with the Runner of Steel sign, sporting my Pittsburgh Penguins bike jersey, of course!
 
 
It took a little bit of effort to find the Eat ‘n’ Park cookies, which is one of the best perks of the races in Pittsburgh, but eventually I found the booth where they were giving out mini ones – they saved the full size cookies for Sunday. I also wandered down to the fountain at the point to take some fun pictures with my medal.
 
After the race, I headed back to Oakland where I was staying and wandered around the University of Pittsburgh camps for awhile. It was graduation weekend and I realized exactly 10 years earlier I had graduated from Pitt. Time sure does fly!
 
Cathedral of Learning

Race #6: Pittsburgh Marathon

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There are so many things to write about my first marathon experience and I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around everything. I have lots of pictures from the first half of the race and a couple from the second half (my focus was clearly elsewhere!) as well as a few that my mom was able to get of me while I was running. 


Overall, I’ll say that this run was worse than any of my training runs – I had some digestive issues during the race, so I ended up eating all of my peanut butter crackers pretty early and didn’t use as many GU packets as I normally do. There were lots of on-course food options, but since I didn’t train with PowerBars, I didn’t want to risk trying them for the first time when I was already nauseous. I did grab a pretzel that someone was handing out somewhere after 20 miles, but it tasted sweet, which is not what I was expecting, so I only ate about a bite of it. 

There were almost 20,000 people running the half marathon and the marathon on Sunday, so it took about 35 minutes from the actual start of the race before I was able to cross the starting line. It was overcast and started to sprinkle a little bit while we were waiting, but the temperature was in the 50’s, so it really was perfect running weather. I lined up near the 12:00 / mile sign, but since there were so many people (and I was in the last corral), I knew that the first couple of miles would be crowded. I adjusted my run walk ratio (2 minutes running, 1 minute walking) slightly at the beginning just to be able to get around people and not stop in front of a bunch of people who were trying to run past me, but I kept it within 30 seconds of what I was supposed to be doing and I figured the crowds would help keep me from going out too fast.

The reason I wanted to do this race as my first marathon was two-fold. One, I loved going across all of the bridges last year in the half marathon and I wanted to take some time to get pictures of the great views of the city as I ran it this time (bonus reason to do a walk-run ratio!). Even though it was overcast, I was still able to get some great pictures of the city and you can really get a perspective of how far you’ve run when you look back towards downtown. The finish line party was held near the fountain that’s in the two bottom pictures.

The second reason I wanted to do the marathon is because the marathon course takes you through part of the University of Pittsburgh’s campus and since I spent 4 years there, I really wanted to run through my old stomping grounds. The bad news is that the worst hill of the entire race is leading up into Oakland!





But, as you crest the hill, you can see Pitt’s iconic Cathedral of Learning and you know that (for the most part) the hills are done and you’ll have a pretty flat course until starting the decent back to downtown.


I was still feeling pretty good when I hit Oakland and started towards Squirrel Hill, but I started to feel some twinges in my left knee because of my IT band and I was still fighting with nausea. I did get a boost from one of my high school friends who came out to cheer me on between miles 14-15, but after that is when the doubt started to creep in. I tried to keep my 2:1 ratio, though there were definitely a few more walk breaks thrown into some of the miles. After looking at my splits, I didn’t break down as early as I thought I had. As I was running the race, I felt like I had started to slow down a lot around mile 14 or 15, but my splits don’t tell the same story. I kept up my pace (though it varied quite a bit between 11:30 and 12:30) until mile 20. Miles 20 – 25, the wheels really fell off and I only had 1 mile that was less than a 13:00 pace, but as I got through the major downhill section to get back to the flatter downtown portion, I knew I only had a couple miles left and I finally started to feel good and no longer nauseous. 

I completely missed the 23 mile marker sign, but I knew based on my Garmin that I had passed it and I think after I saw the 24 mile marker (and verified that’s actually what it said), I knew I only had a couple of miles to go and that I could finish the race! For some reason, my Garmin was quite a bit off of the mile markers (my Garmin said I went 26.76 miles total), but somewhere between the 24-25 mile marker, I decided I would just run as long as I could and then take a walk break as needed. At that point, my left hip was really sore (but no more pain from my IT band near my knee) and my right hamstring decided it was going to try to seize up every 5 minutes or so. I also heard a pacer behind me yelling about coming in under the 5:30 mark and I definitely didn’t want them to pass me, so I just ran until I thought my hamstring was going to cramp, then I’d stop for a few seconds to stretch it out and start running again. 

I saw the sign for the 1/2 mile to go marker and tried to pick up the pace a bit, but I quickly realized that 1/2 mile wasn’t even close! I don’t know exactly how much farther the finish line was, but it took quite awhile to even see the 26 mile marker. I’m pretty confident that the sign wasn’t in the right spot, but considering my Garmin had me finishing at 26.76 miles, who knows! I finished that last .76 miles in under 10 minutes, accepted my Runner of Steel medal and headed through the finisher’s chute to get some food and check out the finish line party. 
I was very impressed at the amount of food that was left when I arrived – the finish line party was supposed to go until 2:00 but there was a ton of bananas, water, bagels and, of course, Smiley cookies. I will say that I was disappointed that a lot of the vendors were already gone by the time I made it to the finish line party (even though it was only 1:30 and there were lots of people still running the race when I finished). Luckily, the medal engravers were still there and I was able to get my name and official time put on the back of my medal. 

My official time was 5:28:34, which is slower than I had hoped to finish, but I finished and was very happy to beat the 5:30 pacer after I heard him coming up from behind me with a little less than 2 miles to go. Even though it wasn’t how I had hoped (or expected) my day to go, it was a great experience and I haven’t completely written off doing another one in the future, though I’m definitely not ready to sign up yet either!

Check back tomorrow for a recap of the marathon by the numbers.