Race Reports

Steamtown Marathon
October 9, 2011
Scranton, PA
Ron Wahula

I ran my 2nd marathon of 2011 last Sunday, the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton PA. In classic road trip style, on Friday, we crammed six runners into my truck and made our way to the beautiful Pennsylvania hill country. Upon arrival, we checked into our hotel, then had a great pasta dinner. The best time for your pasta loading is 2 days before your race, not the night before. On Saturday, we attended the Expo and went into extreme relax mode....no sense in tiring ourselves before our race. Early that evening, we indulged ourselves in the ultimate comfort food - pizza. And Scranton has some great pizza!

Race morning - we boarded the buses and headed out on a 45 minute ride to the start at Forest City High School. Steamtown is a point to point course, which is known as a downhill race. What we didn't realize is that after the first 13 miles of downhill running, there were plenty hills that we struggled to climb.

After the 1st mile, I ran into Nevin Kessler of our 1030 group. He is the ultimate pacer and was running my intervals of 3:1's. I hung with Nevin for the 1st half which we ran in 2:15, a 10:20 pace. The second half didn't go as well. Nevin dropped me but then I ran into William Bales. We hung for awhile, then he stopped for a break. My quads started to burn from that 1st 13 miles, so I was forced into survival mode. I moved to 2:1's, and walked some of the hills. The second half also had about 3 miles of trails....that was a nice break from the pavement. It started getting pretty hot for the latter part of the race, but we know heat pretty well, don't we?

I was pretty psyched to see the finish line....my 27th marathon in 23 years of running is in the history books now. I finished in 4:58, which is an 11:22 average pace. I'm always happy to break 5 hours and I accomplished that goal That's not bad when you consider all my long runs were run with the 12:00 or 12:30 groups and were all run in deep water at a 14 minute per mile pace or slower. My Magic Mile time predicted an 11:03 pace, so I was pretty close to the prediction charts. They also throw a great post race party with tons of food, a band and of course, dancing with Cara.

Bottom line - Steamtown is a great race but plan on some very sore legs afterwards. And it's always nice going to a race as a group. Lots of friendship and laughter made this race very special. My next race is the Tucson Marathon in December - that marathon is also a point to point with a 2500' drop.....more burning quads for Ron!!! And thinking ahead, I just signed up for the Rock'n Roll Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans on March 4th, 2012. If you know you want to run a particular race, don't hesitate, or you may not get in. And yes, a bunch of us are running the Umstead 100 on March 30th....but I promise you, I am only running the 50 mile option.