Little Rock Marathon Recap - Part II

Now that my family & friend have left, it's back to reality.  Here's the rest of my recap from Little Rock:

At the start

So, race day morning, Spazz & I awoke to everything laid out and set to go.  Of course, my Garmin decided to not turn on - something it's never done before or since, but OF COURSE the day that I'm pacing someone's first race it happens.  Awesome.  But we didn't sweat it - we figured we'd just hang with the pace group.

We got downtown & parked with plenty of time to spare.  As I mentioned, our "creative writing" caught the attention of an official photographer who snapped a picture of the two of us (above).  Since I brought my camera to document the race, I also got a picture of Spazz with one of our awesome pacers (left).

Soon after, the race began.  We didn't hear the gun, but the crowd started it's shuffle to the start line & we crossed a couple minutes later.

Once started, we had a great time.  There were a bunch of bands scattered throughout the course along with fantastic spectators, unofficial bands & lots of people with boom boxes or cars blasting music.  Spazz & I did our best to keep things light & fun.  We rocked out to the music.  Made lots of funny faces (see below).  Took plenty of photos.  Chatted it up with everyone around us.

"Dancing" for the cameras

My favorite music we encountered was a guy around mile 20/22 playing Wild Thing.  First of all, it's a great song to pump people up.  But in this instance, it was particularly great because the guy seemed to only know that song, and only know the refrain.  He just kept playing the refrain over & over & over.  Love it.  At least he was out there.

A little past halfway, the course starts going uphill for a couple miles.

Blame Little Rock for the poor picture quality.  I copied this from their page.

The hill isn't terrible but for those of us training in cities with ZERO hills it can be brutal.  Particularly if it's your first marathon.  Spazz started cramping a little on the uphill, but she quickly learned that it's not always the uphill that gets ya... the downhill can be just as tough on the body when you're not accustomed to that kind of running.  By mile 20 or so, I could tell she was hurting.  But this woman is hardcore.  We walked briefly a couple times to see if that would help.  She felt better when walking but that didn't make her feel better when we would pick the pace back up, so she decided to push through the pain.  Yeow-za.  Because I couldn't leave the last 6 miles undocumented, I snapped 2 photos around mile 24:

Smiling for the camera

"Hold on... Let me take one more just in case"
This is the "smile" I got.  Someone wasn't happy!
Check out those guns!

But she pushed through and we rocked through the last few miles.  We didn't stop at the Lipstick stop (mile 26) but we did grab some as we passed by.  And after all the worry of falling behind, Spazz & I finished within 12 seconds of our intended time.  Talk about awesome.  (That was all her.)

Once showered & ready to go again, we headed to the post-race party at the Clinton Library.  There was a Dr. Seuss exhibit going on, so the theme was Seuss everywhere:

The food was great & plentiful.  We stuffed our faces & then some.  They also had free drinks (including jello shots!) and, having met up with our pacers, we were soon handed several jello shots to start the night.  Once those kicked in, we headed upstairs to the award ceremony and dancing.  The band was awesome as was the company.  They played a Cajun song, "Feets don't fail me now," which seemed particularly relevant for running a marathon days before Mardi Gras.

Nothing like dancing to speed recovery.

Hey... I never said I could dance.

Little Rock.  Definitely worth it.