River Bank Run trip 2014

As someone who loves running, something that is fun to do is travel to a race. When Lisa and I were deciding on our race calendar for the year we decided to do to the River Bank Run 25k in Grand Rapids, MI. We chose this race for a couple of reasons. Primarily though it was because our good friends John and Jackie live near Grand Rapids, and I've traveled out there to run this race in the past. It's was also a solid challenge of a race, as it's a couple miles longer than a half marathon.

We headed out on Thursday afternoon, after lunch, with a goal to make it just outside Chicago. We made reservations in Carol Stream so that we could meet a couple of friends on Friday morning for breakfast. The drive was mostly uneventful, except for the massive road construction on I-90. It was a major headache and by Thursday night I was suggesting that maybe we could spring for the ferry from Muskegon to Milwaukee for our trip back to avoid all of that mess.

Friday morning we met Rich and Beth for breakfast and had a great time chatting. We then headed out for a few more hours of driving to Grand Rapids. Because of the time change it was mid-afternoon before we arrived at our hotel. We walked over the packet pickup and I showed Lisa around the start and finish area, and where we would all meet up after the race. Then we headed out to John and Jackie's house for a great chicken and rice dinner and to hang out for an evening. It was a great time to sit and relax and chat (no beer though because of the race ;-) ). We had an awesome time catching up and before we knew it, it was getting much too late.

As usually happens the night before a race we don't sleep tremendously well, so we were up and about rather early. Since I was going into this race with a specific set of goals I was pretty anxious to get moving. We were only a couple blocks from the start line so we headed downstairs close to the gun time and met up with John and Jackie to get to the staging area. The race kicked off and for almost the entire time it went amazingly smooth for me. Around mile 12 things started to fall apart on my pace. I had been managing mostly 9:00-9:30 min/miles, but towards the end I was pushing hard to manage 9:50s. However, I managed to finish the race with a time of 2:28:59. I made my goal of beating two and a half hours, and I blew away my 2011 time by over 8 minutes. Lisa crossed the finish with a time of 3:10:48, which met one of her goals, and was an amazing accomplishment for the longest run she's ever attempted.

However, my celebration was mostly short-lived. After making it back to the hotel and showering off, things started not feeling right. I tried to walk it off a bit, but the nausea started to overcome me and I had to back out of lunch. At some point in the afternoon the diarrhea and vomiting started, and the day became a complete wash-out for me. I spent all of Saturday curled up in bed trying to recover from whatever it was that hit me. At this point I'm thinking it was a combination of overexertion, heat exhaustion and perhaps a small stomach virus that was able to take hold because of overexerting myself. Lisa managed to get out for parts of the day and enjoy herself, which I was happy about. But for the most part my day consisted of lots of sleep and cable TV.

Sunday I woke up feeling a bit better, but still had no appetite. At this point we were very happy that we had opted for the ferry to get us part of the way home. It cost a bit more than we had planned on spending on the trip, but the idea of making it to Milwaukee after relaxing on 2.5 hour boat ride was very appealing. The ferry ride was actually quite amazing. The boat speeds across the lake at 34mph, which is fast enough to blast you with wind if you try to stay on the upper deck at full speed. We spent most of the trip relaxing in the cabin reading and enjoying the smooth ride. I could see us budgeting for this luxury in future trips.

Because I wasn't in a beer mood we skipped our planned stop at Capital Brewing and just headed straight home. The only real stop we made was to pick up some New Glarus beer to bring home, since we can't get that in Minnesota. Oh... and I bought it on a Sunday, at a gas station. Thanks for doing it right Wisconsin.

We made it home around 5:30pm and got settled back in. I'm still not 100% today, but being home in my own bed certainly felt nice last night. Despite the fact that the post-race illness stunk, this was still an awesome trip. I love hanging out with these groups of friends, and wish that distance wasn't such a burden to getting together more often. I also made my race goal, and hopefully whatever knocked me out after this race was a one time affair, and I can get back to training for the summer. On the upside I don't have a race this long until the Marathon in October, so the summer should go pretty good.