Mission: Accomplished (Part One)

Well, I did it…the Quad Cities Marathon is history!

Here are the quick facts.

1.  I finished in 4:27:02.  As my goal was to finish in under 4:30, I was very happy with my time.  My official clock time was also under 4:30, which was an added bonus!

2. I finished solidly in the middle of the pack:  24th out of 43 in my age group, 114th out of 238 female runners, and 402nd out of 656 total runners.

Here is Part One of the story.

I ran with my running group at 7:15 on Saturday morning before heading to Elijah’s soccer game at 9:00.  After three ties and a loss, his team finally scored a victory!  Then, we packed up and headed over to watch about an hour of a tae kwon do test, as the kids have a friend who was getting his black belt that day.  At 1:00, we hit the road for the Quad Cities.

For those of you not from around here, the Quad Cities consists of, as one might guess, four cities at the natural Mississippi River boundary between Illinois and Iowa.  Moline and Rock Island are in Illinois, and Bettendorf and Davenport are in Iowa.  There is also Arsenal Island right in the middle of the four cities, which has a military installation, a golf course, and a visitors’ center.  The QC Marathon touts “4 cities, 3 bridges, 2 states, and 1 island, all along the mighty Mississippi River.”

Yep, that about sums it up.

We arrived in the Quad Cities around 3:00 and went to our hotel in Bettendorf, Iowa.  While the room was tiny and dated, it offered a shuttle bus to the race, a nice pool, a big hot breakfast (which Jeff and the kids would enjoy), and, upon request, a 2:00 p.m. late checkout, so that I could get a shower after the race.  It was also across a couple of parking lots from the three-mile marker of the course, which meant that Jeff and the kids could easily walk over to cheer me on!

We were meeting the Fiedler family over at the expo center in Moline, Illinois, to pick up race packets and then going out to supper with them.  We had originally planned to eat at the Olive Garden (a nice place to ingest lots of pre-race carbs), but OG does not take reservations or do call-ahead seating on Friday or Saturday nights.  So, I called another Italian place, Biaggi’s, on the off chance it might take reservations and have something available.

I got lucky.  Biaggi’s could seat  nine people at either 4:45 or 8:30.  After a quick call to the Fiedlers to make sure the switch was OK, I snatched up the 4:45 slot.  Supper was now assured to be done in a timely manner with no waiting and a relatively early end.

Next, we headed over to the expo center for packet pickup.  We stood in three different lines to pick up our numbers and timing chips, get our race shirts, and then get the chips activated.  Then, we checked out the vendor booths for a little bit (I bought a headband that says “26.2” on it) before heading over to Biaggi’s in Davenport, Iowa.

Yep, we managed to visit three of the four Quad Cities the night before the race!

We enjoyed a great dinner at Biaggi’s with Mike, with whom I had trained for this race, and Robin and their boys.  Great food, great service…I think that Biaggi’s beats Olive Garden hands down!

After supper, we still had some daylight, so we drove a little bit of the course.  It is relatively flat but does have one hill between miles two and three, so I wanted to check that out.  (It was barely a hill…we trained on worse.)  A lot of roads were closed already and much of the course was on a paved walking/biking trail along the river, so we shortly headed back to the hotel.

Jeff opted to stay in the room and put Jeremy down, as Jeff was still pretty jetlagged from just getting back from Thailand the day before.  I took my Kindle and sat with the kids at the pool for an hour and a half.  By 8:30, we were all in the room, and, by 9:30, we were all in bed. 

Next thing I knew, it was race morning!  Mike picked me up at 6:00 a.m., so as to avoid my having to depend on the shuttle and because his hotel was only two blocks from the starting line.  So, I ate my yogurt, banana, and Clif bar over at the Moline Stoney Creek Inn and hung out in the lobby while Mike went to roust his family to watch the start of the race.

While I was waiting, my dad called.  He had come to visit on Friday and then spent Saturday night at our house while we came to the Quad Cities.  On Sunday morning, he drove up to watch the race and made it to the starting line shortly after 7:00.  When the Fiedlers came down, we headed over there and met up with him.  We had time to take a picture, and then we made our way over to the starting area for people who were planning to run the race at our anticipated pace.

There were four races lining up in the same place:  the marathon, the half marathon, the 5K, and the one-mile walk.  So, it was pretty crowded down there, which helped cut some of the windy coldness.  The weather forecast was not promising, but at least it wasn’t raining right at the start!  The mayor of each city and the general in charge of Arsenal Island all said a few words, a 12-year-old sang the national anthem, the race director wished us luck, and BOOM!  Someone shot a cannon, and we were off!