Sunday May 4

I dig the Pig!

Flying Pig is a nice event. The city is much more beautiful and interesting than I imagined. As one rounds the bend between hills one sees the whole skyline with an impressive array of various structures most of which are sports stadiums. There is much public art and it’s mixed in with funky old buildings with lots of history and character.

The marathon start is delayed for 15 minutes while fire officials dealt with a fire in one of the neighborhoods early in the course. Paul Brown Stadium where the race begins and where I believe the Reds play baseball is really cool looking.

We drive up from our hotel across the river in Northern Kentucky in the dark and luck into a great parking spot under a highway in the shade of freeway ramp. It is only a couple blocks from the start but about a mile from the finish.

The actual race is great. The start toward the river into the sunrise is lovely. Some rolling hills through the urban part of downtown during the first couple miles is the only real elevation change on the course. We see some of most fun parts of the city. Crowd support is some of the best I can remember and is comparable to, say, Boston , or Nashville, or Chicago. Folks in various neighborhoods make a block party out of gathering to cheer and hand out treats. I normally don’t notice that so much but find myself getting a little lift whenever I come to a pack of neighborhood greeters. Many of them called out to me “looking good Orlando” (I’m wearing an Orlando Runners Club singlet).

I start out with the 4-hour pace group but by mile 3 I can already feel that is bit too fast for an enjoyable morning so made the conscious decision to slow to something more comfortable. It is absolutely the right thing to do. I cycle through tired and reinvigorated several times as crowds, on course nutrition, and music give influence. There are many musical acts on the course comparable to Nashville or Disney. My personal favorite is the barbershop chorus in a park at about mile 9 but here are also classic rock, mo-town, and country-western acts. I run essentially the whole way and had a relatively strong finish.

There are shuttle busses that would bring one back to the start area (and car) but I don’t figure that out until I’d already walked it. I wanted to come back and change cloths. I wait for Rob to finish. He usually takes about 5.5 hrs so I have some time to rest and change cloths, etc. We have a hard time reconnecting in the crowd after he finished. He came in much earlier than we expected and may have even broken 5 hours for chip time. I got him back to he airport and headed north to my mothers home in Southgate MI. Her apartment is quite nice. It’s tastefully decorated and set up for her various disabilities. She gets around well and better than I expected. I started falling asleep about 8:30pm but managed to stay up to chat until almost 10pm.

Pictures from Flying Pig are available at http://www.runphotos.com/browse.cfm?race_id=134&bib_number=1332